THE lingering problem of graduate unemployment is back again on the front burner as Jobberman, an online recruitment firm, released a report on its recent survey which indicated that about 46 percent of the country’s graduates are unemployed. The finding of this survey is not new. Unemployment had long been identified as a ticking time bomb in the country. What is most worrisome about graduate unemployment, however, is the claim by employers of labour that Nigerian graduates are unemployable as a result of lack of requisite skills for the present day job market.
Unemployment ranks very high on the ladder of our national problems. It deserves the concerted attention of all stakeholders. Nigerians’ penchant for abandoning all problems for the government alone to address will not help in this case.
The present situation in which government is the highest employer of labour in the country cannot solve this unemployment riddle. We have to consider the number of people graduating from our tertiary institutions every year and the many more still waiting to get admission into these institutions to appreciate the magnitude of this problem.
We need the combined efforts of all levels of government and the private sector to provide jobs for both graduates and non-graduates in the country. The realistic way out of this national problem is self-employment. To prepare our universities and other tertiary institutions for this stark reality, a lot must change in their present academic curriculum to redirect attention to entrepreneurial education.
This is the essence of the age-long demand for a meeting of the gown and the town. The National Universities Commission (NUC) and other tertiary education regulatory bodies must sit with the tertiary institutions and the corporate sector to properly articulate current needs in the market place and specifically design programmes to meet them. The present situation in which many of our graduates cannot get jobs or create jobs for themselves is unacceptable.
The claim by private sector operators that the job market is not as tight as it is made out to be, but that it is our graduates that are unable to find relevance in it, calls for prompt action to address the problem. We recall with pain, the dramatisation of this problem several years ago, when the chief executive officer of one of the leading food drinks producing companies in the country disclosed his frustration at finding competent graduates to take up jobs in his company. The situation has, no doubt, worsened with time.
We are encouraged that Professor Anthony Anwuka, the current Minister of State for Education, has noted this gap between the school and the workplace and has committed his ministry to redressing it. When graduates of our tertiary schools have skills that are required in the workplace, they will be able to get jobs easily or create employment for themselves. The situation that the country and, indeed, the world has found itself today calls for job creators and not job seekers. The earlier this message sinks in, the better for everyone.
Government must also work hard at diversifying our largely mono– product economy. A lot has been said by the present government about agriculture and solid minerals. While that is good, we must seriously consider industrialisation too. Our efforts on agriculture and solid minerals have been mostly geared towards exporting primary products.
This is the time to seriously consider how to add value to these abundant raw materials to create jobs at home and earn much–needed foreign exchange. Our recent reverses with our primary product – oil – should be a lesson on how fiercely competitive the global market has become and why indolent nations will be left with the short end of the stick.
This is why as a mark of commitment to addressing unemployment, government must urgently tackle the rot in our core infrastructure. If power and transportation problems, to mention just two, are solved in the life of the present administration, for example, it will go a long way in complementing the employment generation effort. The logic of this argument is obvious and we call for government’s commitment to putting these problems behind us.
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