It’s one thing to come up with solutions to help unemployed youths in Nigeria and it’s another thing to proffer useless ideas in their pursuit of acquiring dream jobs. Slamming mediocre jobs on them is under-employment. If every Nigerian graduate clings onto the path of being a bus conductor, then the future of the country is doomed.
With this kind of reasoning, how can we create the next inventor? How can we introduce the next Achebe? How can the nation produce the next entrepreneur? These days degrees don’t open doors; it’s critical thinking and the ability to prove that one can present more than what’s written in a class text.
Take Christine, for example, she studied mathematics at UNILAG and graduated with a 2:1. She hasn’t got a job. She complains daily about how she thought her grade would make her get an automatic job. Her brain has been wired to believe that studying hard, getting a good grade would automatically present a star-studded future. But reality often shatters like rotten eggs for most Nigerian youths and Christine is choking gradually from the smell that oozes out from the yolk. After several applications, she’s still searching.
What does Christine’s story tell us about our society? That the outcomes from studying hard are grim. Nobody cares about the work you did in school. What matters are: connection, how well you can kiss someone’s back side and more importantly, who you know. The Nigerian youth today is the unwanted dreg of a society built on nepotism, mediocre thinking, and tribalism.
With over five hundred thousand unemployed youths, the country should be scared about its future. Instead of being scared, the leaders who should know better are springing up solutions that would not, in the long run, help anyone. Our leaders and the society have failed youths.
I think this is the best way out for those youths who have a mission to better their lives. First, the unemployed youth should increase their value. That is, after school, the said youth must be ready to do more. This means he/she must be willing to study more on how to elevate the self above the challenges that present itself in the country. This requires less time Facebooking, Tweeting and reading gossip blogs. Instead of focusing solely on that next job, simply focus on building extra skills. It’s easy, most times, to relax after graduation and wait for the right job to come knocking at your door but doing this would gradually eliminate the unemployed. In summary, develop your mind and ensure increment in quality of value.
Second, your choice of a workplace should not be limited to Nigeria. At the point of writing this, there are countries searching for Nigerian graduates. All you have to do is go on the net, search and start sending your application to interested companies outside. Chilling in your comfort zone would kill your dreams: you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Third, and this is perhaps hard to do considering the odds stacked against new businesses in Nigeria. Form an alliance with other graduates. Find a prevalent need in Nigeria and come up with deliverable solutions and services. In other words, start a business. If businesses are not employing, research hard, create a business and start employing. There are young entrepreneurs in Nigeria doing this and they are not doing badly; learn from them.
Society is not on the side of the Nigerian youth. This is the sad reality and the sooner Nigerian youths recognised this, the better. It’s easy to blame this person or that person about the current woes of the country but what’s even easier to do is to create, invent and shatter your comfort zone. Build the tomorrow you desire.
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