Senatorial candidate of the Green Party of Nigeria for Ogun East Senatorial District come 2019, Armstrong Tope Akintunde, has promised to create no fewer than one million jobs for the people of Ogun east every year of his tenure as a senator from Ogun East Constituency.
The young, resolute and articulate crusader disclosed this in his policy document made public on Friday, January 11, 2019
Under his Job Creation and Entrepreneurship Development plan, Armstrong said his term as senator would “target the creation of up to one million self and wage-paying employment opportunities in the private sector annually”.
He said he would also “launch a new, more efficient, cost-effective and sustainable national Entrepreneurship Development and Job Creation Programme”, “target all categories of youth, including graduates, early school leavers as well as the massive numbers of uneducated youth who are currently not in schools, employment or training”, “create incubation centres, clusters and industrial/commercial hubs to provide a market place for MSMEs and SMPs”, and “champion the repositioning and streamlining the activities of the existing Federal and State Government Job Creation Agencies”.
Armstrong noted that creating jobs and economic opportunities for millions of unemployed Nigerians will be vital both for reducing the pool of easy recruits for violent groups and reducing underlying grievances that feed the conflict.
To arrest the problem, he said his government would stimulate the growth of the Nigerian economy with a view to enhancing its capacity to provide opportunities for the economically active population and participate in the economy through wage or self-employment.
Nigeria has suffered the paradox of economic growth without development for many years. Many economists often lament what they have come to describe as our “job-less growth”. While all macro-economic indices point to an economy which is truly growing and there is noticeable improvement in our public infrastructure, especially power and roads, unemployment still remains a challenge. With our huge population comprising mainly youths, this is worrisome and a great threat to our posterity. Nigeria needs to achieve a quick-win solution that ensures that most of our employable citizens are gainfully engaged. We must harness the innovative spirit and entrepreneurial acumen of our people in our battle against unemployment. We must empower our entrepreneurs to be in the position to create jobs on a large scale.
Nigeria’s Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises are faced with many challenges which have stunted their growth and development. Some of these challenges are poor infrastructural facilities, inadequate funding and lack of access to capital, weak managerial and entrepreneurial skills, limited demand for their products and services, and competition from foreign products. Among these challenges, the most restricting is the inadequacy of funds and lack of access to capital. Our financial institutions typically wait for entrepreneurs to become successful before they take any serious interest in their businesses. However creative and innovative they are, these entrepreneurs often cannot meet the strict credit risk acceptance criteria of banks.
The solution is really simple: Venture Capital; which I like to call patient equity funding.
I will initiate legislation for the establishment of a Venture Capital Corporation which will be a vehicle for the empowerment of indigenous entrepreneurs to be the drivers of employment creation in our economy as is the case in fast-growing economies such as China and Israel.
The focus of my Senatorial Constituency Projects shall be: Economic Development; and Human Development.
Having been a business entrepreneur myself and having been a resource person in several training programmes for entrepreneurs, as a matter of priority, I shall establish a world-class academy for the training and development of young entrepreneurs.
This is the beginning a New Righteous Order in Nigeria’s Polity. With humility, and by God’s Grace, I arise to build a nation which shall become the Pride of Africa. A new vista has opened and our posterity can be different. We can bequeath a great destiny to our children. We can ensure that it will be well for Ogun East in particular and Nigeria in general.
