Nigeria’s worsening youth unemployment

The new report that 80 million Nigerian youths are unemployed is lamentable and unacceptable. The report also underscores the nation’s worsening youth unemployment rate. The new report, “State of the Nigerian Youth Report 2025,” presented by Plan International Nigeria, stated also that over 1,500 schools have been shut down in the past two years due to insecurity. It said the worsening conditions confronting young people in the country had left about one million children out of school.

Speaking recently in Abuja at the Nigerian youth dialogue in commemoration of the International Youth Day, organised by the House of Representatives Committee on Youth in Parliament, the Advocacy and Youth Programme Officer at Plan International Nigeria, Jonathan Abakpa, lamented that the fresh statistics painted a troubling picture of wasted opportunities in the country. Moreover, Nigeria is at risk of losing its greatest asset if youth unemployment is not checked forthwith. The report that each year, about 1.7 million graduates leave tertiary institutions without getting a job has even worsened the mater. In addition, over 77,000 lives have been lost to tribal conflicts in the last five years, while 2.6 million people, mainly from farming areas, have been displaced.

There should be concrete efforts to address the country’s unemployment crisis to stem the unbridled youth migration to other countries. The alarming statistics should worry policy makers, the government and even the private sector. The youth unemployment is a ticking time bomb that can explode with dire consequences. There must be deliberate efforts to create more jobs for the unemployed youths. We say this because youth restiveness will be difficult to contain. The EndSARS protest has proved that youth anger cannot be easily contained. The organised private sector should help in creating more jobs for the youths. No doubt, youth unemployment is a present danger and must be urgently addressed. Government needs to provide adequate social security to vulnerable Nigerians, including the unemployed youths.

The education system needs to be overhauled in favour of skills acquisition. Most of our university graduates do not have marketable skills. The education curriculum must be redesigned to inculcate technical and marketable skills in the students. This is the time to revive all moribund technical colleges across the country. The neglect of technical education has increased the training of students without skills for self-employment and has invariably increased the rate of youth unemployment in the country. We should lay more emphasis on technical and vocational education.

Even in the liberal arts education, the students should be exposed to acquire skills through internship training programmes in related industries. Every varsity programme must aim at developing some marketable skills in their students. There is hardly any programme without some marketable skills in this age of internet and social media. Let there be collaboration between the gown and the town. In other words, let there be collaboration between the gown and the industry.

This is the way to go. It is the practice in Europe and America. We must not shy away from it. We must intentionally digitalise our education system. Students in the liberal arts can acquire marketable digital skills that will enable them function efficiently in industry. Curriculum developers should always be abreast of the needs of those in the industry. They should interface with them to know their job needs and required skills and competencies.

Constant curriculum review must be a permanent feature of our education system. There is no way obsolete curriculum can aid our technological and industrial development. The polytechnics and colleges of technology are charged to develop more programmes with marketable skills. They can organise short courses for some other graduates to acquire the much-needed skills to work in the industry.

Therefore, industry experts must ensure that the current training meets the workforce requirements. Our vocational training system must combine classroom learning with hands-on industry experience. This will produce students with specific technical skills that employers require, thereby reducing unemployment and creating a highly skilled workforce.

Since white collar jobs are no longer available due to the economic hardship in the country, Nigerian youths need vocational training, entrepreneurial opportunities, and internship programmes. Moving forward, youths with entrepreneurial skills and business ideas should be given access to capital to establish their own businesses and become employers of labour. Having a steady power supply can enable some youths to establish some businesses. A recent Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) stated that over 70 per cent of Nigerian start-ups failed within the first five years due to lack of funding and mentorship. Therefore, government should provide such businesses with funds and mentorships.