Mission and Vision - National Directorate of Employment

The Federal Government’s desire to handle the social repercussions of high levels of unemployment in the country in 1985 led to the setting up of a committee known as the “Chukwuma Committee”. The committee was charged with the responsibility “to design strategies that will create mass employment opportunities in the country.” The committee identified from the survey that the informal sector whose employee profile is characterized largely by low-skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled labour, accounted for up to 90% of the workers distributed unevenly in agriculture and other self-employment ventures. Their findings led to the recommendation to the Government for the establishment of an employment creation agency. Consequently, the Federal Government approved the establishment of the NATIONAL DIRECTORATE OF EMPLOYMENT (NDE) on 26th March, 1986 but its programmes were launched nationwide in January 1987.

The NDE’s enabling Act, CAP 250 of the Laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (formerly Decree No. 24 of 1989) gave the NDE her legal backing as an employment agency statutorily charged with the responsibility to design and implement programmes to combat mass unemployment. To further enhance and streamline the strategies of the NDE in mass job generation, a committee, the Ahmed Joda Committee of 1999 streamlined the activities of the various Poverty Alleviation Agencies in the country. Thus, NDE’s activities were streamlined and made to focus mainly on training for job generation with resettlement limited to only symbolic to test the efficacy of her training activities.

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At the apex of NDE’s organizational structure is the Management Board chaired by the
Honourable Minister of Labour and Employment. While the Board is charged with the
responsibility of policy formulation for the Directorate’s operations, the Federal Ministry of
Labour and Employment serves as the supervising Ministry of the NDE.

The Directorate has four (4) core programmes departments and five (5) support service
departments in ensuring that the mandate of the Directorate is adequately achieved. All
the Nine (9) departments are headed by Directors who report to the Director – General.
To strengthen programme implementation and projects monitoring, zonal offices were
created in the six geo-political zones of North East, North West, North Central, South East,
South West and South-South Zones. Each Zonal Office is manned by a Director on Grade

NDE’s presence is established in all 36 states of the Federation and the FCT to implement
programmes designed at the Headquarters. The State offices are manned by State
Coordinators who are of the Deputy Directorate level on grade level 16 and are
accountable to the Director General via the Zonal Directors.

In order to have adequate grassroots impact and coverage in the discharge of its mandate,
the NDE has Desk/Liaison Officers at the Local Government Council Areas, who ensure
adequate coverage and implementation of all its employment generation programmes.
The programme and support services departments are complimented by divisions,
branches and units to facilitate employment programme delivery. These programme and
service departments, are replicated in all the 36 States offices and FCT except
Procurement.

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Our Mandates

The law establishing the NDE presents its mandate as follows:

To design and implement programmes to combat mass unemployment;
To articulate policies aimed at developing work programmes with labour intensive potentials;
To obtain and maintain a Data Bank on employment and vacancies in the country with a view to acting as a clearing house to link job seekers with vacancies in collaboration with other government agencies; and
To implement any other policies as may be laid down from time to time by the Board established under sections of the enabling ACT.

Our mission

Our mission is to harness the power of innovation to transform the lives of Nigerian Youth by aligning our efforts with the renewed hope agenda, we aim to provide sustainable employment opportunities and foster a culture of entrepreneurship