Unemployment – Country’s Time Bomb

Boco Edet

21 June 2011

analysis

For President Olusegun Obasanjo to have admitted in Geneva that he might be the first target of a revolution in Nigeria arising from the deepening crisis of unemployment is a big deal.

The former president tacitly admitted his administration scored low in the area of job creation and called on the African continent to begin talking about the monster.

Official figures as at 2009 indicate that twelve million, mostly youth and women, out of the 150 million Nigerians are unemployed. Almost fifty per cent of youth within the age of 15 and 24 years residing in the urban areas are jobless while 39.6 per cent of youth in rural areas are also unemployed.

In the urban areas, the number of unemployed women is placed at 22 per cent and those in the rural areas are slightly higher at 24 per cent.

Recently, federal government approved the establishment of nine new federal universities which are scheduled to take off in September. It also issued provisional licenses to four newly approved private universities, bringing the number of universities in Nigeria to 117.

This is outside of polytechnics, monotechnics and Colleges of Education. The carrying capacities of these institutions have been overstretched due to overpopulation.

On the average, 600,000 students graduate every year and there is hardly room in the various sectors of economy to accommodate this army of unemployed youth.

The evidence is usually the mammoth crowd witnessed during recruitment exercises at government organizations where more than 2,000 applicants indicate interest for one position.

The reasons for high unemployment rates vary from economic underperformance, fast population growth over Gross Domestic Product (GDP), poor infrastructure and wealth inequality between the rich and poor, to mention a few.

But asides these surrounding factors, analysts have said that graduates also fail to match manpower needs of the emerging economy and government must improve the producing capacity of graduates of the system.

The Federal Government in trying to reduce poverty and generate wealth has restructured school curriculums at primary and secondary level and at tertiary level, introduced entrepreneurship education.

In 2005, primary and junior secondary education curriculum was restructured into the 9 year Basic Education Curriculum to lay a proper foundation of knowledge at these levels in line with global best practice.

This was followed in March with the introduction of the new Senior Secondary Education Curriculum (SSEC) by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to overhaul the obsolete content of the former curriculum.

The objective of these new curricula is that every senior secondary education graduate should have been well prepared for higher education and captured relevant functional trade of entrepreneurship skills needed for poverty eradication, job creation and wealth generation.

In the new curriculum, 34 trade or entrepreneurship subjects were introduced from which a student must choose one as part of the five compulsory cross cutting subjects in WAEC and NECO.

The entrepreneurship subjects are classified as media, office, personal care, engineering repairs, carpentry, furniture and decorating and outdoor.

The new curriculum would commence in September beginning with year one of the Senior Secondary school and the first batch of graduates are expected to graduate by June 2014.

But analysts have said the curriculum is likely to fail if government is as ungenerous as it was to funding the past curricula. They have queried how many public schools have workshops where these skills would be taught and learnt or how many teachers have been trained to teach these subjects.

One of the five compulsory subjects is computer studies/ICT but schools exist in rural and semi-urban centers that do not have computers.

At the tertiary level, in 2006 the federal government directed that Entrepreneurship Education be made compulsory for all students and specifically Entrepreneurship Study Centres be established for students to acquire relevant skills in enterprise development.

It was expected that within the first three years at least 50,000 students would have received training and at least 10,000 graduates would have gone into self employment by end of 2010. None of these objectives have been achieved.

Although all universities have introduced entrepreneurship education as directed, only 19 out of the 117 universities have entrepreneurship study centres.

The challenges confronting proper implementation of the initiative are many. The students are not receiving adequate coaching from entrepreneurs that have successful ventures, there is dearth of qualified personnel to offer personalized training and advise to individual students and no readily available market to test the marketability of students’ products.

Michael Ogblega a senior executive at CHAMS said introducing entrepreneurship education would help only if the teaching is not theoretical. Commenting on the type of graduates the company battles with, he said, “It is only a tiny percentage that have those values that fit your company. They do not have the right work ethics. The emphasis for them is on making quick money.”

Aboki Nawani who is the National Moderator of the Civil Society Action Coalition on Education for All (CSACEFA) said infusing entrepreneurship education into the school curricula is laudable but fears it might not be properly implemented.

“There should be a support system to drive this entrepreneurship. For example microfinance banks should grant loans to graduates who want to start up their own businesses, “Nawani said.

Babatimehin Dare Folorunsho, a Business Development Executive said some graduates who parade First Class cannot make meaningful contribution about practical subjects in their area of specialization when engaged in conversations.

Folorunsho said from his experience, “You see some graduates of private universities with first class but when you dig deeper you find out they got it because their parents are in government. But we cannot reject everyone that comes to us, the ones that have some kind of skill we absorb and re-orientate.”

Hassan Taiwo, National Coordinator of Education Rights Campaign (ERC) believes the introduction of entrepreneurship education has not helped because though the objective of the programme is to train graduates not to rely on government employment there is no infrastructure or domestic market for products.

“Government should ensure the economy functions. If you have a situation where all sectors are working, graduates would find it easy to fix themselves in these areas. But the case now is many multinational companies are folding up and selling their factories to churches. It shows the lies of capitalism in practice and it would not help the graduates or economy,” Taiwo said.

Henry Nzekwu Executive Vice-Chairman of a media outfit said, “The curriculum we run in most schools was not designed for today’s workforce. The career opportunities emerging in this economy are not being taught. People learnt basic courses but today’s economy is driven by creative enterprise. For example people are into comedy, music and sports and all those things are not offered in schools.

The knowledge of how to organize a business is lacking for many graduates. You need to learn to run a profitable organization, and understand the business.”

AllAfrica – All the Time