Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River State has announced that 6,000 youths from the Central and Northern Senatorial Districts of the state would be captured under his administration’s Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme.
This is coming on the heels of the increasing number of unemployed and underemployed Nigerians officially standing at 34,027,119 released by the National Bureau of Statistics.
Ayade made this public at two separate events in Ikom and Ogoja Local Government Areas where the swelling army of unemployed youths and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) players had gathered at the township stadia to endorse him for a second term in office.
The governor who is locked in a backstage re-election bid is currently making efforts to avert a violent uprising by unemployed youths in the state.
Apparently shaken, Governor Ayade has been very busy in recent weeks promising the electorate a better and relatively comfortable life in the coming months as he keeps mobilising the state to rally behind his re-election bid in 2019.
According to the PDP governor who is being seriously challenged by some power gladiators in the All Progressives Congress (APC), ‘’upon my honor, my character, my integrity, exposure, wealth and fear of God, I will make a difference. I am going to bring prosperity and hope to these young faces.’’
At Ikom, he said 3,000 youths will be included in the CCT register from the six local government areas that make up the district and in Ogoja, he promised that the next political event will be held at the new township stadium which construction has stalled.
Ayade who is pressing on with his backstage re-election campaign said the five local government areas in the district will also produce 3000 youths to be added to the register.
This brings to 9,000 youths the governor will be adding to the register after announcing same figure for the seven local government areas that make up the Southern Senatorial District.
The CCT is a register domiciled in the social welfare ministry with those whose names are written therein, receiving cash every month.
At the moment, the country’s labour force as at the third quarter of last year was put at 85.1 million. Analysts say this implies that Nigeria has 85.1 million people between the ages of 15–64 who do not have jobs.
In the Niger Delta area, Nigeria’s gold pot, Rivers State for instance, has a labour force of 4,301,988, which is second to Lagos in Western Nigeria with a labour force of 7,118,101and Kano State in Northern Nigeria coming third with 3,713,679.
Analytically, 61.4 per cent of the Rivers labour force which stands at 2,639,589 are either unemployed or underemployed. Tearing it down further, the fact tends to show that 41.8 per cent or 1,103,348 are unemployed while 19.5 per cent or 514,719 are underemployed. These are quite scary figures in millions.
Researchers have always maintained that there is a major link between rising unemployment and rising crime rates which translates to, the more unemployed people exist, the more crimes are committed.
In the Niger Delta, Rivers has a peculiar case because she is the oil and gas capital of Nigeria. Thus, just as many people migrate to Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, in search of better economic opportunities, so do people flood Rivers in search of jobs and other economic opportunities.