Nigeria urgently needs to shift its employment strategy from creating jobs to building pathways that move workers from precarious informal livelihoods into decent, sustainable employment.

Pushing this necessary shift in a book, ‘Informal Nation: Livelihoods, Informality and the Struggle for Decent Work in Nigeria’, Lekan Olayiwola argued that Nigeria’s huge informal economy has become a structural feature of the labour market, making it difficult for conventional employment policies to deliver lasting improvements in workers’ livelihoods.

He said the country’s employment challenge should no longer be assessed mainly by the number of people counted as employed, but by the quality, security and sustainability of the work available to them.

According to him, many Nigerians move repeatedly between unemployment, self-employment, casual work and other informal activities without a clear route into stable employment.

This, he noted, exposes workers to income insecurity and limited access to social protection.

Olayiwola therefore called for a more integrated employment framework that connects education and skills development with labour-market demand, strengthens job-matching systems, and expands social protection for workers across different forms of employment.

He also stressed the need for stronger labour-market intelligence to provide reliable information on emerging occupations, skills required by employers, available vacancies and employment outcomes.

Such information, he argued, would enable government to design employment interventions based on actual labour-market needs rather than assumptions, while helping jobseekers choose training that improves their chances of securing productive work.

The author further advocated closer collaboration among educational institutions, vocational training providers, employers and employment agencies to address the persistent gap between skills acquisition and access to jobs.

He said practical skills, structured apprenticeships, employer-led training and stronger school-to-work transition programmes should form part of a coordinated strategy to improve employment outcomes.

Beyond skills, Olayiwola identified social protection as critical to addressing the vulnerabilities associated with informal work.

He argued that protection should be designed around workers rather than tied exclusively to conventional employer-employee relationships.

He also called for policies that encourage informal businesses and workers to formalise without imposing excessive compliance costs that could further weaken their ability to survive.

According to him, simplified registration processes, accessible compliance systems and incentives for formalisation would provide a more realistic route for small businesses and informal workers to enter the formal economy.