Education and industry mismatch?

By Oluibukun Ajayi

The recent remarks by Tosin Eniolorunda of Moniepoint and the similar account linked to Aliko Dangote have reopened an old Nigerian argument that refuses to die. Are we truly short of talent, or are we simply short of talent that is ready for work? The distinction is quite important. Mr Eniolorunda affirmed that Moniepoint has about 500 vacancies and that it has struggled to find Nigerians who meet its standards, while also insisting that it chose to hire locally. The company has also since launched training efforts, such as DreamDevs, a bootcamp for engineering graduates, suggesting that the issue is not a total absence of people but a gap between what firms need and what the system produces.

The real problem

Nigeria is large, young, and full of ambitious people. Yet the pipeline from classroom to workplace is badly strained. UNICEF says one in every five out-of-school children in the world is in Nigeria, and about 10.5 million Nigerian children aged 5 to 14 are not in school, even though primary education is officially free and compulsory. UNICEF also says only 61 % of children aged 6 to 11 regularly attend primary school, while girls in the north east and north west face especially low attendance. UNESCO adds that schooling does not automatically mean learning, since completion and learning outcomes remain weak, and tertiary participation is still limited.

That is the first reason many employers struggle. A labour market cannot produce industry-ready engineers, analysts, technicians, and managers when too many children never get into school, too many who enter school do not learn enough, and too few reach strong tertiary training. The World Bank’s latest human capital brief for Nigeria puts the country’s HCI plus score at 131 out of 325, far below the lower-middle-income average of 153, and notes that tertiary completion is one of the biggest contributors to the gap. That is not a sentence about the absence of talent; it is about talent being underdeveloped.

Why the gap keeps widening

Several forces sit behind this mismatch. The first is weak foundational learning. UNICEF reports limited digital infrastructure, low internet use, widespread digital literacy gaps among youth, and gaps in teachers’ ICT skills. When a system struggles with basic reading, numeracy, and digital competence, it cannot easily feed modern firms that need problem-solving, code, data handling, client service, and teamwork from day one. The second force is the labour market structure. NBS says informal employment stood at 93 % in the second quarter of 2024, while youth unemployment was 6.5 % and youth not in education, employment, or training was 12.5 %. That means many Nigerians are working, but often outside stable and skill-building jobs.

A third force is the strong pull of migration. The popular word for it is “japa”, and it is not just a social media slogan. It is also a response to pay gaps, weak career paths, insecurity, and frustration with systems that often reward corruption and connections more than competence. The evidence from global labour trends is that this is not only a Nigerian issue, because the World Economic Forum says skill gaps are the biggest barrier to business transformation worldwide, and 63 % of employers see them as a major barrier. But Nigeria feels the pain more sharply because its talent pool is larger than its supply of strong training, reliable institutions, and decent work.

Is Moniepoint right?

The fair answer is yes and no. Yes, because the shortage of work-ready senior talent is real in many Nigerian sectors, especially technology, finance, advanced manufacturing, health, and energy. No, because the phrase “there are no talents” is too blunt. Talent exists in abundance. The issue is that the right people are not always visible, not always trained to the standard required, and not always willing to stay in a market where pay, growth, and workplace culture lag behind global options. That is why the debate should not stop at mere blame games. It should move to responsibility. Employers, schools, government, and families all share the burden.

This is also where companies must be honest with themselves. If a firm says it cannot find enough people, it should ask how much it has invested in building them. Moniepoint’s DreamDevs bootcamp shows that the company already understands this point in practice. It selected 20 engineering graduates from more than 9,000 applicants for a nine-week programme, with the stated aim of building industry-ready engineers and linking strong performers to internships and full-time roles. That is the right instinct. A firm that needs talent at scale cannot survive on recruitment alone. It must also create a feeder stream.

What Nigeria must do

Nigeria needs a cleaner pact between education and industry. First, early learning must be fixed. Reading, writing, and numeracy should be treated as national emergency priorities, not as routine school subjects. If children do not master the basics early, the rest of the system becomes a long repair job. UNICEF’s data on out-of-school children, early childhood attendance, and regional exclusion make this plain. Second, teacher preparation must improve. No country builds a serious economy with undertrained teachers and weak classroom support. Third, technical and vocational education must stop being treated as a poor cousin of university education.

Fourth, universities and polytechnics must work far more closely with employers. Curriculum review should not be done once or twice in a decade and left there, and the industry must be actively involved in the process. Industry should help design and shape what is taught, how it is taught, and how students are assessed. Internships must be real, not ceremonial, and final year projects should solve practical problems. Fifth, firms should expand apprenticeships, graduate residencies, and in-house training, especially in fields where the market is thin. The World Economic Forum says 85 % of employers plan to prioritise upskilling, 70 % expect to hire for new skills, and 50 % expect to move staff from declining roles to growing ones. Nigeria should take that signal seriously rather than waiting for institutions to produce perfect graduates.

Sixth, the government must fund education in a way that reflects the scale of the crisis. UNESCO says global benchmarks for education spending are 4 to 6 % of GDP and 15 to 20 % of total public expenditure, yet many countries still fall short. Nigeria should use those standards as a minimum guide, not as decoration in policy speeches. Funding matters, but spending quality matters just as much. Money must reach classrooms, teachers, labs, libraries, connectivity, and learner support.

Conclusion

Nigeria does not lack people. It lacks enough people who have been properly or adequately  groomed into the kind of workers modern firms can trust from day one. That is a painful statement, but it is not a hopeless one. A country of over 200 million people, with a youthful population and a deep entrepreneurial spirit, should not accept a future where employers hunt for staff in vain while graduates hunt for jobs in frustration. The answer is not to shame young people. It is to build a system that turns potential into performance, and then gives people a reason to stay. Tosin Eniolorunda’s hiring challenge is a warning, and Nigeria should hear it as such.

•Prof Oluibukun Gbenga Ajayi is an associate professor of geoinformation technology at the Department of Land and Spatial Sciences, Namibia University of Science and Technology. He writes from Windhoek and can be reached via [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are his own and not those of NUST.