Nigeria’s Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, on Monday, raised the alarm that nobody is safe any longer in the country owing to the security challenges confronting her.
Ngige ascribed an increase in the security challenges, which has also made the elites vulnerable, to the non-payment of attention to the provision of decent jobs to teeming youths roaming about the country.
The Minister stated this in Abuja while playing host to the leaders of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) and the National Pension Commission (PENCOM).
His words: ‘Insecurity, as you rightly pointed out, is caused by people who feel cheated by the society.
Read Also: Continuation Of Strike By Doctors Contemptuous – Ngige
‘They carry arms, weapons to vent their anger on the elites.
‘So, the elites in Nigeria are in danger, including me, all of us.
‘Hence, the sooner we start talking to elites in employer organisations like yours (IPMAN) the better. So we can curb this malady and prevent it from escalating.
‘When you refer to the nexus between job vulnerability and insecurity, you hit the nail on the head.
‘A lot of insecurity problems we have today is caused by unemployment and underemployment.
‘In underemployment, people are not making up to the National Minimum Wage or working up to 8 hours a week which is the ILO standard for full employment.
‘There is a lot of danger if we fail to effectively tackle this. But we are doing our best.’
He urged employers of labour and labour unions to pay greater attention to the formalisation of workers across the federation, warning that unemployment and indecent jobs are huge incubators of national insecurity.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK