The Vice Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Peter Obi, has said that Nigeria lost four million jobs in a six-month period, while China created 10 million jobs.
Obi, who said this at the ongoing Vice Presidential debate, at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, which was monitored by Post-Nigeria, knocked the current administration, for failing in counter-terrorism, education, and job creation.
He said: “On the issue of unemployment, which is worsening, we can see that millions of our children are out of School. You can see from a study that there is a straight link between SMEs and growing your economy, and we are not supporting our own SMEs very well.
“If you look at what China has been able to do with SMEs, SMEs in China is contributing to 60 percent of their GDP. And 60 percent of China’s GDP is 7.2 trillion dollars, which is 18 percent of Nigeria’s GDP.
“China today, using the same SMEs, is guaranteeing 10 million jobs annually. Half of this year alone, China has produced 7.2 million jobs, which is over 40 percent of their target. Within the same period, Nigeria lost four million jobs.”
According to the former Anambra State Governor, Nigeria needs to revisit its policies and have a better focus on how it can create jobs.
He added that as long as Nigeria does not create jobs, with the number of unemployed youths in their productive age, Nigeria might go into crisis.
Obi continued: “That is why we have issues of insecurity, instability and all sorts of things we are witnessing today. We now live in a country where we have the highest number of poor people in any nation – 87 million and growing six percent every minute.
