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Learning Alot of Nothing: The Reality of Nigeria's education

Hello everyone, it's been a while. I have been out of town and very busy trying to get some things going. The reality of our hustle. Hope you are all doing good and enjoyed the 
holiday.

So over the weekend I was reading a couple of things about the Nigerian education sector and since schools  just closed I had the opportunity to talk to some of my young friends, nieces and nephews who are still in school.
How many of us thought when we were young and back in school, how important what we were doing was. I love education, I love a chance to learn new things and I have the kind of mind that hardly ever forgets. Not that I was always first in my class or something but I was a good student, and I thought what I was learning will change the world.  Matter of fact is that it didn't. most of the things that I actually use in my life now are things I learned outside the strictures of the formal education system.

How is it that Nigerian  graduates amount to about 1.8 million people a year and you still hear Nigerian employers talking about Nigerian graduates being unemployable. I was with a couple of friends in Lagos who have their own businesses and one of them was ranting about how he interviewed 7 new graduates for some entry level jobs in his firm and none of them could even pass muster. To tell the truth I was a bit annoyed, I was in the Nigerian unemployment market for a while and it's not that I wasn't  good enough it's just the reality of that circumstance and it offends me when I hear potential employers say stuff like this. He then went on to say how he will only employ Nigerians who have had an education outside Nigeria. It is true that some graduates are a very big disappointment and you don't even want to hear what they have to offer ( working in HR I know this first hand) but we have very wonderful Nigerian trained and ready to learn  graduates too, and is Nigeria the only country where being educated outside our shores is an added advantage? to be honest how many Nigerians can afford this luxury?
 

In school you are taught a lot of subjects that are so removed from reality it makes it difficult sometimes to find real life application. In university I was an economics undergrad and most of the theories are based on the assumption of  "all things being equal". In real life outside of the utopia of education, all things are not equal. when the government increases spending does it necessarily mean that the money will get into the hand of every hardworking Nigerian out there? it doesn't, neither does it  mean that the qualified graduates will be employed.
What is going to be done in our education system so that Nigerian students don't leave school without real world skills.

There is nothing more annoying than working extra hard for four years of your life and an employer who is employing for graduate positions for basically crappy pay tells you that it will be better if you had a masters degree from a school abroad, whether there is globalisation or not, not all knowledge from outside the economy is applicable within the economy, that is why other countries prefer students who have schooled in their country.
On another hand I can understand where the employers are coming from. Who wants to use all their money and time in training someone in skills they should already have? You see some graduates come in to an interview with no skills and ask for start up pay that is probably equivalent to the amount the company is making as profit. You also see that they are un-teachable and even unwilling to learn after being stuck in a system where no one rewards hard work and diligence.

So while the government is busy spending money on only God knows what, they should consider investing in  building a knowledge based economy. A country filled with educated illiterates is useless and will continue to exist in a cycle of bad to worse until employers are happy to pick their human capital from within the economy and train them to be what they hope for.

Nigerian Institutions should also look into building a more rounded graduate in skills, in athletics and in as many fields as possible for a more hands-on kind of education, So that our graduates can at least compete on a global level with students from universities outside out shores.

xoxo. 


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