Nigeria’s youth—a majority in the country where the median age is 21—are the most affected by the quandary of unemployment. A lot of firms are laying off workers and the demand for paid employment still outweighs its supply, in our desperation to provide a panacea we have tried a lot of things, but the problem still persist. The country’s economy is facing reccesion, firms are either moving out of the country or laying off workers, and our youths have taken solace in lottery and fraudulent ponzi schemes which thrives with millions looking to make a quick buck in the absence of gainful employment.
It’s pertinent to note that the problem of developing nations is not unemployment per se but underemployment. Undoubtedly, the jobs are there but meager proceedings emanating from them are often insufficient to cater for daily needs. Besides, job owners are not as qualified as our graduates in terms of logic but they were able to utilize their little stock of knowledge to create businesses that absorb the so called educated graduates. So who is the educated one between job owners and graduates? To further deteriorate the issue, instead of graduates to spend considerable time learning from job owners on how to create and manage business, they prefer using the time to go pursue professional courses/certificate that will educate them little or nothing on how to create jobs.
There are some perennial graduates when bugged with the temptation of being redundant; they result in going into further studies (postgraduate) thinking that the next round of wheel (their new qualification) will fetch them job. Although everything in life follows the law of averages but as far as I’m concerned, they are not well educated. Their education suppose to fetch them an ebullient idea that will absorb them. Analogous to job owners, graduates needs to start practicing what they learn in class couple with other knowledge instead of submitting CV for meager jobs.
There was a time a friend of mine gathered about 60 of his certificate for burning. He discovered that whenever he submits his CV for job application in one of the purported company, the head who is a diploma holder often relegate them to dust bin. When he realizes what was happening, he decides to do something else instead walking randomly. Like I said earlier, employers are no in need of your certificate. What they are after is value added. Our educational system is a fairy tale and the foundation itself is faulty. Prior to discussing to the cataclysmic of our educational system, its expedient we revisit the trend of unemployment in Nigeria.
Trend analysis of Unemployment in Nigeria
Nigerian since the attainment of independence has been under the spell of unemployment. Unemployment is a very serious problem for any nation because it can lead to civil rise against the state. It represents a waste of human resources as well as a drain on government revenue. Most economists consider unemployment as one of the greatest challenges deterring the attainment of growth and development. Nigeria labour force according to NBS( National Bureau of Statistics) is made up of persons aged 15-64 years excluding students, handicapped, home keepers and those who are not willing to work. According to Oyebade (2013), Nigeria’s unemployment can be grouped into the older unemployed who lost their job through retrenchment and bankruptcy and the younger unemployed, most of who have never tasted what it is to be employed. In line with this, a field survey conducted by NBS depict that unemployment rose from 4.8 percent in 1981 to 6.1 percent in 1985. This can be attributed to the recession faced by the Nigerian economy in the early 1980s owing to oil glut.
Measures to curb this led to export restriction which is one of the foundations of import dependency culture of Nigeria. With the introduction of SAP in 1986, unemployment declined to 5.3 percent. But this was not sustained for too long as unemployment rate rose to 17.5 percent in 1999. It is crux to point out that the SAP had a serious impact in reducing unemployment. Since 1999, unemployment has continued to maintain upward trajectory. With the introduction of MDGs and NEEDs in early 2000, unemployment was able to go down slightly. But that too temporarily because in 2010 to 2011, we experienced the highest rise in unemployment rate in history, rising from 21.1 percent in 2010 and to 23.9 percent in 2011 and also aggravated to 29.5 percent in 2013. These figures released by the NBS of course, do not capture the true reality of unemployment rate in Nigeria. What we will just say is that unemployment rate has exploded beyond imagination.
One thing that is disheartening about this is that greater army of unemployed are secondary school leavers and University degree holders. The federal government once said that the Nigerian university system is producing unemployable graduates. This implies that the school system is questionable as well as aided in producing redundant graduates with no technical know-how. The government also contribute to unemployment in that they are the highest employer of labour which is against the standard model. The retrenchment of workers by banks and other industries that couldn’t cover cost of production compound to this problem among others.
Our Educational System
John Lennon once wrote “when I was five years old, my mother always told me happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to become when I grew up. I wrote “happy”. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life”.
The problem of unemployment cannot be solved if we don’t revisit our educational system. Education system focuses on two variants viz-a-viz academic and professional education whilst lagging in financial education. Financial education supposed to be hegemonic in education because it’s the key to wealth and independence.
More often than not, the modus operandi of school is on how to be job seekers whilst acquiring many certificates that in no way related to their profession. As put forth by kiyosaki, the current schooling system hovers around;
- Schools are about finding a “high paying job” rather than enacting a “high paying job”
- Schools are about climbing the corporate ladder rather than how to create corporate ladders.
- Schools are about “job security” rather than financial freedom”, which is why almost all employees live In fear of “losing their jobs”.
- Schools teaches little or nothing about money , which is why millions of people now believe in entitlement programmes like pension and other social securities
If the root of the schooling system is overhauled to include financial education, then students as well as graduates will have no choice but to be entrepreneurs that will be creating jobs rather than seeking job. The inclusion of financial education will rejig the impulse of thoughts of students to want to become entrepreneurs because there will be compelling factor in the atmosphere. Accordingly, their entrepreneurial and productive prowess will be rooted out. And not being an entrepreneur will imply being addle and doltish. The only people that can solve our unemployment problem are entrepreneurs.
The society
You will agree with me that majority of the powerful people as far as economics is concerned are those with little or no formal education. Thomas Edison, Henry ford, bill gates, Steve jobs, Mack Zuckerberg, Alhaji rasak alakija etc realized that school can’t give them what they want hence they opt self-education instead. Our society frowns at school drop-out; they often regard them unemployed or unsuccessful. They only consider the school goers as the successful ones. One thing is common about the aforementioned people and their ilk; they have a burning desire to want to make changes which the school system is not giving them the avenue to explore. The school teaches them to be employees which is against their instincts. The fact that they didn’t have sophisticated education doesn’t make them unsuccessful. In fact, they have made life easier for us. Its High time the system start giving room for those with creative mind, those who have the burning desire to make changes. If all these have been achieved, then the problem of unemployment will be mitigated.
If you can observe lucidly, i inadvertently omitted government from the model. We can’t always rely on the government to make changes if our impulse conscious is not ready. For how many times have we been crying out to the government to create jobs but to no avail? Howbeit, the only way government can come in is to consolidate the institutions and incentive system.
knowHR 