The Senate is making moves to review the age limit for employment in Nigeria, so as to solve the problem of unemployment in the country and curb the rising numbers of unemployed graduates in the country. The Senate has therefore urged the Federal Government to direct the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Productivity to set up a committee that would review the age limit for employment in Nigeria.
This was in consideration of the motion moved by Senator Ibrahim Gobir, who pointed out that certain recruitment requirements by government agencies and private organizations exclude prospective skillful and competent participants on the grounds of their age. The Senator also acknowledged that the current state of unemployment in the country could take a candidate longer than 10 years before getting a suitable job. He also said that this might cause many youths to start falsifying their ages, against the prescribed laws of the land.
Senator Bala Ibn N’Allah also added that, “I think the legal basis for this senate to proceed on that lies in the fact that as an institution we must take judicial notice of the fact Federal Government on its own placed embargo on employment for over 13 years.
“So that period of the embargo placed by the Federal Government itself should be what we should consider in the review of the age limit. For example, if the age limit is 23 we will now add the 13 or 14 years of the embargo on employment to the age already benchmarked for employment so that the age will now be plus 13 because it is the Government on its own that placed the embargo on employment.”