More knocks than commendation have continued to trail the recent revelations that of the 13,00 applications received, six Ph.D, 704 Masters and over 8,460 Bachelor degree holders applied for the Graduate Executive Truck Driver of Dangote Group of Companies.
According to the Chairman of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, most of the applicants are from reputable universities and our plan is to eventually make them self dependent.
The drivers will get trip allowances on each trip along with their salaries, and will own the trucks at no interests or repayments after they must have reached 300,000km, (about 140 trips from Lagos to Kano) within two to four years.
Despite these pecks attached to the job, concerned stakeholders believe that more still needs to be done by government to create employment and the enabling environment for the organised private sector to employ more people.
In his reaction, VC, Bells University of Technology, Ota, Ogun State, Professor Isaac Adeyemi, called for the need to evaluate the PhDs.
“Several schools offer PhD programmes, but what is the quality of the PhD, how do they run their post-graduate programmes, in what fields and where? Assuming they obtained the PhDs from reputable institutions and in relevant areas, have they sought employment in the universities, polytechnics, colleges of education etc.”
On if the economy or educational system is to be blamed for the apparent anomaly, Adeyemi said the educational system can’t really be blamed because “there are checks and balances in-house in the PhD certificates from over 90 per cent of Nigerian universities apart from the involvement of external examiners. The provosts and deans of post-graduate schools are streamlining the procedure leading to the award of PhD certificates. The National Universities Commission also tries to monitor post-graduate programmes.”
Proffering solutions to the problem, the VC noted that the problem should be tackled from two perspectives.
“One, from educational perspective; are we really producing graduates that will meet the needs of the nation? There is need for the educational sector to cooperate with the industrial sector in researches and in training. There must be target production of manpower and constant rubbing of minds.