INTRODUCTION
Research undertaken proved that unemployment of graduates are devastating phenomena in their lives. A high incidence of either are indicators of institutional ineffectiveness and inefficiency. Since the beginning of the economic recession in the US economy in 2007, an increasing number of graduates have been unable to find permanent positions in their chosen field. According to statistics, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates has been higher than all college graduates in the past decade, implying that it has been more difficult for graduates to find a job in recent years.
Manpower planning applies the process of planning to the preparation and employment of human resource for productive process. One of the reasons for planning in developing countries is to increase the rate of economic development. The genesis of manpower planning in Nigeria is traced back to the Ashby Commission appointed by Nigerian government in 1953 to conduct an investigation into Nigeria’s need in field of post school certificate and higher education. There arose the need to provide skilled human resource for the expanding economy.
Aggravating factors for unemployment are the rapidly increasing quantity of international graduates competing for an inadequate number of suitable jobs, schools not keeping their curriculum relevant to the job market, the growing pressure on schools to increase access to education which usually requires a reduction in educational quality. (Coates ; Morrison, 2016).
By statistical information in Nigeria, the phenomenon of graduate unemployment has reached an alarming state. For instance, Akintoye (2008) indicated that graduate unemployment as a percentage of total unemployment rose in Nigeria from 1% in 1974 to 4% in 1984. In less than a decade, between 1992 and 1997, it accounted for 32% of the unemployed labour force in the country (Dabalen, Oni ; Adekola, 2000). Conservatively, Eneji, Mai-Laifa ; Weiping (2013) put the rate of unemployed graduates at about 60% of the Nigeria labour supply market. Recent publication supplied by National Bureau of Statistics (2016) indicated that a total of 52million citizens within the economically active population of Nigeria is jobless and this figure consisted mostly of newly qualified university graduates.
By any standard, the picture that emerges from these statistical information seems to have portrayed Nigeria as a country that is incapable of providing wage employment opportunities to a substantial number of her trained university graduates. According to Afolabi, Yusuf and Idowu (2014), of all the problems facing Nigeria in recent time, none is as virulent, persistent and agonizing as the problems of high unemployment among Nigerian graduates. The deleterious effects on the nation’s economy and affected individuals are highly unquantifiable. Aside from being a huge waste of human capital and loss of investment in higher education, those caught in the web of this social menace are often susceptible to frustration and non-conforming behaviours. As Baku, Ashiaagbor, Simon and Alfred (2008) put it, rampant unemployment of university graduates is not only a disincentive to schooling, but could also be recipe for social unrest, if not checked. For these reasons, reducing the problems of graduate unemployment in Nigeria is tantamount to solving one of the greatest macro-economic challenges militating against rapid transformation of the nation’s economy.
LITERATURE REVIEW
THE CONCEPT OF MANPOWER PLANNING
Manpower planning according to Obisi (1996) is the undiluted strategy of acquiring, utilizing and maintaining the workforce of an organization. It is a means to acquire the right kind of people at the right time and adjusts the requirements to the available supply.
Armstrong (1995) defined manpower planning as a systematic and continuing process of analysing an organisation’s human resource need under changing condition and developing personnel qualities appropriate to the longer term effectiveness of the organisation.
Prachi (2014) said manpower planning which is also called human resource planning consists of putting right number of people, right kind of people at the right place, right time, doing the right things for which they are suited for the achievement of goals of the organization.
The ultimate aim of human resource planning is to put the right man or woman on the right job. It also attempts to strike a balance between shortages and surpluses in the workforce and encourages an organisation to cut its coat according to its cloth. (Obisi, 2015)
PROBLEMS OF MANPOWER PLANNING IN NIGERIA
Athanasius (2017), highlighted the following as the problems of manpower planning in Nigeria.
1. Lack of adequate use of manpower:
One of the greatest challenges of manpower planning in an organization is the issue of under utilization of human resources.
The fact that companies are not making proper use of their human resources has hampered the very effort of manpower planning in an industry.
Many attempts in undertaking the manpower planning have been thwarted by some hurdles, such as utilizing human capital maximally. This is just one of the problems that have brought many businesses to their knees.
2. Lack of training
Lack of initiating training and education programme is seen as major problem of manpower planning in most organization, the level of unskilled labour has slow down the pace of growth in business organization, there is no way one can expect growth in an organization, when the people are unskilled and the end result of this situation is either business closure or low productivity.
3. Lack of information on manpower
A good number of industries lack access to proper information on manpower lest alone to plan. Lack of adequate statistic on manpower in many organizations, data base complications, lack of integration of modern technology into organization’s development plan and computerized system has brought about inefficiency in manpower planning.
Infact, lack of integration of modern technology in manpower planning has hampered the very success of manpower planning.
CONCEPT OF GRADUATE UNEMPLOYMENT
According to Oppong ; Sachs (2015), graduate unemployment is defined as the number or proportion of degree holders (graduate and post graduate) in a given economy who are capable and willing to work, but unable to find jobs. This definition established graduate unemployment as a specific type of unemployment among people with academic degree from higher institution working zero hour and earning zero income.
Viewed almost in the same context, Eneji, Maifa, ; Weiping (2013); Akinyemi ; Ikunomore (2012) and Ogege (2011) described graduate unemployment to encompass graduate of universities and polytechnics who are fit and ready to work, but could not find a job or discriminated by experience. In these categories of people are fresh and young tertiary institution graduates, retrenched graduates seeking re- engagement and those who are underemployed or on disguised employment.
One of the greatest challenges facing the Nigeria economy is unemployment which has maintained a rising trend over the years. The total labour force in Nigeria is made up of all persons aged 15-64 years excluding students, home keepers, retired persons and stay-at-home to work or not interested. Unemployed refers to people who are willing and a capable of work but are unable to find suitable paid employment. The classical school of thought that provided the earliest thinking on economic issues did not fail to give a central point of reflection on the undesirability of unemployment. The Keynesian revolution of the 1930’s, which commanded the explosive attack on economic orthodoxy apparently, treated unemployment as a central issue of great concern. Following the path of the predecessors, economists at all times and in all ages have expressed various degrees of concern over the threat of the monster called unemployment. The population of every economy is divided into two categories, the economically active and the economically inactive. The economically active population (labour force) or working population refers to the population that is willing and able to work, including those actively engaged in the production of goods and services (employed) and those who are unemployed (Njoku & Okezie, 2011).
Within this perspective, graduate unemployment has been construed in this study to mean condition of involuntary idleness for higher education graduates who are actively seeking for remunerative employment, but cannot find any, under the prevailing economic circumstance.
The next category, the economically inactive population refers to people who are neither working nor looking for jobs. There seems to be a consensus on the definition of unemployment. The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines the unemployed as numbers of the economically active population who are without work but available for and seeking work, including people who have lost their jobs and those who have voluntarily left work (World Bank, 1998:63). Examples include housewives, full time students, invalids, those below the legal age for work, old and retired persons. However, the application of this definition across countries has been faulted, especially for the purpose of comparison and policy formulation, as countries characteristics are not the same in their commitment to resolving unemployment problems (Akintoye, 2008).
CONTEXTUALIZING UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
Unemployment rate according to Business dictionary (2014) refers to the percentage of total workforce who are unemployed and are looking for a paid job. Unemployment rate is one of the most closely watched statistics because a rising rate is seen as a sign of weakening economy that may call for cut in interest rate. A falling rate, similarly, indicates a growing economy which is usually accompanied by higher inflation rate and may call for increase in interest rates. Investing Answers (2014) adds that the unemployment rate measures the percentage of employable people in a country’s workforce who are over the age of 16 and who have either lost their jobs or have unsuccessfully sought jobs in the last month and are still actively seeking work. While explaining further, Investing Answers (2014) using the United States of America examples posits that in the U.S., the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the unemployment rate in its Employment Situation report, which is released on the first Friday of each month at 8:30 AM EST. The report discloses the current unemployment rate, the change in the unemployment rate, and a variety of other labour statistics. The data in the report is generated by surveys taken from almost every major industry in over 250 metropolitan areas. The Bureau conducts two surveys: the household survey, which interviews 60,000 households, and the establishment survey, which reviews data from 160,000 businesses and agencies.
It is important to distinguish between the percentage of people who are unemployed and those who are simply not working. Some people may be in school full-time, working in the home, disabled, or retired. These people are not considered part of the labour force and are therefore not included in the unemployment rate. Only those people actively looking for a job or waiting to return to a job are considered unemployed. Economists generally distinguish between three different types of unemployment. Frictional unemployment exists when a lack of information prevents workers and employers from becoming aware of each other. It is usually a side effect of the job-search process, and may increase when unemployment benefits are attractive. Structural unemployment occurs when changing markets or new technologies make the skills of certain workers obsolete. And finally, cyclical unemployment is a result of the cyclical nature of the economy and occurs whenever there is a general downturn in business activity. Unemployed people typically fall into one of four classifications. Job losers are people who have been laid off or fired, either temporarily or permanently. On the other hand, job leavers are people who have voluntarily left their jobs, and the size of this group may actually reflect confidence in the state of the economy. New entrants are people seeking employment for the first time. And finally, re-entrants are people who left the labour force for a time and are now returning, such as parents who opted to raise families or those who left to pursue additional education. Some level of unemployment will always be present in an economy as industries expand and contract, as technological advances occur, as new generations enter the labour force, and as workers voluntarily search for better opportunities. This is why most economists agree that there is a natural rate of unemployment in the economy (usually 4%-6%). This natural rate is most affected by the number of youthful workers in the labour force, as well as public policies that discourage employment or job creation, such as a high minimum wage, generous unemployment benefits, and few disincentives associated with laying off workers.
Justifying why unemployment rate is significant for her economy, Investing Answers (2014) asserts that employment is the primary source of personal income in the U.S. and has a major influence on consumer spending and overall economic growth. Thus, the unemployment rate, which is a lagging indicator, can provide considerable information about the state of the economy or the health of particular business sectors. For example, high unemployment generally indicates that an economy is underperforming or has a falling gross domestic product. Conversely, low or falling unemployment may reflect an expanding economy. At the same time, unemployment data can also point to changes in certain industries. For example, an increase in construction jobs might signal improving housing starts. For these reasons, the unemployment rate is one of the most widely followed economic indicators while there is some controversy over the different methodologies used to measure unemployment, nearly all recognize its importance. Because unemployment statistics are so closely watched and heavily relied upon, differences between the expected unemployment rate and the reported rate may have a wide impact, not only in the securities markets, but also in the value of the U.S. dollar (which tends to rise in a strengthening labour market). Furthermore, unexpectedly low unemployment may motivate the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates in order to curb a possibly overheating economy, and vice-versa. This will also influence stock and bond prices.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (2014) warns that the official definition of the unemployment rate, given above in a series of definitions, contains a couple of unavoidable complications. (1) A person who loses a 40 hour per week job, but works for one hour mowing a lawn for pay is classified as employed. (2) A person who simply expresses interest in having a job is classified as unemployed. “Discouraged workers” who have lost a job, but do not make an effort to find a new job in a given week are not classified as unemployed or even as in the labour force. Both possibilities mean that the announced unemployment rate is not as definitive as it might sound. Nonetheless, the unemployment rate is defined as the number of unemployed persons divided by the labour force, where the labour force is the number of unemployed persons plus the number of employed persons. The official definitions of these figures as documented by Bureau of Labor Statistics (2014) are as follows: Persons 16 years and over in the civilian non-institutional population who, during the reference week, (a) did any work at all (at least 1 hour) as paid employees, worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family, and (b) all those who were not working but who had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent because of vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labour-management dispute, job training, or other family or personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off or were seeking other jobs. Each employed person is counted only once, even if he or she holds more than one job. Excluded are persons whose only activity consisted of work around their own house (painting, repairing, or own home housework) or volunteer work for religious, charitable, and other organizations. Persons 16 years and over who had no employment during the reference week, were available for work, except for temporary illness, and had made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week. Persons who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off need not have been looking for work to be classified as unemployed.
For our purpose, unemployment rate can be defined as the number of people actively looking for job divided by the labour force. Changes in unemployment depend mostly on inflows made up of non-employed people starting to look for jobs, of employed people who lose their jobs and look for new ones and of people who stop looking for employment. Domesticating the characteristics in Nigeria, Obinna (2014) explains that the rate of unemployment in the country is expected to increase further by about two per cent this year, The Financial Derivatives Company Limited (FDC), report has predicted. The Financial Derivatives Company Limited (FDC), a Lagos-based financial advisory firm stated this in its 2014 outlook obtained recently. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the rate of unemployment in Nigeria stood at 23.9 per cent in 2011, while urban unemployment was estimated at 29.5 per cent in 2013.
In addition, the FDC report also forecast that the misery index would likely to increase further in 2014, from the 38 per cent it stood in 2013. It also predicted that the nation’s currency would fall by about three per cent this year, even as it anticipated a correction in the stock market. The report equally stated that inflationary pressure would manifest this year, adding that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which stood at 7.9 per cent as at November 2013, may increase to between 9.5 and 11 per cent. “External reserves to deplete further to $40 billion. Recurrent expenditure projected to increase to 72.71 per cent of total government spending”.
Furthermore, the report predicted that the net Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) would decline to $4.8 billion in 2014, adding that the United States tapering of its quantitative easing programme would trigger capital flow reversal. The report showed that in 2013, power generation declined as the naira shed 12 per cent at the parallel market, while the exchange rate divergence ratio widened. In the review period, external reserves declined to $43 billion, with net FDI declining to $5.3 billion as trade balance decreased to $40.2 billion. Nigeria is ranked 37th largest economy in the world (with GDP of $283 million) and is projected to rise to 13th position in 2020. The countries potential GDP growth declined to 11 per cent, the report added.
Equally in a separate report released recently, an Economist at Renaissance Capital, Charlie Robertson pointed out that with the proposed rebasing of the country’s GDP, the Nigerian economy would become the biggest in Africa at over $400 billion.
“Electricity reform is working. Growth of seven per cent a year since 2000 means Nigeria’s GDP is on course to be bigger than Japan by 2050, at over $5 trillion in today’s money by 2050. We like Nigeria for the first quarter of 2014,” (Obinna, 2014) Robertson added.
GROWING RATE OF UNEMPLOYMENT: THE NIGERIAN CASE.
Statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that Nigeria’s unemployment rate rose from 21.1 per cent in 2010 to 23.9 per cent in 2011. The labour force swelled by 2.1 million to 67,256,090 people, with just 51,224,115 persons employed, leaving 16,074,205 people without jobs. Insufficient jobs resulted in additional 2.1 million unemployed persons in 2011, up from 1.5 million in 2010, even as Nigeria’s population, according to NBS, grew by 3.2 per cent in 2011, from 159.3 million people in 2010 to 164.4 million in 2011.
NBS however, added that, “Unemployment was higher in the rural areas, at 25.6 percent, than in the urban areas, where it was 17 per cent on average.” NBS however, admonished that in the light of the country’s fast growing population, there is need to double efforts at creating a conducive environment for job creation in order to reverse the trend. Therein lies Nigerian’s fears. For instance Akintude Maberu told The Nation that “government is yet to come up with conscientious and people-oriented policies targeted at getting millions of unemployed Nigerian youths actively and meaningfully engaged” (Okorocha, 2014:5).
While noting that unemployment remains one of the major concerns in the country today, the renowned fiancé analyst and stockbroker dismissed current federal government’s programmes aimed at creating jobs as “more propaganda.” He argued that reversing the trend of rising youth unemployment must start from the nation’s education sector, which he said must be overhauled along the line of skills acquisition. Hear this: “Nigeria’s education curriculum should be immediately revised to incorporate entrepreneurial skills and enterprise development. This would adequately horn the entrepreneurial skills of Nigerian youths (Okorocha, 2014:5).
The idea, Maberu explained, is that with adequate skills and hands-on experience in various vocations, Nigerian graduates would be self employed after leaving school while those in school would find something doing even before completing their education. He said that this would save Nigerian youths the stress and trauma of endless and fruitless search for paid employments in a highly saturated labour market. The approach, according to him, has become even more necessary considering the fact that many Nigerian graduates are unemployable.
Maberu also took a swipe at the structure of Nigeria’s civil service which, according to him, is not structured in a way that allows qualified youths take up vacant positions left by retired civil servants in an open and transparent manner. While conceding that indeed, few employment opportunities exist in the country, he however, expressed regrets that the few job openings in various government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), unlike in the past, are no longer openly advertised. He asked, when was the last time you saw job advertisements in the papers by any of the MDAs? adding, you hardly see advertisements for jobs these days, and until there is a progressive shift from bottom up, allowing civil servants in MDAs to genuinely retire and make room for the younger ones instead of reserving those jobs for their cronies, the rising unemployment trend in the country may never be reversed (Okorocha, 2014:5).
Maberu argued that the need for more concerted and holistic efforts to reverse the rising youth unemployment has become even more necessary considering the grim picture painted recently of the global unemployment market by the International Labour Organization (ILO). ILO (2014) projected that global unemployment would hit over 215 million by 2018. The organization in its ‘Global Employment Trends 2014’ noted that the uneven economic recovery and successive downward revisions in economic growth projections have had an impact on the global employment situation with the result that about 202 million people were unemployed in 2013 around the world.
The figure, according to ILO (2014), is an increase of almost 5 million compared with the year before, reflecting the fact that employment is not expanding sufficiently fast to keep up with the growing labour force. ILO (2014) said the bulk of the increase in global unemployment is in the East Asia and South Asia regions, which together represent more than 45 per cent of additional jobseekers, followed by Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Latin America, by contrast, added fewer than 50,000 additional unemployed to the global number-or around 1 per cent of the total increase in unemployment in 2013.
ILO (2014) said overall, the crisis-related global jobs gap that has opened up since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008, over and above an already large number of jobseekers, continues to widen. ILO (2014) projected that in 2013, this gap reached 62 million jobs, including 32 million additional jobseekers, 23 million people that became discouraged and no longer look for jobs and 7 million economically inactive people that prefer not to participate in the labour market and on current trends, it would rise by a further 13 million people by 2018. It also said that if current trends continue, “global unemployment is set to worsen further, albeit gradually, reaching more than 215 million jobseekers by 2018. During this period, around 40 million net new jobs would be created every year, which is less than the 42.6 million people that are expected to enter the labour market every year.
ILO (2014) however, said that young people continue to be particularly affected by the weak and uneven recovery. “It is estimated that some 74.5 million young people aged 15-24 were unemployed in 2013; that is almost 1 million more than in the year before. The global youth unemployment rate has reached 13.1 per cent, which is almost three times as high as the adult unemployment rate. In all, ILO (2014) says that tackling the employment and social gaps requires job-friendly macroeconomic policies. The report said that a rebalancing of macroeconomic policies and increased labour incomes would significantly improve the employment outlook.
As if to make matters worse, more companies, in a bid to cut cost, are downsizing their workforce, thus sending thousands of their employees back to the labour market. The banking sector appears to be worse hit following a sack gale that has shown many bank workers the door while keeping others on edge. The telecoms sector is also hit as telecoms companies are laying off their workers after out-sourcing most of their operations. Many of the workers who have been sacked are bread winners and their lives and that of their families and dependants are now hanging on the balance. The increasing rate of unemployment in the county is seen by experts as confirmation that Nigeria’s widely reported rapid economic growth has evidently failed to translate into job creation. For instance, Prof. Pat Utomi, Director, Lagos Business School, has never stopped wondering why Nigeria experiences rising rate of unemployment despite its rating as one of the fastest growing economies in the world, a situation said to be no different in six other African countries listed among the 10 fastest growing economies in the world (Agboola,2014).
The NBS equally pointed out that 54 per cent of Nigerian youths were unemployed in 2012, of this figure, females stood at 51.9 per cent and male 48.1 per cent. In a related development, the former chairman of the subsidy reinvestment employment programme (SURE-P), Dr. Christopher Kolade bemoaned the rising rate of unemployment in the country, saying that no fewer than 40 million Nigerians are without jobs. The former minister of Finance and co-ordinating minister of the economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala also admitted that the spate of unemployment was really alarming. Quoting the NBS, she declared that 1.8 million young Nigerians enter into the labour market. It is very instructive to note that, Nigeria was ranked 153 out of 186 countries in the 2013 United Nation’s Human Development Index (Akadoro, 2014).
The World Bank states that job creation in Nigeria has been inadequate to keep pace with the expanding working age population, causing social distress for an increasing number of Nigerian youths. Similarly, the statistician General of the Federation and the Chief Executive Officer of NBS, Dr. Yemi Kale said, unemployment was highest amongst youths aged 15-24 and 25-44 adding that the problem was more pronounced in the rural area. So bad is the situation that if urgent and workable decisions are not taken, it could be capable of far-reaching cataclysmic consequences (Salif, et.al, 2014).
More and more people do not have purchasing power; and less consumption has led to lower production hindering economic growth. Ineffective government development programmes as well as lack of institutional capacity to provide jobs due to under-funding have not helped matters. A fallout of unemployment is the recourse to kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution, militancy, insurgency, street begging, hawking, cybercrimes and proliferation of baby manufacturing dens just to mention some of the escalating social vices.
Unemployment situation in Nigeria has become a conundrum. Not long ago, the Dangote Industries Limited, DIL, announced its intention to recruit just 100 derivers with Ordinary National Diploma certificate to drive its newly acquired state-of-the-art trucks. In the scheme tagged Executive Truck Drivers, about 13,000 young Nigerians turned up for the interview. But that was not even surprising considering the level of unemployment in the country. What shocked many Nigerians was the fact that of the 13,000 applications, six were Ph.D holders, 704 master’s degree holders and over 8,460 bachelor degree holders (Obike,2014). A bemused Aliko Dangote, President of DIL, said that most of the applicants were from reputable universities and had the needed qualifications. The attraction of the offer was that the drivers would eventually take possession of the trucks. In addition to getting allowances on each trip along with their salaries, they were to own the trucks at no interests after they must have reached 300,000 kilometres, which is about 140 trips from Lagos to Kano. Dangote said a hard working driver could complete such distance in two years, while it may take lazy ones up to four years (Nnaqdozie,2014). The unemployment situation in the country is worsened by mass retrenchment in various sectors of the economy where companies have had to restructure their operations or even shut down their factories due to the harsh operating environment. A clear example is the banking sector, where thousands of workers have been thrown into the employment market on a yearly basis. Sunday Salako, National President, Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance, and Financial Institutions (ASSBIFI), confirmed that about 10,000 of the association’s members have lost their jobs since 2009 (Nwaeze, 2014).
CAUSAL FACTORS OF GRADUATE UNEMPLOYMENT
Various causal factors traceable to the prevailing general status of socio-economic system in some emergent nations were held responsible for exacerbating the growing incidence of graduate unemployment . Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria. (CIPMN), 2016; International Labour Organisation (ILO), 2012; Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa (ERNWCA), 2008; Oppong & Sachs, (2015).
In terms of specificities, the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPMN, 2016) identified some factors that predisposed tertiary institution graduates to unemployment in the country. These were lack of national employment policy, sub-optimal quality of graduates, educational system not tailored and aligned to industry need and inappropriate educational curricula. Others are poor political governance, poor setting of policy direction, inconsistent government policy and harsh business environment. Besides, in recent decades, the Nigeria economy has not achieved any significant diversification and the country’s tertiary education system has witnessed a ponderous admission overload of students, resulting into massive over supply of higher education graduates. This lack of synergy between the production of graduates and employment opportunities underscore the complexity of the graduate unemployment issue in Nigeria (Ogege, 2011).
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF GRADUATE UNEMPLOYMENT
According to Shadare and Elegbede (2012), the phenomenon of graduate unemployment as it is being experienced today in the developing countries like Nigeria, constitutes a peculiar problem to the labour market and the general economy of these countries. The economic cost of this social problem involves reduction in gross domestic product of any nation. It reduces economic welfare, reduces output and erodes human capital (Oluwajodu, Blaauwu, Greyling, & Kleyhans, 2015). As such, the performance of the economy in most of the developing countries where graduate unemployment persists, is enfeebled as a result of under-utilization of the labour resource. The maximum economic benefits that would have accrued from genuine harmonization of socio- political and economic forces, have eluded the economy of these countries leading to unpleasant dirges of poverty (Ajayi, 2015). In essence, graduate unemployment is an immense way of human resources that could contribute to the economic progress of any nation.
Viewed seriously, Madoui (2015), opined that beyond the deprivation of salary, graduate unemployment entails removal from the indispensable socializing effect of work. It undermines the self-esteem of the affected persons and raptures them from social ties and relationship. Hence, in Nigeria and other developing nations, the unemployed graduates are characterized by shame, boredomness and hardship. With the concurrent marginalization from the world of work, the unemployed graduates have been put in a state of worklessness and made to become dispossessed persons with no income value in the society. They are perpetually unhappy with themselves in the world of material consideration (Adawo, Essien & Ekpo, 2012). Also, they suffer social exclusion and lack social recognition which often make friends and relations to regard them as liabilities in the society. These destroy morals and break social relationship (Asmare & Mulate, 2014) which paves way for disaggregation of social bond and instability in the level of social order in a country. Thus, the accelerated level of non-conforming behaviours among the unemployed graduates has culminated into unpleasant social vices which have suffocated the entire Nigeria’s environment.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To this end, government must ensure necessary modifications in the educational system in the country that would make graduates to be employers of labour and self-employed, instead of looking for scarce job opportunities. The acquisition of the right skills to fit the various needs of the society is imperative. However, the oft-repeated cliché that Nigerian graduates are unemployable is as a result of apparent failure of government to pro-actively address the deficiencies in the educational system.
To effectively deal with the unemployment situation in the country, the government must also exigently attend to the nagging issue of infrastructural deficits in the country, especially the issue of power supply. The national economy need a strategic diversification from oil and gas to solid minerals, aviation, tourism and agriculture. Small and Medium Scale Enterprises as well as the manufacturing sector should become the real engine of growth and employment generation, backed by the enabling environment for private investments.
While on the part of the corporate organisations, it is imperative that all stakeholder’s must put their best foot forward, using manpower planning as a tool, which is to be used in bridging the gap of unemployment and other catastrophic menace that could bewilder an emerging economy such as Nigeria with youthful population.
We also advocate for a comprehensive national policy on employment to drastically reduce unemployment ratio in the country to the barest minimum. Again, the national economy should be managed in such a manner that would have direct bearing on the wellbeing of the generality of the people. After all, the economy cannot exist in a vacuum; also government should address the gross underutilization of resources to deal with pervasive unemployment in the country. Government must be courageous enough to put in place homespun economic policies devoid of any misanthropic tendencies and reject foreign induced anti-people economic agenda. Government must get to the brass task of tackling the serious problem of corruption with all the attention it deserves. Also, social security schemes must be created to curb the fangs of unemployment amongst the teeming population.
CONCLUSION
It is an established fact, that planning is an analytical process involving various aspects so as to produce quality products and to offer best services, various plan excise such as determination of desired goals, assessment of the future in relation to the environmental changes, selection of activities, preparation of written plan document etc. will have to be done, which will give rise to mobilization of human resources. The result of manpower planning is marvellous. This will be reflected in higher turnover, lower absenteeism, lower breakdowns, lower migration and more than anything else, higher quality of work. However, for most organizations, long term planning rarely exceed five years. Short- term planning is a yearly adjustment of the figures on the current payroll which goes with the actual annual budgeting in organization.
Attainment of organizational objectives requires a lot of efforts on the part of management, having gotten the right type of materials to accomplish the task they have set out. The strategic problem of goal achievement is to get to the expected end without either being derail by poor management or dearth of expertise in the needed areas of the organization. Only a navigational instrument will surely help matters, this suggests the blending of the elements of good and effective management with the availability of skilful and talented manpower to achieve corporate objectives of enterprise.
Unemployment, insecurity, harsh economic conditions among others indicate that young graduates in the polity are losing out while unconfirmed statistics indicate that three out of ten graduates in Nigeria are unemployed, some of them have become commercial motorcycle operators and petrol station attendants. To add to their frustration, some smart but dubious recruitment agencies have capitalized on their woes to exploit them under the guise of securing profitable jobs for them. With the story of the Ph.D holders applying as drivers in Dangote companies still fresh in our memories and now the death of 20 urgent youths as a result of a stampede that occurred during the Nigeria immigration service, NIS employment sage, it shows that all the measures to check the scourge of unemployment have defied logic by successive governments.
Therefore, the nexus between manpower planning and unemployment, is something that should not be treated with levity in the short-run as its impact in the long run is catastrophic, with the teeming exploding Nigerian population. To reduce unemployment in the polity, the individuals concern, government at all levels and the organized private sector must put in place creative measures to stem the tide. Under this condition, it is doubtful how the youths of today can propel the needed wheel of development; if young people are provided with employment opportunities, they can become productive assets and take their part in main stream society offering the best of their skills and talent.
