SPACES FOR CHANGE [S4C]

Friday, 15 August 2014

PHOTOSPEAK: PORT HARCOURT YOUTHVOTE INFORMAL ROUNDTABLE

The informal roundtable held in the Nigerian garden city of Port Harcourt was aimed at educating young people to register in the forth coming elections and also empower them with the capacity to undertake voter education at their community level.

Tuesday, 1 July 2014

Spaces for Change Donates Learning Resources to Lagos Slum School

The 27^th day of June 2014 wasn’t just an ordinary day for pupils and members of the Otto/Ilogbo extension slum community in Lagos Mainland Local Government Area in Lagos State. On that day, Spaces for Change staff and volunteers , led by its executive director, Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri, donated learning resources and materials to the pupils of Young Leaders Academy (YLA), a ramshackle and hastily knocked-up shed that serves as the only nursery and primary school within the slum village. The school - a one-roomed hall, barely the size of a standard bedroom, with gaping slits and cracks in its wooden walls - is the equivalent of the luxurious Grange School for the slum children. Founded in July 2012 by Musibau De great Agbodemu, a slum dweller himself, YLA was borne out of his quest to ensure that the poorest slum dwellers had access to basic education.

An anonymous caller to the popular WOMAN radio programme hosted by Zoe Chinaka on Nigeria Info FM 99.3 complained about her boss who was sexually harassing her at her workplace. She wanted to know what to do and was afraid of losing her job if she did not give in to his demands. This prompted the discussion around the special radio discussion on the 19^th of June, 2014, featuring Spaces for Change's OluwaFunmilayo Fakeye.

PRESENTATION OF Q2 Q3 & Q4 2013 JOB CREATION & EMPLOYMENT SURVEY

Dr. Yemi Kale

Spaces for Change.S4C’s Ilemona Onoja participated in the presentation of the Q2, Q3 & Q4 2013 job creation and employment survey by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). “The briefing is in line with the resolve of the NBS to present cogent and verifiable data which are necessary for policy making and business decisions”, says Statistician General of the Federation, Dr Yemi Kale. The latest statistics are neither policy material nor representative of the national policy thrust on job creation, but were figures showing the effect of existing national policies designed to bolster employment generation in the country.

The press briefing also presented an opportunity for the NBS to clarify frequently-misunderstood or often-politicized official data and statistics on job creation. As part of efforts to improve data gathering in Nigeria, the NBS revamped its organizational and administrative structures in the 36 states and set up of state-level statistical agencies, with enhanced digital capabilities in 17 states of the federation.

The Results

The results of the survey were categorized into 3: formal, informal and public sector. Formal jobs refer to jobs in establishments that employ 10 or more people or professional services that employ less than 10 people. Informal jobs refer to jobs generated by individuals or household businesses employing less than 10 people, or business with little or no structures (eg in agriculture, wholesale or retail).

Public sector jobs refer to jobs in ministries, departments and agencies, parastatals, research and educational institutions at federal, state and local government levels. The results show that the Nigerian economy generated:
221, 054 jobs in Q2 2013
245, 989 jobs in Q3 2013 and
265, 702 jobs in Q4 2013.

These are broken down thus:

Q2
formal jobs- 80, 412
informal jobs-112, 557 and
public sector - 28, 075.

Q3
formal jobs- 76,385
informal jobs- 140,673
Public sector- 28, 931

Q4
Formal jobs - 101, 597
Informal jobs - 143, 278
Public sector- 20, 827

The informal sector leads the way in job creation providing over 54% of the jobs created in the quarters covered. In the three quarters covered, employment generated were attributed to 3 main factors- business expansion, seasonal growth and new skill required.

In Q2 2013, education was the highest provider of new jobs with 37, 578 new jobs followed by manufacturing with 9, 000. Lowest was administrative and support services with 85 new jobs.

In Q3, education and manufacturing recorded the highest number of new jobs with 29, 777 and 13, 946 new jobs respectively. Admin and support was lowest again with 30.

Q4 saw this trend maintained with education and manufacturing creating 76, 874 and 12, 337 new jobs respectively.

Partnership with Spaces for Change

In March 2014, Spaces for Change filed a Freedom of Information request to the NBS requesting to inspect and independently verify the statistical data of jobs created between 2011 and 2013. In compliance with the FOI request, NBS has forwarded the Q2, Q3 & Q4 2012 results of the job creation survey to Spaces for Change for independent verification. That request opened the gateway to sustained engagement and cooperation between Spaces for Change and the NBS with the objective of strengthening the independent monitoring of the development and analysis of job creation statistics. Reiterating the agency’s willingness to collaborate with Spaces for Change to ensure the integrity and quality of its data, Dr. Yemi Kale extended an invitation to Spaces for Change to participate in a number of upcoming exercises including:

1. National census of commercial and industrial businesses. NBS will conduct this exercise in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Ministry of Trade and Investment. This exercise was last conducted 20 years ago.

2. National Agricultural Sample Survey which is designed to collect information on agricultural production in the country. This exercise was last conducted in 1997.

3. Q2 2014 job creation survey

We have accepted this invitation and have begun to mobilize our network of volunteers across the federation to undertake these exercises. This partnership offer was also extended to jobberman.com, Nigeria's biggest online employment agency. This partnership seeks to take advantage of jobberman's access to information relating to job creation statistics in about 30, 000 companies scattered across the 36 states of the federation with interests in more than 40 fields.

Data Center Tour

Dr. Yemi Kale led participants on a tour of the data centre and facilities of the NBS. The centre contained servers directly connected to state statistical centers in 17 of the 36 states, including the Nigerian Customs Service, the ministry of finance, Central Bank of Nigeria and other federal government departments.