This piece adds my voice to the discussion on the topic ‘Nigerian graduates: Unemployed and Unemployable’ which was transmitted on Channels TV Station on Sunday, March 22, 2015 during the programme, ‘Seriously Speaking’. I am aware that government is ‘working very hard’ to ensure that our youths are educated and that on completion of their education they are gainfully employed.
Local industries in Nigeria will require literate and skilful graduates with sound cultural values and attitude. But our educational system is not producing technologically literate graduates who have well developed pro-industry cultural characteristics.
Regrettably, most of our youths are now becoming spectators in the formal sector of the economy because they are not given the right education in a technology- driven age. When some of our youths are sent to industrialized nations with huge foreign exchange implications to acquire necessary skills to enable them cope with imported technology, a sizeable number will not come back to the country.
This is what scholars of technology policy refer to as ‘reverse transfer of technology’ popularly known as ‘brain drain’. Increasing the supply of skilled workers may also lead to ‘brain drain’ if it is not accompanied by a corresponding increase in the demand for skilled workers by firms in industries.
Can we now blame our youths for being unemployable or unemployed without government accepting that education policy has failed? Are firms in our local industries being blamed for not employing a sizeable number of our youths? Without prejudice to thoughts on these questions, I think government at the federal and state levels are to take decisive steps to address the challenges of the nation’s educational system.
That our youths are either unemployable or unemployed is due to poor quality of education and unfavorable business climate in the country. This position is taken because a complex interaction exists among technology, industry and the society. Inadequate understanding of the complex interaction will disable policy makers from formulating education and technology policies that will engender employment of our youths.
Education is one of the key factors for improving the quality of people in order to develop new skills, cultural values and behavioral patterns needed in the industry. In today’s knowledge-based economy, educated people represent the most critical natural resource, not oil as most Nigerians thought. The power of a nation is determined by the huge number of educated people it can muster, not by the abundance of oil and gas. This has been seen with events in the global oil market in the past 9 months. Anyone interested in the welfare of our youths would always wonder why many of them are not gainfully employed. Is it the low quality of our education that has given rise to a huge number of unemployed graduates? Or is it that the firms operating in various sectors of the nation’s economy are not performing optimally such that most youths in search of jobs could be employed?
Report has it that only 24.4 percent of firms employed in the last quarter of 2014 due to business expansion. Perhaps, the remaining 75.6 percent firms could not expand their business because of numerous challenges in the country such as insecurity, multiple taxation, decay of infrastructure, poor industrial linkages including management and production bottlenecks.
The problem with policy makers and those saddled with the responsibility of implementation is that they hardly try other approaches towards solving a particular problem of the society, especially when the policy is not working. They will always tell you that ‘this is the way we have been doing it’ even when it is obvious that what they have been doing for many years have not yielded the desired results.
That the demand of our local industries for Nigerian youths is not met by supply of quality graduates from our tertiary institutions reflects inert nature of our economy and inappropriateness of our education policies to stimulate reasonable level of employment. It is reported that ‘there are about 1.8 million graduates entering the labour market every year’. A National Bureau of Statistics report shows that‘2.8 million jobs have been created by the formal, informal and private sectors between 2012 and 2014, while no fewer than 5.3 million youths are jobless’.
There is no doubt that youth unemployment is high in Nigeria despite several pronouncements by government officials that several jobs have been created. Improving the supply of skilled workers via education and training programmes are absolute prerequisites for the success of any capacity building initiative.
Creating an enabling environment that will make firms increase their demand for skilled workers enables them create wealth, reduce ‘brain drain’, and pay workers well. How are we to create sustainable employment in our nation if available firms in most sectors of the economy have issues with the quality of graduates that are graduating from our tertiary institutions?
As soon as possible, institutions of learning should compulsorily teach students entrepreneurship from primary to post-secondary school level. Above all, Nigerian youths must display the right attitude and values that are pro-industry. The country needs more private business incubators with support from government to cater for policy needs which may include job creation, fostering entrepreneurial climate, and accelerating local industry clusters amongst others.
I hope our policy makers have the courage to go back to the drawing board and consider ways of overhauling the education system alongside other teething problems of the industry in Nigeria. This is because education is the engine of economic growth, while business and industry are drivers, government is the catalytic converter and academics are fuel’. I wish all Nigerian youths my best in the new dispensation.
MA Johnson
