Unemployment & the Problem of the Nigerian Graduate.

Last year, I attended a one week intensive leadership and employability training programme organised by LEAP (Leadership, Effectiveness, Accountability and Professionalism) Africa and one of the salient issues discussed therein was the disturbing issue of unemployment as it affects the Nigerian graduate.

In Nigeria, the analysis of labour statistics indicates that the unemployment rate for university graduates may be around 25% and that their prospects for being employed have worsened over time. According to the 2006 provisional census figure, Nigeria has a youth population of over 80 million, or 60% of her total population. Of this population, more than 80% are unemployed while about 10% are underemployed. Data provided by the National Manpower Board and Federal Bureau of Statistics indicate that only about 10% of the graduates released into the labour market annually by Nigerian universities and other tertiary institutions are able to get paid employments.

This situation is disturbing and quite confusing. Here’s why: While graduates complain of high levels of unemployment, employers, on the other hand, complain that the graduates are poorly prepared and therefore not suitable for the work environment. They believe that the standards of education in Nigeria have plummeted considerably over the past decades and the university degree is no longer a sure guarantee of effective communication skill or practical technical competence.

There seem to be a mismatch between what the employer needs and how much the Nigerian graduate can perform and deliver on the job in the labour market. Certain major characteristics such as, but not limited to, effective problem solving skills, ability to think outside the box, teamwork, focus, drive, charisma, motivation, flexibility, the abilities to initiate, analyse, plan and organise, expected from the graduates are minimum or completely lacking. It is against these backdrops that the graduates are commonly viewed as incompetent.

The blaring messages conveyed by surveyed managers of companies are clear; Today’s university graduates are poorly trained and their requisite skills have been deteriorating over the years. As a result, they are very unproductive on the job. This incompetency problem becomes increasingly annoying where there are severe shortcomings particularly in the area of oral and written communication and in applied technical skills.

In many cases, most employers compensate for insufficient academic preparations by organizing trainings and remedial courses for new employees. These steps ultimately increase the company’s operating cost and reduce their profitability margin and market competitive ability.

Where companies cannot afford to take the risk of 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.

One major problem associated with today’s graduates is that they do not seek to practice within their fields of studies because they do not usually meet the standard requirements for job on their fields or they simply want bigger pay. Most times, because of the malfunctioning economy, they practically accept any offer that comes their way regardless of what field as long as there is something to take home at the end of the month. This clearly explains why we have fewer doctors in the hospitals and more laboratory technicians, human anatomists and engineers in the banks and industries.

One way to address this ugly situation of producing unemployable graduates is to introduce proper career guidance and counselling faculty in every educational institution in Nigeria so that before candidates are admitted into a course of study, they would undergo appropriate career counselling to make sure they are suited physically, mentally and academically for their intended course of study.

In our universities, many undergraduates are clueless as regards what they really want to study; others are studying courses that they are not passionate about, sometimes, because their friends talked them into it or their parents forced it upon them. Most times, these students choose these courses because they were given inadequate or no advice before they did so.

Another way to tackle this menace is to revisit the departmental syllabuses which are usually filled with irrelevant and outdated courses. The government should furnish universities with the needed basic and academic amenities. A glimpse into a Nigerian university will reveal lots of inadequacies both academically and infrastructural; the laboratories, better described as dumping rooms, are full of cobwebs sleeping with outdated and unusable equipment. The lecture halls are dilapidated and most of them cannot even accommodate the number of students admitted. Some students help themselves by sitting on the floors; others find solace in poorly written and printed handouts, others don’t bother themselves with attending lectures, after all, the lecturers are the accomplices in the sorting game.

Another way to address the situation is to employ intelligent, zealous, practical and hard-working lecturers. These lecturers should be drilled with the necessary examinations before they are considered for employment. The present school system is full of “half baked” lecturers who lack the ethics of the teaching profession, lecturers who thrive on handouts and consistently make cash and sexual demands from failing students. These lecturers, who are often appointed on favouritism basis rather than competence, sometimes even take the job unserious and do it without the required passion, vision and creativity and sometimes, they take up these jobs because it is the only way to get a steady pay check.

Until the Nigerian Government, through the ministries of education, takes the necessary steps to bridge the gap between employability and job competency, there will still be the heinous problem of unemployment and an even alarming challenge of employability among teeming Nigerian graduates.

Written by Richard Chilee & Culled from TheScoopNG
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