The National Directorate of Employment, NDE, has been described as the apex job creation agency that has repeatedly performed highly in its job creation mandate and met expectations in all key areas of responsibilities.
The remarks are contained in a report presented by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms, BPSR, in Abuja on Tuesday.
According to the Director-General of BPSR, Dr. Dasuki Arabi, the report was the result of the self-assessment tools developed by the BPSR and deployed to the NDE with the overall objective of identifying strength, weaknesses and first step towards improvement and optimum performance.
During the self-assessment report presented to the executive management team of the NDE on Tuesday, Arabi said that the outcome of the assessment showed that NDE was a Level 3 Silver Grade organisation with 63.6 per cent score.
He said the grade was above standard.
He therefore presented to the directorate through its Director-General, Mallam Abubakar Fikpo, the Level 3 Silver Award of Excellence.
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“It means NDE consistently meets expectations in all essential areas of responsibilities, the qualities of works and services are above standard.”
BPSR, he said, had the federal government mandate to assess operations, successes and otherwise of federal government agencies, make recommendations and revert to the government for better performances.
Arabi said NDE was the 106th agency to be assessed by the BPSR in Nigeria.
According to Arabi, BPSR had visited some of the NDE offices nationwide and put to test the activities of the directorate and was happy with the findings.
He said the challenge facing the directorate was mainly inadequate funding to excellently prosecute unemployment to the satisfaction of many Nigerians.
To that end, he said, BPSR was willing to partner with the directorate to source for development partners through which the directorate could better leverage on her mandate of job creation nationwide.
“We are willing to collaborate with the NDE to sustain her achievements and support the directorate to overcome her challenges,” he said.
NDE, it was reported, had created over four million jobs in the last three years.
Arabi said discussions were ongoing to link potential beneficiaries of the federal government student loans policy to the NDE in ensuring that graduated students had some skills through the NDE after graduation to generate personal funds in order to repay their loans.
He said when the President and the Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu was unveiling his developmental agenda, he had expressed determination to tackle frontally the level of unemployment in the country.
He said was therefore imperative for the NDE, the apex agency established by the federal government to step up its designed programmes, identify priority areas and record new height in combating mass unemployment.
Areas of strength of the NDE, according to the assessment, included standardised delivery of blue collar jobs through skills acquisition and entrepreneurship development to willing Nigerians, periodic review of programmes, schemes and strategies to meet the operating realities of job creation and the need to justify its existence; collaborations with both private and government agencies to widen job creation opportunities; compliance with financial guidelines to meet both the national and international standards.
Other areas of excellence, according to the report, included provision of array of skills and trades which were marketable and could be learnt by the unemployed at short durations; presence of the NDE and its skill acquisition centres in all states and virtually all 774 local government areas in the country and the use of standardised artisans to augment its established skills acquisition centres to impact skills across the nation.
The report, however, frowns at the conflict and duplication of roles between the NDE and relevant departments of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, its parent ministry.
Arabi said, “we must ensure that the NDE is empowered to take full ownership of its tasks, responsibilities and assignments as enshrined in the law establishing the NDE.”
Also, the report noted that in the area of governance, there was no formal code of conduct defining standard of behaviour of individual governing board members and employees of the NDE.
He said that was strategic to BPSR, adding that board members should be conscious of their limitations and know what was expected of them when they came on board.
The Director-General of NDE, Malam Abubakar Nuhu Fikpo expressed his delight over the report and appreciated the BPSR for keying – into the priority areas of the president and assess the directorate based on the expectations of the new government.
He said NDE would leverage on the platform presented by the BPSR, key into the policies of the present administration and do what the federal government desired in providing employment to the unemployed and alleviate poverty among Nigerians.
He advised jobless people, especially the youths, in the country to avail themselves of job opportunities already presented by the federal government through the NDE.
