If the report by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, that Nigeria’s unemployment figure had dropped from 33.3 to 4.1 percent is anything to go by, then the army of the unemployed youths, particularly the tertiary education graduates, should have drastically reduced.
But, the reality on ground is that hundreds of thousands of Nigerian graduates still don’t have jobs to do. From north to south and east to west, the story remains the same.
There is no job for scores of graduates being churned out every year from the nation’s universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education. Many even have masters’ degrees that were acquired walking a tightrope with the belief that once they have their second degrees, they would have brighter chances of getting good jobs.
But, that never happened; instead it became their greatest undoing as most employers of labour shun them because they have no cognate experience and they would demand higher salaries.
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Daily Post Nigeria
Daily Post Nigeria
NEWSHow unemployment drives Nigerian graduates into ‘class suicide’Published on November 23, 2023By Ihechukwu Sunday
If the report by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, that Nigeria’s unemployment figure had dropped from 33.3 to 4.1 percent is anything to go by, then the army of the unemployed youths, particularly the tertiary education graduates, should have drastically reduced.
But, the reality on ground is that hundreds of thousands of Nigerian graduates still don’t have jobs to do. From north to south and east to west, the story remains the same.
There is no job for scores of graduates being churned out every year from the nation’s universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education. Many even have masters’ degrees that were acquired walking a tightrope with the belief that once they have their second degrees, they would have brighter chances of getting good jobs.
But, that never happened; instead it became their greatest undoing as most employers of labour shun them because they have no cognate experience and they would demand higher salaries.
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For an average unemployed Nigerian graduate, the society has relapsed into a Hobbesian state, where life has become nasty, poor, short and brutish, with only the fittest surviving.
The situation is so precarious that in Nigeria today, graduates freely commit class suicide and resort to doing jobs considered way below their qualifications. They take up jobs reserved for artisans just to survive.
DAILY POST findings revealed that riding motorcycles (Okada), or tricycles (Keke), driving cabs or commercial buses, house cleaning and laundry services, generator repairs, running restaurant businesses or car wash services, as well as getting involved in estate agency services and petty trading, among others, have become beautiful brides for many unemployed graduates, who believe in dignity of labour.
For others who want to get rich quick, they find solace in fraudulent means of survival like kidnapping, armed robbery, internet fraud, advance fee fraud, ritual killing, among other dirty and illegal jobs.