Nigeria is a country in urgent need of skilled people. As the momentum to build a country that fits into the 21^st century grows so is the need to forge a technological goal that will get us there. This is so because for too long this country, known for its great human and material potentials has suffered from neglect and plunder in the hands of those who should know better. The shortage of skilled professionals in the country is a scandal and an indictment of the many years of poor planning and the lack of a national focus towards a better future for every citizen.

What I romantically call the Nigerian Renaissance is partly a throw back to where we were in the 70s and partly a realisation of where we should be today. In the case of Nigeria, the great engine that propels every country into success needs to roar back to life now. For too long emphasis has been taken away from skills training and every focus has been on university and academic education. While university education is great, a country such as Nigeria with her teeming population also requires people with skills to deal with her everyday needs in critical growth areas such as manufacture, construction, maintenance, home renovation, building and agriculture. It is also curious as to why Nigeria hangs to academic courses and general education that keep many of her citizens in the vicious unemployment cycle. The truth is that both general and vocational education are not mutually exclusive, when carefully and professionally guided, our youths can have both and thrive in them.

Youth Unemployment

The 2022 National Bureau of Statistics report shows Nigeria has 151 million youths, of which a whopping 80 million or 53.4% are unemployed! By and large, they’ve been left behind in the scheme of things in their own fatherland. At the same time, they watch with frustration how well the generations before them are faring. Little wonder they have become quite restive and combatant these days because they’ve been pushed to the wall. But these unemployment numbers are not just unacceptable, they are a shame in a country touted as the largest economy in the whole African continent.

Nigeria is a country where paper qualification means so much it seems an obsession. It is not uncommon therefore that many young graduates hold degrees in business administration or history, or sociology and many other courses that make finding employment such an ordeal. I am not writing against the degree anyone holds (my first degree is in sociology), however, where the government truly gets involved in the education of her citizens, college and university choices will be tailored to the country’s labour market needs to create the opportunities for economic engagement for our youths on graduation. As it is now, it can be argued that Nigeria needs more skilled people for her immediate and long-term growth. Lots of them.

In countries such as Germany, Denmark and Switzerland, vocational education plays a prominent role on the road towards economic competitiveness and prosperity.  Germany, for example, runs a dual vocational system that allows an apprentice to study in school and work in the industry at intervals. The focus of this program is to mentor apprentices into experts in their chosen trades through thorough schoolwork and rigorous industrial training. (Witte and Kalberg, 1995). The success of the program has ensured that Germany has the lowest youth unemployment rate in the whole of Europe (German Trade and Investment, 2014). It is common knowledge that a trained medical doctor in Germany can double as an expert in automotive repairs simply based on the interaction between the country’s academic and vocational pathways.

However, Nigeria has not always been this way. In the 1960s through the 80s, vocational education was doing very well, though they were mostly known as Trade Centres and technical colleges. As a product of the trade center myself, I know first-hand that it was one of the best things that ever happened to Nigeria as a country, especially in the development of entry-level but important manpower for her manufacturing sector. The Polytechnics and colleges of technology ensured that there were no shortages of middle level technicians and technologists for the same purpose.

So, what went wrong? Gradually, and regrettably, educational focus started shifting solely towards the achievement of academic credentials instead of maintaining a dual educational system where university and vocational education continued to enjoy comparable level of importance. It is little wonder therefore that the last three decades have seen a major decline in vocational education in Nigeria. It has become so bad that some citizens now rely on artisans and homemakers from Benin Republic and other neighbouring countries to work on their building and other skill-based projects.

The Employment Market

Nigeria is a country primed for a major industrial surge. When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu unfolds his economic blueprint for the country, it is bound to unleash a glut of investors scrambling for an opportunity to be part of it. They would however be confronted by the stark absence of manpower for their industries. Where are the competent welders or electricians or auto mechanics or carpenters or plumbers, or home makers? Where are they? We simply don’t have nearly enough of them. For example, the Dangote Refinery located in Lekki Lagos should have provided the opportunity for many of our youths to make a financial killing through their skills in the construction of the $19 billion gigantic industrial edifice. Instead, over 11,000 skilled workers were brought in from India to build a refinery in Nigeria, a country with over 200 million citizens! The Sub-Saharan African Skills and Apprenticeship Stakeholders Network (SASASNET) in its damning explanation for importing skilled personnel from abroad noted that “youths from Nigeria lacked the adequate skills needed to be engaged in the assignment”. This is so deeply saddening and speaks volume to how far back we are in the training and development of people with the skills that will be required to push Nigeria into the industrial age.

I know that there are a few federal and state vocational and technical colleges sprinkled across the country, especially in Lagos State where there are five of such. This is a good start but a cursory look at some of them will show they are mostly ill-equipped, underfunded and without adequately trained staff. There are those that have been abandoned, an example is the government technical college in my hometown in Ondo state. While some of the graduates of these colleges find jobs in the industry, many return to the street to work as Okada riders for a quick income. This means the government has a lot of work to do in sensitizing our youths to the idea of holding jobs that will provide opportunities for growth and a guarantee of a pension after retirement. In a country where people want to make it overnight, it is not surprising why many young people would prefer to ride Okada with its attendant dangers instead of holding a steady but structured employment.

The $15 billion Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline project is billed to start from Warri through to Niger Republic all the way to Algeria to connect to Europe. This is a huge undertaking capable of engaging thousands of young Nigerians/Africans both in general labour and in specialized skills. My hope is that the challenges that necessitated the influx of skilled foreigners to the Dangote Refinery would have been overcome this time.

Omololu Nick Apata is a Vocational Educator based in Canada.