By Funmi Fasipe
According to the 2006 provisional census figures, Nigeria has a youth population of over 80 million, or 60 per cent of her total population. Of this population, more than 80 per cent are unemployed while about 10 per cent are underemployed. Data provided by the National Manpower Board (NMB) and National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicate that only about 10 per cent of the graduates released into the labour market annually by Nigerian universities and other tertiary institutions are able to secure paid employments.
By definition, a graduate is a person who has successfully completed a course of study or training, especially a person who has been awarded a first academic degree in a higher institution.
According to a World Bank statistics, youth unemployment rate in Nigeria is 38 per cent; but realistically, 80 per cent of Nigerian youths are unemployed with secondary school-leavers mostly found among unemployed rural population accounting for about half of this figure, while university and polytechnic graduates make up the figure. What seems to be more worrisome is that the nation’s universities and polytechnics continue to churn out more than 150,000 graduates –both Bachelor’s degrees and Higher National Diploma (HND) – annually and job creation has been inadequate to keep pace with the expanding working age population.
What makes the situation a bit complicated is that employers of labour now believe that the standard of education in Nigeria has plummeted considerably over the past decades and that university degree is no longer a sure guarantee of effective communication skill or practical technical competence. These days, graduates who are trained outside the country are given prominence in terms of employment and are offered better paid jobs ahead of their colleagues from the supposedly best universities in the country. Mostly, when prospective employers cannot afford to risk training new employees because of high operating cost and the fear of losing a trained employee, they simply source for always-available, suitable candidates overseas.
As of January 1, 2016, the population of Nigeria was estimated to be 182,307,178 people. This is an increase of 1.94 per cent (3,465,943 people) from previous year’s 178,841,235. The available facilities in the universities, especially the government-owned ones, cannot accommodate the number of students that apply for admission, thus different measures are used to shortchange some unlucky candidates. Some of the students that are admitted are not offered courses of their choice.
Gone are the days when companies and top organisations select fresh graduates for employment on the day of their convocation ceremony. Now, a brand ambassador for top organisations doesn’t need to go through the four walls of any institution as long as their identity can attract sales.
As a result of frustration mostly emanating from economic hardship, some graduates have lost grip of their focus and values. Some of them have given up and stooped so low to hawk fruits on the highways, riding commercial motorcycles or tricycles and working as attendants in supermarkets and restaurants, receiving peanuts at the end of the month. Capitalising on the unemployment situation in the country, some employers simply exploit these young brains by underpaying them and over-using them due to their desperate need to find a means of livelihood.
A major issue in the dwindling fortune of Nigerian graduates is that too much emphasis is placed on theoretical applications in most of our tertiary institutions. But for a few, most tertiary institutions in the country place heavy premium on theory at the expense of practicals. This explains why we have continued to produce engineers but have not been able to make any appreciable technological breakthrough as a people. We produce engineers and other professionals that would end up seeking employment in government agencies where they concentrate mostly on paper works. There is clearly a failure in the school curriculum to place emphasis on practical concepts of entrepreneurship. Too much emphasis is on theoretical education. Added to this is the fact that some of the courses on offer in most of the nation’s higher institutions are clearly outdated. We no longer have any need for them in a 21st century world.
There is, therefore, an urgent need to alter the curriculum of our tertiary institutions to do away with courses that no longer fit into present day’s socio-economic reality. Indeed, we need to lay more emphasis on technical education as well as courses that de-emphasise the craze for non-existing white collar jobs. Similarly, we should make effort to promote entrepreneurship among our undergraduates. This could be done through the establishment of internship programmes aimed at giving them the opportunity to learn valuable skills in contemporary fields such as information communication technology (ICT), fund development, public relations, programme development, management and much more.
Further, there is need to extend the period spent at the orientation camp by graduates that take part in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme beyond what presently obtains. This is to ensure that, apart from the para-military training on offer at the camp, corps members could spend more time to be trained in different vocations that could make them economically empowered upon completion of the programme. This becomes very vital as a result of the dreadful state of unemployment in the country. It has now become quite clear that certificates alone are no longer sufficient for economic empowerment. Thus, every avenue through which the youth could be empowered for economic survival should be taken hold of.
It is equally important, especially in the case of public institutions of higher learning that both federal and state authorities promote a harmonious relationship with both academic and non-academic staff of the various institutions to encourage industrial harmony. It is no longer a secret that incessant strike actions over various unresolved issues have, in no small measure, hampered tertiary education in the country.
According to former United Nations Secretary General, Dr. Kofi Annan, “Education is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a basic tool for daily life in modern society. It is a wall against poverty, and a building block of development. It is a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity.” It is in view of this truth that all stakeholders must unite to give a new lease of life to tertiary education in the country.
• Fasipe, a Library Scientist, wrote in from Anthony, Lagos.