Nigeria Today.

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX©

✍ You are a final year student in one of the universities in Nigeria. You are already counting days or  months. Soon you will be out of that cage called school. During this period, a lot of young adult begin to dream of an eldorado. They dream of jobs in the banks, oil and gas sectors and other multinational companies.

✍ Shortly after graduating, they go for youth service. During that period of one year you are placed on a stipend. 

✍ It is during the service year that reality begins to dawn on the Nigerian graduate. You go for an aptitude test in which only 30 job spaces are available and  yet 500,000 plus applicant will sit for the qualifying exams. So pathetic!!!

✍ For one aptitude test to another and the job space becomes fewer. Few years down the line hope turns to desperation and desperation turn to misery.

✍ After 2- 5 years of job seeking, the almighty graduate end up applying for a teaching position in one of the mushroom private schools with an overbearing proprietors where he is placed on a meagre pay of between N15,000 and N25,000 an amount that can hardly cover airtime, transportation and feeding.

✍ The above scenario is the reality faced by over 95% of graduates in Nigeria and in most African countries. The  reasons are quite obvious. The industrial sector is at its infant stage. Productive activities in the country is its lowest ebb. We import almost  everything. Ours is a mono centric economy subsisting on the crude oil. Any country that depends on only petrol dollar for survival will always end up poor and suffers from the painful effect of "Dutch disease"

✍ With high dependence on foreign goods and a low productive base, a sliding currency, poor power supply, endemic corruption etc, job provision becomes very bleak.

✍ The few job spaces are taken by the privileged  minorities: Children of Governors , Senators, Reps, Commissioners, Head of government MDA's, traditional rulers and all the other big sharks.

✍ The majority of graduates who are between 90 and 95% of job seekers roam the street aimlessly. Some bifurcates into crimes such as prostitution, human/drug trafficking, kidnapping, armed robbery etc with the risk of meeting their untimely death.

✍ It is sad that in this age and time, we still have an army of job seekers who are wasting their lives away when there is wealth everywhere and instead of carrying the tag of a job seeker, one can actually create job without much ado. Our major problem is ignorance.

✍ It is time to look beyond government. In the next 100 years, governments in Africa will not be able to salvage the unemployment situation.

✍ It is time to think outside the box, there is wealth everywhere. The earth is blessed with abundance.