Nigeria's Unemployment Rising, As Vegetable Oil Industry Records 25,000 Job Loss
Vegetable oil and related products industry in Nigeria are nearing total collapse as no fewer than 25, 000 out of the 30,000 direct jobs in the sector have been lost due to the influx of substandard processed oil dumped into the economy. This near collapse is as a result of government unfavourable policies and policy reversals. This is coming on the heels of government propaganda on job creation in the midst of continued rising unemployment in the country.
It will be recalled that Financial Vanguard had on July 15, raised alarm over the looming collapse of the sector due to government’s import waivers granted to few privileged Nigerian politicians and portfolio businessmen to import refined vegetable oil, Soya bean meal and related products.
One of the few surviving manufacturers of vegetable oil in the country, Sunola Oil Nigeria Limited, owned by Kewalram Chanrai Group, weekend confirmed that the sector is in real danger of imminent collapse and
called on Government not to allow the sector go the way of the textile industry in the country. The company expressed sadness that “out of top eight oil mills in Nigeria, only three are working at the moment below installed capacity. If drastic measures are not taken immediately, oil mill industry will go into extinction like the textile industry.”
Group Deputy Managing Director, of Kewalran, Mr. Victor Eburajolo, at a briefing in Lagos, lamented that the industry had lost the capacity to generate employment as “not less than 25,000 direct jobs have been lost in the last few years because of unfavourable operating environment. At its peak, the industry created over 30,000 direct jobs. But today, the sector cannot boast of 5,000 jobs.”
According to him, the industry is seriously distressed because of unfavourable policies and policy summersaults and called for total ban on importation of finished products like vegetable oil, drive to improve infrastructure like power, fuel, railway, roads etc to support capacity increase in processing as well as farming inputs.
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