The complaints from parents and everywhere is that ‘there is no job’ for the teeming young people who are expected to start a productive life after graduating to at least take care of their basic needs without asking anybody.
However the jobs are simply not there, even where there are they are not enough, not everybody would get it.
As such you would see a young man that has graduated for more than five years idling away his life, while waiting to find a job, and may be if it comes age would be against him and he may be considered too old.
Apparently because of this disillusionment, earlier last month a graduate of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Oludare Alaba, returned his certificate to the university and asked for a refund of the fees he paid to the school till he graduated.
He said he did that because his certificate had not brought him anything and he could not make ends meet.
He also said he could not feed his wife and two children and take care of his 90-year-old father. Though he said he had a talent for entertainment and he wanted the refund to us it and build a meaningful life.
This story drew the attention of many to the reality of going to school and acquiring all the talent available but at the end your dream of getting that job at the lucrative agency is dashed. In fact even the one you feel is beneath you may not be available for you.
As a stop- gap the government introduced N-Power, one of the Social Investment Programmes (SIP) of President Muhammadu Buhari Administration in 2016 for unemployed graduates for two years. They are paid N30, 000 a month. There is exit strategy where they are trained in specific areas and given loan.
Though, at some point some of the beneficiaries staged a protest of not wanting to leave the programme when their time was over.
When in anger or to show inequality between the rich and the poor, people ridicule the N-Power programme that it is only good for the children of the masses, that the lucrative jobs which everybody wants like the NNPC, CBN are for the children of the top government officials and other wealthy people.
It however means something to others to the extent that they want to hold on to it. It also helps many families, so it may not be NNPC or CBN , but it is something and definitely better that nothing.
Young men cannot get married because they don’t have a job after they have graduated, parents lament.
But for how long should a graduate wait for a job? There is more emphasis now on learning a skill even if you are a student. You can build on that when you graduate even if you get a job you can have that as well, because your salary may not be enough especially if someone is married.
From time to time there are skills acquisition programmes where people are trained and even given start up money or equipment as empowerment.
Some sell the items or abandon the skill they have learned. Therefore sometimes it is not for lack of trying, but perhaps there is no passion and motivation.
Now couched as entrepreneurship perhaps our highly educated young people would key into that, being more comfortable. You see engineers and lawyers among the jobless. Engineers are selling computer accessories and driving taxis.
Someone say Nigeria is wasting its talented people because it is a consumer country, it does not manufacture what it uses. And that if there are industries people would be absorbed and their talent utilised. All those chemical engineers that have since opened shops in the market because there are no industries to work, according to one of them, would have a job.
Since that is obviously not for some time to come people have to find a way to survive. Some are now into tailoring ( fashion design), catering , business centres, shoe and bag making, fruit and gift packaging and so on. With resilience companies may emerge from such small businesses.
In this regard, if those of the olden days find it difficult to do anything it is understandable. In their days there were jobs for the taking and there were not many people, but the youth of today have no excuse, they just have to learn a skill, a business, as a means of income.
