Are You Safe with Your Degrees? -By Sulaiman Ayuba

Yesterday morning, I was opportune to engage in a serious conversation with a professor in our faculty, and he said, “you’re lucky to be Nigerian, and that, after graduation you can get a job as soon as you finish your Master Degree. Here, people barely get a job”.

The statement of such a Professor called my attention to understand that it’s not only in Nigeria that graduates are having difficulties with employment. There was a time he narrated to me that the only job one can get easily in India is a teaching Job. And teaching job needs people who read extensively and have other skills aside from their degrees. Teachers here are very exceptional. They’re recruited because they have the knowledge and zeal to carry out the activity, not on the political interest or favoritism.

However, in Nigeria, people think degrees are enough for them to get a job. We barely go for extracurricular training. In India, besides teaching jobs, one can get industrial jobs. And for the industry to hire you, one needs to have diverse experience in ICT, leadership skills, chartered affiliated training, and the rest. In Nigeria, we always blame the government for not providing job opportunities while we don’t even have what the job takes, or demands from us. We only spent years in Universities cramming old literature that was published in the 80s.

Unfortunately, a graduate of Computer-related courses can’t develop an algorithm that will help to change the narratives of how our country is. I was amazed to see that a Nigerian graduate from a foreign University developed an algorithm that will help to report the case of sexual violence in Nigeria. On the other hand, those that read social science courses can’t make reviews ( even in a form of secondary data) to assess the problems that are facing Nigeria and proffer a handful of solutions to them.

Before, people can get jobs with mere primary certificates, and later it moved to secondary certificates. And nowadays, even degrees aren’t enough. People need extra training and practical skills to develop squarely. If for example, we can develop good ICT centers, they will be better than some degree-awarding institutions we have been producing since independence.

Millions of dollars and grants were spent on research and ICT training Centres everywhere across the world. The government should invest, and the youth should patronize. Without these, we will continue to say there are no jobs in Nigeria. But If we can do it in a good way, we can provide the job and even employ foreigners.

There’s no time for much prayer and miracles. The world appreciates reality nowadays. We should wake up then.

Sulaiman Ayuba is from Gombe State, and currently a student of Masters of Art in Sociology from Madhav University, Rajasthan, India.

You can reach him via: +917742349388
splato379@gmail.com