MAJOR CONSTRAINT TO THE LABOUR MOBILITY IN NIGERIA

By mobility of labour, remain the movement of workers or members of the labour Force from one geographical environment to another or from one job to another. In a country like Nigeria, there are a lot of constraints or hindrances or impediments to labour mobility.

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Such constraints include language barrier, differences in political ideologies, ignorance, family ties, inadequate transport facilities, religious differences, government policy and so on.

Nigeria is a country that is made up of very many ethnic groups with their various languages or dialect. In most cases, members of a particular ethnic group do not understand the dialect of another ethnic group. This makes people to feel very reluctant to move out of their local area to work elsewhere even when job opportunities are bound outside their local area. Language therefore serve as a major constraint on labour mobility.

the problem posed by differences in political ideologies to labour mobility needs to be considered. Nigeria is a country where people are actively involved in politics. And members of the different ethnic groups or tribes belong to different political parties which invariably have different political ideologies. but unfortunately Nigerians play the politics of bitterness so much so that people suffer political victimization in one form or the other whenever they go to an area where the party to which they do not belong happens to be in power.

The tendency then is for people to keep to the place where the party to which they belong is in power even when they are job opportunities outside that area or part of the country.

Ignorance is another factor militating against labour mobility in Nigeria. Nigeria is an agricultural country since a substantial percentage of the country's labour force is engaged in farming. farmers can just certain part of the country with farming with the result that output per head of the Farmers is very low when they are wide expense of uncultivated but cultivable land area elsewhere.

They failed to move to such areas mainly because of their ignorance. The same thing happens also in the case of non agricultural work. many school leavers roam the streets of Lagos ibadan kaduna Enugu ibadan in search of employment and they are ignorant of the fact that job opportunities exist in other parts of the country.

Another major constraint on labour mobility in Nigeria is family ties. Nigeria is a typical African country where the extended family system is the order of the day. In most homes in Nigeria, when their child manage to have say, a university degree that holds the erroneous that the Messiah has come and the devil look up to him for the solution to most of their problems.

You have to take care of the aged father or mother the brothers and sisters and some others. In order to be able to cope with this responsibilities, he may have to take up employment in his local area so as to be close to his extended family apart from his immediate family where applicable.

Such a job may even be the one for which is not best suited. because of the factors discussed above in maybe compared to stay in his local environment even when they are jobs of better prospects else where.

Labour mobility could be facilitated by efficient transport system in a country like Nigeria. But unfortunately, transport facilities are grossly inadequate in Nigeria. Most of our roads are bad. As a result, not many motors ply the roads, and the few months that to charge very high fares. and some part of the country do not have motorable roads at all apart from the fact that the supposed motorable roads are bad.

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the effect of this is that people would have loved to move out of their local environment to work elsewhere in the country are prevented from doing so.

Religious differences also constitute a constraint on labour mobility in Nigeria. The two dominant religions in Nigeria are Christianity and Islam. the northern part of Nigeria are predominantly Muslim areas why the South apart are predominantly Christian areas.

Non-Christian often feel very reluctant to move to the Christian state to work so also the non-muslim often feel very reluctant to move to the Muslim state to work for reasons best known to them.

the result of this is that people tend to remain in the areas of their religions interest to work even if they are better prospect for them in those areas where their religion is given little or no recognition.

Finally, government policy is also a strong factor. the policy might be that anybody who was sponsored by his or her state during the period in the institution of higher learning must work for the state government that sponsored him or her. That sponsorship could be in the form of state bursary or state scholarship.

this places a limit on the movement of people in search of better employment another part of the country therefore it is a constraint on labour mobility.