President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration has created 12 million jobs since it was elected into government, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity Garba Shehu said yesterday.
Shehu stated this on Sunrise Daily, a programme on Channels Television, while discussing National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data indicating millions of jobs have been lost.
Disputing the figures about the number of unemployment released by the NBS, the presidential aide said the NBS Director-General, Dr. Yemi Kale, had admitted to the Federal Government that they had only focused on white collar jobs loses.
Shehu said: โThere was a departure last week. The NBS chief while addressing the Federal cabinet, made admission himself that they had concentrated their analysis over time on white collar jobs and that they havenโt taken into cognisance jobs creation in the area of agriculture. The Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria made an open claim that they have created 12 million new jobs and nobody has come out to dispute that.
โWhen he finished addressing the Federal cabinet last week, the DG was told to go out and address the public about what he just told them. So, you are just saying to us that Jigawa, Kebbi and Ebonyi are reporting the lowest employment rate on the account of agriculture?โ
โI think that it is the data collected on the basis of which some of the judgements that have been passed are misleading. There is now a convergence. The data has been unfair to this administration. They have ignored job creation in the areas of agriculture and now that is being integrated and Nigerians will be impressed with us as we have created 12 million new jobs in the area of agriculture.
But, the NBS DG, in a response to a question tweeted to him on his official twitter handle about Shehuโs claim of admitting to misleading the public on the number of job loses across the country, denied the statement credited to the presidential spokesman.
โNeither the Statistician-General nor NBS ever made any such admission at any time to anybody and the unemployment computations does take into account all sectors, age groups and both rural and urban areas,โ he said.
