Employment-Nigeria - The emerging industry in the country, Outsourcing, could generate over 500,000 jobs in Nigeria within a very short time if fully embraced by public and private companies, an IT expert, Mr. David Onu has said. Outsourcing is the contracting arm of a non-core business function - commonly one previously performed in-house - to an external provider who deals solely in the field. Speaking with Daily Trust in Abuja yesterday, Mr. Onu, said Outsourcing which generated over 20milllion jobs in India in just few years, could also solve the problem of unemployment in Nigeria if the country bought into it.

According to him, outsourcing has been discovered as the fastest way to create demand driving jobs in the emerging economies all over the world.

He said most Nigerian public and private companies would have their annual revenues increased if they contract out some of their non-core functions like complaint centre to outsourcing companies.

Mr. Onu, who is the CEO of an Abuja based IT/outsourcing company, Interranetworks, said most companies do not maintain a point of interaction with their customers, adding that this often makes them not to retain their customers for a long time.

He said his company which was set up just two years ago, already had staff strength of over 200, adding that many are likely to join before the end of the year.

"Outsourcing industry has been discovered as the fastest way to create jobs in the world, especially where unemployment is the problem. In India alone this industry generated over 20million jobs in just few years. In Nigeria, conservatively, it could generate over 500,000 jobs within a very short time if fully embraced by all--the government and the private sector.

"Every day consumers complain against one thing or the other from their service providers without getting appropriate redress. This often makes many consumers to either sue or leave their service providers in protest. This is because most companies do not bother to set up a point of interaction between them and their customers. But what they don't know is that instead of losing customers they can simply outsource this non-core duty to an outside company and the relationship between them and their customers would be maintained through this call centre interaction", the Interranetworks CEO said.

Zakariyya Adaramola

Daily Trust/04/03/2011