Skills Acquisition As Panacea For Unemployment

From all indications, unemployment is now a global problem but the rate of unemployment in Nigeria is quite alarming.

Concerned observers note that unemployment rate in the country is in the region of 23.9 per cent, describing it as very outrageous.

They warn that if urgent measures are not taken to reverse the trend, it may induce social upheavals in the country.

Commenting on the rate of unemployment, , the Minister of  Labour, Chief Emeka Wogu said: Unemployment has reached a frightening dimension in our country that it now constitutes an affront to government’s development effort.’’

Wogu described the 23.9 percent unemployment rate as quite worrisome, adding that “ government is not insensitive to the plight of youths who spend their youthful years and vigour going in search of non-existent jobs.

“The present government is committed to addressing the unemployment problem through well-targeted intervention that will empower the citizenry to be architects of their own future,’’ he said.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who also commented on the high level of unemployment in the country, said that if something was not done urgently to address it, it might soon trigger a serious crisis in the country.

“We are sitting on a keg of gunpowder in this country due to the problem of youth unemployment.

“We have almost 150 universities now in the country churning out these young Nigerians but without job opportunities for them,’’ Obasanjo said.

Sharing similar sentiments, Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State said that a national emergency plan was required to solve the country’s unemployment problem.

“Unemployment resonates everywhere; we have never had unemployment as huge as this in our history. Urgent steps must be taken to check the trend,’’ he stressed.

Aregbesola wondered why the retirement age for certain category of workers was increased to 70 years without due regard for the high level of youth unemployment in the country

Besides, the Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufa’i, also acknowledged the danger posed by the high incidence of unemployment in the country, arguing that only skills acquisition would stem the trend.

Rufa’i, who spoke recently at a workshop on “Youths and Skills: Putting Education to Work’’, said that the key to bridge the gap between schooling and work was quality technical and vocational education.

“We recognise the crucial role of technical and vocational education training in poverty reduction, job creation and sustainable development,’’ she said.

The minister, nonetheless, identified the challenge facing Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) as the low estimation of TVET.

Also, the Director-General of NYSC, Brig.-Gen. Nnamdi Okore-Affia, underscored the importance of skills acquisition in efforts to tackle unemployment when he addressed corps members recently in Katsina.

He advised serving corps members to focus their attention on skills acquisition so as to enable them to be self-reliant after their service year.

Sharing similar sentiments, Obasanjo stressed the need for the training of graduates outside their academic disciplines as a way of stemming unemployment. The former president identified agriculture as one of the sectors with great potential to create jobs.

“I am not saying that agriculture will make you a billionaire; in fact, if you want to be one, don’t go into agriculture.

“Nevertheless, if you practise agriculture well, it will make you comfortable,’’ he added.

Obasanjo recalled that he enrolled at Moor Plantation, Ibadan, after his stint as military Head of State in 1979, to learn modern agricultural techniques before venturing into large-scale farming

However, a company executive, Mr Dominic Ovieghara, blamed the high unemployment rate in the country on some defects in the nation’s education system and called for increased funding of technical education.

“We have a lot of unemployed graduates because our education system produces many graduates with no technical skills to fit into the industrial sector, which has room for expansion,’’ he said.

Ovieghara, who is the Managing Director of a Warri-based equipment fabrication company, noted that Nigeria with about 22,000 secondary schools and less than 200 technical colleges could not produce enough technical manpower to drive the country’s industrial development. “Although government seems to be working hard to address the deficit, the country needs to increase its budget spending on education, so as to provide for technical education,’’ he said. However, analysts opine that if the country’s tertiary institutions strictly adhered to the admission policy of 60 per cent for science and 40 per cent for other disciplines, graduate unemployment would not have reached such an alarming proportion.

They also argue that science and technology are the driving forces of the 21st Century civilisation.

That is not to suggest that all the country’s universities are not adhering to the admission policy of the Federal Government.

Prof. Barth Okolo, the Vice-Chancellor of University of Nigeria, Nsukka, who stressed that his university was complying with the admission policy, also described science as the “centre of development’’. “Science is the centre of development in the world. As a university, we have taken it as a key priority to train 60 per cent of our students in science courses and 40 per cent in other fields,’’ he said.

All the same, there appears to be no end in sight for the current unemployment problem bedevilling the country that has over 150 universities churning out graduates mainly in the humanities and social sciences every year.

Experts, nonetheless, suggest that the solution to the problem entails a marked policy shift in the country’s education system with tangible emphasis laid on skills’ acquisition and technical education. All in all, the experts insist that government should adequately fund technical education, while skills’ acquisition courses should be introduced in the curriculum of the country’s tertiary institutions.

Ukoh writes for NAN.

Obike Ukoh