Emeka Odili was 17 years of age when he finished his secondary education and obtained his Senior Secondary Certificate (SSCE). But he stayed extra five years at home struggling to gain admission into a tertiary institution. It was in no way his fault, but due entirely to the chaotic and competitive educational system where many Nigerians jostle for the limited space into its federal and state universities.
In 2011, Emeka at age 22, finally entered the University of Benin to study Economics and Statistics, which originally ought to have been a 4-year course. However, with the two strikes by the university teachers during his stay, one three months, and the other six months, Emeka finally graduated and completed the compulsory one-year national service at age 28.
On getting into the labour market, Emeka became frustrated despite coming out with the sought-after second-class upper (2.1) degree, as many of the job offerings coming his way were pegged at a maximum age limit of 24 years.
This frustration pushed 28-year-old Emeka into moving with cliques of internet fraudsters since his entire family now looks on him as a source of hope for living. The frustration got so intense that Emeka even moved up to the level of “Yahoo plus,” by using “ladies pant,” taking laws into his hands to increase his chances of getting more clientele online by way of rituals.
This is how the Nigerian academic system is turning students into what neither they nor their parents bargained for. By not fixing and paying enough attention to its failing educational system, the Nigerian system leaves its youthful population unprepared to meet the global trends in employment standards.
For over three months, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has been on strike, vowing not to go back to the classrooms until the government meets their demands. The union has accused the government of failing to honour past agreements over the redevelopment of tertiary education as contained in the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) of 2017 and also conclude the renegotiation of the 2009 agreements it had reached with the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
The government on the other hand has been nonchalant about the issue as several meetings between both parties ended in deadlock.
“It is very unfortunate that Nigerian students spend an average of six years in school for a course that should originally take just four years, due to the disagreement between the Federal Government and the academic staff of universities,” said Timothy Olawale, DG, Nigeria’s Employers Consultative Association (NECA).
“On the other hand, I do not think either the private or the multinational companies should be blamed for the laxity of the government as every company hopes to employ staff that it will derive value from for a very long period of time,” Olawale said in a phone response to BDSUNDAY.
Both private and multinational companies have beaten down their maximum age recruitment limits as a way of eliminating the millions of Nigerian students who have “green horns” rushing into the labour market.
In 2010, BusinessDay checks showed that the maximum age limit of recruitment in private companies was 28. This was reduced by 7 percent to 26 years in 2014. However, the age limit fell to 24 years with many of these companies training graduates for an average period of 2 years before they can be confident enough in enlisting them as full time staff.
Another notable trend witnessed in recent times on the recruitment processes by private and multinational companies is their high preference for students who schooled abroad as they believe these must have been through the right skills, so as to cut down huge operational expenses involved in training staff.
Consequently, Nigerians have resorted to using the exit door to study in the country’s West African neighbor, Ghana, as the few tertiary institutions in the country cannot meet up with standards that can equip their graduates to be employable globally.
One of ASUU’s major demands is the implementation of past agreements and the spending of $2.7bn in total to revamp universities.
On the average, government currently allocates about $1.8bn (N648 billion) to the education sector overall, which accounts for 7 percent of Federal Government spending, according to data compiled from the Budget Office of the federation. Federal universities get about $750m of that.
A 7-percent allocation to the health sector is far below the United Nations standard of 26 percent. This is despite warnings from the World Bank and the founder of Microsoft Corp. Bill Gates, that Nigeria needs to invest in human capital development, particularly education and health.
Data from the national bureau of statistics have put the rate at 23.1 percent as at Q3 2018 from 18.8 percent the same time the previous year. This excludes the number of underemployed Nigerians that currently stand at 20.1 percent
In nominal terms, a total of about 3.1 million people have entered into the unemployment trap in less than a year, pushing the number of unemployed Nigerians to 20.9 million from 17.8 million in Q4 2017.
With the country’s population growing at an average of 2.6 percent, the government needs to open the economy to attract investments which in turn will create more jobs for the teeming population.
With a presidential election less than a month away, both candidates of the major parties (the APC and the PDP) have talked about their commitments to education, promising to increase funding.
Can this year mark the beginning of a new era? Can Nigerians, especially the younger generation, look forward to the emergence of a government that will give them hope and a foundation on which to face the competitive future? They demand an answer.
Micheal Ani
