"Excluding and restricting some of these job seekers, therefore, from the opportunity to contest for the available jobs in the labour market through age limitation or other unnecessary limitations, especially when these job seekers have the required academic qualifications, amounts to a great injustice."
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| Mc Paul |
The average Nigerian is suffering several acts of injustice that need to be corrected before they breed uncontrollable anger that is capable of compounding the issues militating against the growth of our country. One of such injustice is age discrimination among other restrictions imposed on job seekers in the labour market.
Discrimination against fellow citizens or mankind in terms of class, colour, language, race, age, or sex has been an agelong challenge that is bedeviling humanity. All over the world, either cautiously or uncautiously, people are found discriminating against their fellow countrymen in one way or the other. This has led to several agitations - violent and nonviolent - due to the accompanying social stigma, trauma, frustration, depression and low self esteem that discrimination creates on its victims. It may also interest you to know that several lives have been lost due to such agitations.
For instance, between the 1950s and 1960s in the United States of America, there was racial discrimination, terrible incidents and maltreatment of Black Americans. The blacks were seen as minor or inferior to the whites. Martin Luther Kings Jr, who was then a leader of the Civil Right Movement, arose and started leading nonviolent protests to end the discrimination of fellow Americans, who are black. In December 1, 1955, King led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which marked the beginning of an era where all the blacks of Montgomery, Alabama would boycott the city buses until they are no longer relegated to the back sit whenever a white boarded.
According to Katie Winston in a written work titled: Like Gandhi, King used civil disobedience as a means of effectuating government change, "King led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a Coalition of Conscience. The Freedom March took place in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. Attended by over 250,000 protestors, this march is described as the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation's capital, and one of the first to have extensive television coverage. 1963 was distinguished for racial unrest and civil rights demonstrations. Nationwide outrage and turmoil was sparked by media coverage of police actions in Birmingham, Alabama, where attack dogs and fire hoses were turned against protestors, many of whom were in their early teens or younger."
In Nigeria, age discrimination and other restrictions set against fellow Nigerian citizens who are job seekers is taking an alarming dimension, which might spark off protest or agitation in the future if not properly handled.
There is no justifiable reason why a country that has one of the highest number of unemployed graduates in the world takes pleasure in setting certain age limit, year of graduation limit, and years of experience limit when there are job placements; limitation that ends up restricting and disqualifying a large number of job seekers, who ordinarily have the required academic qualifications to apply for such job opportunities.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, the total number of economically active or working age in Nigeria is 115.5million as at 3rd quarter of 2018. The number of persons, however, in the labour force (those willing to work) is 90.5million. Of this figure, the total number of unemployed workforce is placed at 20.9million while those underemployed is 18.21millon. This means that over 39.11million Nigerians are job seekers today. It is suicidal to provoke this large number of persons, who are already feeling frustrated, with certain restrictions as terms for employment.
Sadly, of the 39.11million job seekers in Nigeria, some have been in the labour market for the past 5 years, 10 years, 15 years or more and a large number of these unemployed Nigerians are above 30 years of age. To worsen the situation, over 500,000 graduates from our tertiary institutions, who have no guarantee of being engaged one to five years later after graduation, join the list of job seekers annually.
Excluding and restricting some of these job seekers, therefore, from the opportunity to contest for the available jobs in the labour market through age limitation or other unnecessary limitations, especially when these job seekers have the required academic qualifications, amounts to a great injustice. The earlier we correct this unnecessary act of restrictions targeted at job seekers, especially older ones the faster we save ourselves from the agitations that it might cause in the nearest future.
A good and recent example is the 2019 recruitment of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), where the age limit was pegged at 28 years and the year of graduation not earlier than 2014 for the "graduate trainee" category while for the "experienced hires" category, the age limit was placed at 34 years for Senior Officer and 37 years for Supervisory Cadre, with the minimum of 6 and 9 years experience respectively. These restrictions, no doubt, offset millions of Nigerian job seekers, who were immediately disqualified.
The National Assembly should as a matter of urgency make a law that protects Nigerian job seekers from age discrimination and other related restrictions in the labour market. This is a better service to our fatherland than the battle for self recognition and other parochial adventures that have always dominated the Nigerian Senate and the Federal House of Representatives.
Mc Paul, a Criminologist & Social Commentator, Writes From Delta State.
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