Whenever I hear people describe Nigerian graduates as
unemployable, I shiver. I quiver because
many a time, such sweeping assertion is made by people who themselves are also
products of Nigerian universities, thus wondering if such people realise the
implication of their weighty indictment of the system that produced them.
I may
not be able to give specific statistics on the number of graduates from
Nigerian universities working in both indigenous and multinational companies in
the country, a casual observation of happenings around shows that many of these
companies are filled with Nigerian graduates. Personally, almost everyone I
have worked with or supervised has been a product of Nigerian universities –
and none of them could be shoved aside anywhere in the world. We may also need to find out where the likes
of Dangote Group, MTN, Glo, Shell, Mobil and other multinational companies
operating in Nigeria are getting their graduates from to know the population of
foreigners compared to Nigerians in these thriving organisations.
Apparently, the blanket generalisation of Nigerian graduates
being unemployable informed President Muhammadu Buhari’s recent charge to
university administrators to ensure that their graduates are employable. The
President had said he could not be comfortable “when products of Nigeria’s
citadels of learning are being described as ‘unemployable’, exhibiting lack of
job-readiness and so on.”
I think from the outset, it is important to make a
distinction between what constitutes a university and what does not.
Universities are not universities because they are so named, universities are
universities because they satisfy the thirst for knowledge and their scholarly
expertise impacts positively on the society. There are many institutions
described as citadels of learning in Nigeria today that cannot even pass for a
secondary school. Products of such universities can’t be blamed for being
unemployable because such universities cannot possibly give what they do not
have. Thankfully, products of these mushroom universities are insignificant
compared with the critical mass that forms the real products of Nigerian
universities. There are some Federal Government owned universities in Nigeria
that are highly undersubscribed. Some of them may not have up to 50 students in
a whole department. Even when the cut-off mark for admission to such
universities is lowered to the barest minimum, they still don’t get candidates.
The problems being that many of them are wrongly located and poorly funded.
As a way of clarification, the Nigerian graduates being
referred to here are those that genuinely scaled the difficult hurdles of
gaining admission into institutions that can manage to pass for universities in
spite of their glaring inadequacies and succeed in graduating. The truth is
Nigerian universities are some of the most difficult to gain admission into in
many parts of the world. First, a student must have five credits which must
include English and Mathematics. It doesn’t end there. The Unified Tertiary
Matriculation Examination, which the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and
Matriculation Board, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, has described as a ranking test, is
another difficult hurdle that they must scale through. Any candidate that is
able to get a space in a recognised Nigerian university without compromising
integrity must be a good material. While I admit that many candidates get in
through compromises here and there, majority enter through the normal, tough
process. A report by Stutern on the employment status of Nigerian graduates
between 2010 and 2016 shows that only 36.26 per cent of recent graduates are
currently unemployed. About 50.09 per cent of them are working either as
self-employed/freelance, voluntary or other unpaid work. Another 8.6 per cent is said to be engaged in
full time and part-time further study, training or research while the remaining
5.05 per cent represents those preparing for further study or professional
exams.
This brings me to the real question. Is it that Nigerian
graduates are unemployable or Nigerian environment is not employment friendly?
In other words, are there jobs in Nigeria? Rather than shifting blame of
unemployment on Nigerian graduates, it is high time we started interrogating
the reasons for the poor state of the nation’s economy. Why is the economy not
expanding? Why are factories closing down and churches taking over warehouses?
Who are the people saddled with the responsibilities of making policies that
should make the economy expand for business to thrive? For me, whoever is paid
to do these things and failed to deliver as expected, are the ones that are
neither qualified to be in government nor leadership positions. And such people
should not be comfortable in the midst of a shrinking economy, mass
unemployment, poverty, lack and want prevalent in the country now. According to
the World Bank, the economies of African countries despite the decade long
average annual GDP growth of 4-5 per cent has not expanded rapidly enough to
absorb the between 9-10 million youths that enter the labour market. The real
problem here is that Nigerian universities are producing more graduates than
the economy can absorb, so getting a job has become the survival of the
fittest.
And if I may ask, was there ever a time that Nigerian
graduates were entering into the job market and performing magic? If there was,
why were multinationals employing graduates as management trainees in the 70s
and 80s? Up until today, companies such as Nigeria Breweries still take in
fresh graduates as trainees. How many companies in Nigeria have such models in
place now? Almost every firm wants a ready-made, well baked graduate that would
not require any form of further training because they are trying to cut cost. I
am not in any way trying to discountenance the relevance of self-development
for every graduate, however, it is good to clarify that university education is
not meant to mould graduates into specific job placements. The job of a
university is to shape raw materials into a form that could be easily adapted
for various purposes. This is one of the reasons why companies employ graduates
as trainees and put them through other forms of trainings to mould them
appropriately for the responsibilities expected of them.
There are many fantastic Nigerian graduates. Certainly,
there are some who don’t know their left from their right, even at that, if we
bother to probe deeply, we may realise that the admission process of these ones
were probably compromised one way or the other. A recent online article
featured top Nigerian women in technology, majority of the people on that list
are products of Nigerian universities. Those who think Nigerian graduates, especially
the younger generation, are not employable, could check the brains behind
startups such as Rubies, Piggyvest,
Softcom, Paystack, Stutern and
Thrive Agric to mention but just a few. This, to me, is the true
verdict-Nigerian graduates are employable but most Nigerian leaders today are
unemployable! Nigerian government has consistently failed to leverage on the
power of its talented, intelligent citizens to grow the economy due to its bad
policies, irresponsibility and poor thinking.
This country is wasting its army of talented youth. There are many
brilliant graduates that have ended up confused, frustrated and devastated. It
is no longer news that Nigerian youth perform exceptionally well when offered
opportunities in saner climes where things are working. For example, a Nigerian
lady, Osarieme Anita Omonuwa, was the first to win the Reading University
Chancellor’s Award in the history of the 121-year-old institution.Yet, she had
her secondary school education in Nigeria. In the same vein, a Nigerian, Dr
Victor Olalusi, scored a 5.0 Cumulative Grade Point Average as a medical
student for seven consecutive years at the Russian National Research Medical
University, Moscow.
It is heartwarming that JAMB has leveraged on technology to
reduce cases of exam malpractice. It has also introduced the Central Admissions
Processing Systems to give higher ranking candidates preference above lower
ranking ones; this is a welcome development as it will ensure that the most
qualified candidates get the opportunity to go to university. This will further
improve the quality of graduates coming out from Nigerian universities.
Nigerian policy makers should be more concerned in the New Year about how to
transform and grow Nigeria’s economy to enable it to offer more opportunities
to the young graduates that automatically enter the labour market instead of
lamenting about graduates being unemployable.
Olabisi Deji-Folutile is a member of the Nigerian Guild of
Editors. Email bisideji@yahoo.co.uk
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