Nigeria: Why graduates are unemployed and unemployable

                                     Babatope Babalobi

By Babatope Babalobi

About 25m graduates are unemployed in Nigeria, though
President Muhammadu Buhari estimated it at over 20m
earlier this year.
This calls for urgent national planning, though the National
Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has not helped matters by
masking its data in technical terms and not updating its
record timely, making it difficult for Nigerians to know in
exact figures, the country’s employment, underemployment,
and unemployment status.
In the Nigerian context, a graduate can be defined as a
person that has successfully completed first academic
degree in a university approved by the National University
Commission (NUC), in case of university graduates or
National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) for
polytechnic graduates.
Interestingly, the graduate manufacturing ‘factories’
continue to expand while the graduate employing factories
continue to shrink. There are 134 recognised Polytechnics
in Nigeria (29 federal Polytechnics, 48 state polytechnics,
57 private polytechnics) as of October 2019. Similarly,
Nigeria presently has 174 universities (43 federal
universities, 52 state universities and 79 private
universities).
Nigeria’s 308-degree awarding institutions (134
polytechnics and 174 universities) have an enrolment
population of about 2m and produce about 600,000
graduates yearly.
The National Universities Commission (NUC), announced
earlier this year that it is processing registration applications
for additional 303 new private universities. In the next five
years, the number of degree awarding institutions may
double, and up to 1m graduates may be added to the
employment queue and unemployment market annually.
Signs of an unemployment bomb has been tickling in recent
years. In 2014, 520,000 Nigerian jobless graduates stormed
various recruitment centres to apply for 4,000 advertised
vacant positions in the Nigeria Immigration Service. This
implied 130 unemployed graduates chased each of the 4000
vacant positions.
At least 16 people reportedly died in the ensuing stampede.
The then Minister for Internal Affairs, Abba Moro claimed
responsibility but was never sanctioned by the Goodluck
Jonathan Administration, who rather gave automatic
employment slots as compensations to families of the
bereaved.
In Nigeria, it seems someone must die on an employment
queue before his/her close relation secures a job.
Early 2018, the former Chairman of Federal Inland Revenue
Service (FIRS), Mr Tunde Fowler said a staggering 700,000
graduates applied for 500 advertised position in the FIRS,
with 2,000 of the applicants holding first-class degrees!
In September 2018, the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC)
announced it received 324,000 applications to fill 4,000
advertised vacancies for officer cadre, inspectorate, and
road marshal assistants.
Few months ago, about 60,000 graduates sat for interviews
for unstated number of vacancies, (possibly less than 100),
in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Unfortunately, there is no end sight to nightmares of
Nigeria’s graduates, no thanks to the triple factors of high
birth rates, ever rising enrolment in tertiary institutions, and
economic underdevelopment.
Nigeria’s graduates seems to have entered a ‘one
chance’ scenario, as no escape light is blinking at the end
of the tunnel of no return.
A country’s labour force according to the NBS, consists of
all persons who participate in the labour market, as either
employed or unemployed, while the employment-to-
population ratio is defined as the proportion of a country’s
working age population that is employed.
In the 2nd quarter of 2019, National Bureau of Statistics
said the national labour force was 69%, and
the employment-to-population ratio was 66.6%, meaning
33.4% of the labour force were unemployed.
Going by these figures, and working with an estimated
population of 200m, Nigeria’s labour force is roughly 138m,
33.4% or 66.8m of which are unemployed, as of mid- 2019.
The NBS also stated that 38.1% of unemployed have post-
secondary education, translating to 25.4m unemployed
graduates, with diploma or degree qualifications. Nigeria
Graduate report 2016, in fact, said ‘36.26% of recent
graduates are currently unemployed’. Many graduates are
also underemployed or wrongly employed, in respective of
their disciplines often ending up as schoolteachers,
commercial drivers, uber drivers, farmers, salesmen,
marketers, and factory workers.
International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines
unemployment as the share of the labour force that is
without work but available for and seeking
employment,  including people who have lost jobs and
those who have voluntarily left work, while the NBS defines
persons in unemployment as those of working age, who are
not in employment, seeking work (in the four weeks
preceding the enquiry) and currently available to start
working (in the reference period or within two weeks
subsequent to the enquiry).
The Nigerian Senate recently discussed the unemployment
situation, an issue requiring the declaration of a national
emergency. Quoting figures from the National Bureau of
Statistics in 2019, Senator Ike Ekweremadu stated that
Nigeria’s unemployment rate stood at 23.1 per cent of the
workforce in the third quarter of 2019, and hit 33.5 per cent
by 2020.
Graduate unemployment is an issue requiring national
discussion. Graduate unemployment saddens parents that
spent fortunes to train their children, wasting youthful
creativity, potentials, and energies at prime.
Generally, unemployment fuels crime in line with the
proverbial dictum that the devil engages an idle hand,
breeds frustration, increases disease and preventable death
rates due to cash flow limitations, conversely increases
birth as procreation increases by idle people, breeds
prostitution, promotes Yahoo Yahoo Internet Fraud And
Other Criminalities , exacerbates poverty due to lack of
disposable income, lowers self-esteem, promotes brain and
second slavery, slows economic growth, boosts insurgency
with recruits from the unemployed army, and promotes low
educational attainment.
Why are Nigeria’s graduates jobless? The reasons are
fundamental and multifaceted. Causes of unemployment
are well known and includes corruption that has crippled
the economic development, primitive capitalism that breeds
inequality, poor quality education, educational curricular
than breeds white collar job seekers, mismatch between
outputs of educational institutions and requirements of the
labour market, and infrastructure deficit especially poor
energy supply, unmotorable roads, and poor access to
water supplies.
Generally, many Nigerian graduates are not only
unemployed, but unemployable as their skills are largely
divorced from labour requirements.
The admission policy of Joint University and Matriculation
Board (JAMB) which encourages quota rather than merit-
based admissions, also fosters graduate unemployment,
though recent reviews have granted each university
autonomy to determine its admission’s policy.
Under the old policy Joint Admissions and Matriculation
Board, 30% of a university’s admissions was reserved for
applicants from its immediate geographical surroundings
or “catchment” area, 20% was  reserved for applicants
from educationally disadvantaged states, 10% of
admissions were at the Vice-Chancellor’s discretion, while
only 40% of graduates were admitted on merit based
academic performances.
A study by Adeyemi, 2001, shown a strong correlation
between this quota-based admission policy and poor
academic performances of students, eventually leading to
unemployable graduates as technically 60% of students
admitted to Nigerian universities were not admitted on
merit.
Beyond these, Nigeria’s graduates are not marketable in the
global economy as the institutions that produced them are
lowly ranked due to a myriad of factors.
Times Higher Education World University Rankings, 2020
ranked only four Nigerian universities- Covenant University
(401-500), University of Ibadan (501-600), University of
Lagos (801-1001), and University of Nigeria, Nsukka (1001+)
out of 1397 ranked.
The fact that the new generation Nigerian graduates are
poorly trained, and quarter baked in lowly ranked
universities reflect in their oral and written communication.
My personal experience shows, if you schedule an interview
to assess young graduates for possible employment, you
may be wasting your time examining certificates and paper
qualifications.
If you want to catch an average fresh graduate pants down
in a recruitment interview, simply ask the applicant to write,
in longhand, one or two-page essay on any issue. You will
be shocked at the sequence of tenses and grammatical
errors.
The typical new generation ‘indomie’ graduate does not
know a noun or sentence starts with a capital letter, and
when employed writes official notes as if chatting with a
friend on Facebook or WhatsApp; abbreviating words (u for
you , 4 means for , d for the , aw for how , thn for thing, etc)
in the process.
Social media undoubtedly has damaged English
comprehension of the youths.
Many new generation graduates are unemployable because
their educational career was built on a faulty and false
foundation. Many are products of examination malpractices
in West African Senior School Certificate Examination
(WASSCE), and gained admission to tertiary institutions
through JAMB special centres where cheating is official and
officials are cheats, as they wrote answer sheets for
students they were supposed to monitor.
Few years ago, the Head, National Office of WAEC, Charles
Eguridu lamented that Nigeria has the highest number of
examination malpractices and cheating incidences among
the five member countries of the council, forcing WAEC to
withdraw full recognition for 113 secondary schools
nationwide, and cancelling results of 30, 654 candidates
that sat for  May/June 2012 West African Senior School
Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
In the tertiary institutions, cheating continues through
plagiarised term papers, poorly motivated lecturers, sex
scandalised examinations, and doctored thesis. The truth is
that a good number of graduates from tertiary institutions in
recent years, cannot defend their certificates.
What is the way forward? Unemployment could be
minimised, while total eradication may be utopian.
Possible solutions include strengthening employment
opportunities such as President Buhari’s N-Power
programme, non-partisan implementation of
entrepreneurship programmes such as the Youth
Employment and Social Support Operation
(YESSO),  reviving former President Jonathan Goodluck’s
administration’s Youth Enterprise with Innovative (Youwin),
computer skills education, youth empowerment, reduction
of retirement age limit for government  and non-government
workers, continued support for small and medium scale
industries  through financial bodies such as Development
bank, upscale of labour intensive rather than robotics
intensive industrialization programme, implementation of
measures to reduce birth and control population growth,
provision of loans and grants for small scale and large
scale agricultural entrepreneurs, and investment in human
capital development and skill based education.
Also, unemployed graduates could consider acquiring
higher degrees such as Masters, and Doctorate to improve
their marketability.
The curricula of Nigerian universities and polytechnics
should be continuously reviewed to respond to the needs
and dynamics of today’s knowledge and technology
economy.
They should also prepare undergraduates for the outside
world on simple issues such as making oral and written
presentations, writing a curriculum vitae, preparing for
interviews, and improving job profiles.
Lastly, good governance by all tiers is the key to creating
employment opportunities for Nigeria’s graduates, now and
in the future.
More factories such as Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Mill or the
famed Textile mills should be revived, the private sector
should be supported to set up new factories such as
oncoming Dangote refinery, social infrastructure such as
railways, good roads and stable energy supply that favour
industrialisation should be improved, value of the naira
should be strengthened, states should embark on massive
commercial agriculture schemes, local industries should be
protected from vagaries of free trade, and official
corruption should be tackled to free resources for
developmental projects.
Babatope Babalobi is a Doctorate Researcher, Department
of Health, University of Bath, UK.