Government empowerment of Nigerian graduates: A necessity

As the level of unemployment in Nigeria increases by the day, the number of graduates in the labour market persistently appreciates. Many Nigerians attribute this challenge to lack of empowerment from governments, at all levels, for graduates.

The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had said in April this year that no fewer than 5.3 million youths are jobless in the country, while 1.8 million graduates enter the labour market every year.
The World Bank statistics, last year, put the number of Nigerians living in destitution at 100 million, while its latest report put Nigeria among the five poorest countries in the world.
Amidst the challenges of unemployment, poverty and hunger, Nigerian unemployed graduates who are poverty-stricken have become instruments of violence, hired and used by politicians to launch attacks on their opponents. Also, criminal activities are on the increase with jobless youths and unemployed graduates as key players.
Although entrepreneurship programmes and skills development courses have been introduced into the curricular of tertiary institutions in Nigeria through respective commissions such as the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), among others, but as is the case with many government programmes, this one is still fraught with numerous challenges.
Students are only taught the theoretical aspects of the entrepreneurship studies, and left without the capabilities of putting what they have been thought into practice.
It is pertinent to state clearly that the task of producing well-thought, well-informed and well-rounded graduates is not dependent on teachers or lecturers only. Government also has more than a few roles to play in this direction. In Nigeria today, teachers at all levels take the blame of producing a category of incompetent students depicted as “half-baked graduates” for the labour market.
For instance, where there are skilled teachers, instructors or lecturers who are ready to groom students with the needed practical experience, and on the opposite, there are obsolete and insufficient practical facilities, the teachers are not to be blamed, but the providers of such facilities.
Lack of conducive teaching and learning environments and inadequate research and practical facilities are among the major challenges facing our country’s education sector. In public institutions, laboratories are not well-equipped or are practically non-existent. For example, universities and polytechnics offer computer science courses without computer laboratories, let alone internet connectivity. Libraries have become archives of stale, archaic, and irrelevant materials.
Over the years, strategies which don’t seem to be helping the situation have been put in place by government through the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), the Subsidy Re-investment Programme (SURE-P), Graduates Internship Scheme (GIS), with supports from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), among others. Vocational trainings and skills acquisition programmes have been organised and are still ongoing by these bodies to empower youths and unemployed graduates in different areas with the aim of alleviating the unemployment crisis in Nigeria, yet the problem persists.
Government should also introduce entrepreneurship courses and programmes in schools right from the elementary/basic (pre-primary and primary) levels, up to the advanced/higher levels of studies in Nigeria, as this will enhance students’ performances and provide more chances for their contributions to the nation’s economic and technological development.
As a local adage says, “education is light, knowledge is power and without education, nothing is practically possible.” Empowering a graduate does not necessarily mean giving such person money. If government can further strengthen its agencies in addition to empowerment programmes and initiatives such as NDE, NEEDS, SURE-P, ITF and SMEDAN to effectively train graduates in different vocational and technical skills, the crisis of unemployment will surely become a thing of the past.

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