Akwa Ibom government refutes ‘false’ statistics on employment

Akwa Ibom State government has denied a recent statistics that it was one of the two states in Nigeria with the highest unemployment rate.

It made the rebuttal yesterday in a statement signed by the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Charles Udoh.

The report, published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), was widely reproduced by the media.

“We would have ignored these logically confounding findings since the facts on the ground do not support such wild conclusions. But for the larger reading public who may be persuaded to believe the decidedly skewed report, we wish to state that this report is false and misleading.

READ MORE:   Akwa Ibom, Rivers top states with high unemployment rate in 2018 third quarter – NBS 

“To further buttress this point, in the same report, the NBS contradicted itself by saying that between the third quarter of 2017 and the third quarter of 2018, only Akwa Ibom and eight other states ‘recorded a reduction in their unemployment rates despite an increase in the national unemployment rates.’ This finding contradicts the main conclusion of the NBS and renders the exercise spurious and utterly confounding,” the state asserted.

According to the statement, Akwa Ibom under the focused and pragmatic leadership of Governor Udom Emmanuel has tackled unemployment and under-employment with messianic zeal.

It added: “The central plank of his first term in office was the need to rapidly industrialise the state and create employment opportunities for our teeming youths.

“So far, this policy has been achieved, leading to the establishment of 16 industries that have employed thousands of our youths. The Akwa Ibom Employment and Enterprise Scheme (AKEES) has ignited in our youths an entrepreneurial and ownership mindset. This has seen our youths applying their creative resources to create employment for themselves as part of our Dakkada philosophy.

“Because of the achievements recorded in the job and wealth creation agenda of Governor Emmanuel’s administration, youth restiveness has been greatly reduced, leading to the peace and safety we now enjoy in our state, which is one of the main reasons foreign investors are trooping to the state.”

“The Completion Agenda of Governor Emmanuel, as enunciated in the 2019 Manifesto, will expand the job creation agenda horizon and further provide opportunities for our people to be gainfully employed.

“We wish to emphasise here that the 2019 elections are over and cooking up unnecessary statistics to help certain narratives should be discouraged. Akwa Ibom is rising and will continue to be on the ascendance in the next four years of Governor Emmanuel’s second term in office.”

Comments

comments