A country of young hustlers
Tilers from Cotonou, bricklayers from Chad, while many Nigerian youths open gates, hawk in traffic and engage in internet scams, breeding youths, without skills yet have sky-high ambitions, writes ISAAC ANYAOGU
It looked surreal from afar, up close, it is a crying shame. A young man in the prime of his life, chasing after a rickety bus in a moving traffic much like someone fleeing a lynch mob, just so he could sell bottled water to someone in the bus.
Twenty –two year old Elechi, like thousands of young Nigerians hawk everything from sausage rolls to live poultry on highways in Lagos and other major cities in Nigeria.
Their circumstances are similar in their differences. Elechi dropped out of school because his aged mother could not afford the fees but for many others, they could not even find decent jobs after long years in schools that nurture ignorance.
Like his fellow hustlers, Elechi cannot be said to be lazy by any stretch of the imagination. He spends up to 10 hours daily weaving through traffic, hawking bottled water or plantain chips.
“At least I am not stealing,” he said, as he wiped his brow with the back of his hand, sitting beside a disused electric pole by a Marina link bridge. “I am hustling, fending for myself,” he said with a conviction hard as steel.
John, his brother, is engaged by a private security firm to open gates for school children and visitors at an upscale Nursery and Primary School. He has friends who engage in internet scams and a massive number are hired as security guards.
Nigeria has over 3,000 registered private security companies and hundreds operate informally. They guard banks, upscale residential estates, hotels, shopping malls, company premises and even church buildings.
Some say this is a waste of the most productive years of their lives. “My heart bleeds each time, I drive around and see youths opening gates or chasing cars in traffic to sell merchandise because I see people wasting the most productive years of their lives,” said Godman Akinlabi, leader of Elevation Church, a faith-based organisation based in Lagos at a recent conference.
“These people could have been acquiring useful skills like learning to tile, or welding and other vocational skills sorely needed in Nigeria,” he said.
Nigeria’s hustling generation, in a hurry to drive their Bentleys has made it difficult to find technically skilled workers.
The net beneficiaries are neighbouring African countries like Benin Republic, Chad and even Niger who now do the bulk of vocational jobs in Nigeria.
Worse still, local artisans trained in plumbing, electrical wiring, carpentry, tiling among others perform their tasks shoddily, have a sense of entitlement and rarely deliver good quality work according to deadlines.
Brian Ikechukwu, an accountant based in Lagos knew first-hand the pain of a bungled job by local artisans.
The managing partner of a fast growing accounting firm, after a major consulting assignment, he decided to refurbish the firm’s 350 square-meter office.
“We planned to change the floor tiles as what we had were rubber tiles. We also want to change the partitions from cardboard to aluminium frames, repair broken plumbing facilities and generally give the place a face-lift.
“Our objective was to give back to the community where we have thrived, it was also our biggest mistake,” he said in a voice crumpled with regret.
Three days after hiring local artisans, he came to inspect the work and his jaw was on the floor. The previous rubber tiles weren’t removed and a completed section was already heaving while they were still working. Alarmed, he fired them on the spot.
A day later, a business partner introduced him to Kojo Williams; a tiller from Cotonou. Kojo carried out an assessment, stuck to the agreed service contract, delivered ahead of schedule, cleaned up and returned unused tiles. Now Brain recommends him to everyone who needs the service.
A flawed system
However, to blame Nigerian youths for this situation is to blame an illegitimate child for the pregnancy that brought it into the world.
“Despite its contributions, the leaders of Nigeria have not given vocational education the attention it deserves. That is one of the reasons for the nation’s underdevelopment,” writes Victor Dike, founder and chief executive officer of Center for Social Justice and Human Capital Development (CSJHD) on a blog post.
Comfort Okolocha of the department of Vocational Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka and Baba, E.I, of the department of Office Technology and Management, Federal Polytechnic Idah, Kogi State in their study of Vocational and Technical Education (VTE) in Nigeria published in the International Journal of Capacity Building in Education and Management, last year say VTE has had a chequered history in Nigeria.
Historical development of vocational and technical education in Nigeria
| 1885 | Hope Waddell Institute in Calabar, first technical institute established in Nigeria |
| 1908 | Government department started to organize some form of vocational training
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| 1931 | The public works, the post and telegraph and railway training schools where established |
| 1934 | Yaba Higher College was opened, later became the first vocational and technical institute in 1948
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| 1950-1960s | Nigeria Federal Ministry of Education set up the Ashby commission investigate post-secondary education needs
Led to establishment of various technical schools in: Enugu (1950), Ilorin (1951), Kano (1953), Bukuru (1953), Sapele (1955), Ijebu-Ode (1959), Osogbo, Oyo (1961), Owo (1963), Aba (1964) and Abakaliki (1966).
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| 1963 | FG approves technical schools be upgraded to award the City and Guilds London Certificate.
The Commission for Technical Education, set up recommended different levels of vocational and technical education: Pre-vocational and pre-technical training usually offered in secondary schools; Craftsmen training usually offered in technical colleges, trade centres and vocational schools and
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| 1982 | The marine training school came on board
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| 1986 | Technical training offered in polytechnics and colleges of technology. The fourth Commonwealth Education Conference recommended that industry should be closely associated with technical education..
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| 1987 | The National Council on Education (NCE) approved the National Board for Technical Educational (NBTE) which classified vocational and technical institutions into: Vocational Schools , Technical Colleges, Polytechnics/Monotechnics/
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| 2004 | FG classified courses offered under vocational and technical education as mechanical trades, computer, craft practice, electrical engineering trades, building trades, wood trades, hospitality, textile trades, printing trades, beauty culture trades, business trades and leather goods manufacture |
Therefore the poor fortunes of VTE in Nigeria are not as a result of policy but poor implementation. Dike avers that vocational education is the missing link in Nigeria’s development policy.
David Seyi, a scholar in a research work published in the International Journal of Technology Enhancements and Emerging Engineering Research attributed the challenges of VTE in Nigeria to poor organization and slow pace of implementation of polices shortage of qualified and empowered manpower, lack of equipment and infrastructural facilities for teaching and learning and low level of funding.
In Nigeria’s 2017 budget proposal, a total of N448.01billion was allocated to education, representing about 6 percent of the N7.30 trillion budget, contrary to the 26 percent recommendation by UNESCO.
Of this sum, N398.01billion was allocated to recurrent expenditure and the balance of N50billion allocated to capital projects.
As a result of this mismatch between statutory intent and action, many young people in Nigerian believe that only office work qualifies as gainful employment. So they struggle to get into universities.
An analysis of Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) data by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), states that a total of 11,703,709 applications were received between 2010 and 2016 for enrolment into Universities while a total of 2,674,485 students or only 28 percent were admitted across the 36 states and the FCT between 2010 and 2015.
“We take skills development for granted in Nigeria. This is partly the reason why every youth thinks going to the University is the only way to earn a decent living. It is only in Nigeria, I suppose, that anyone can open a barber shop without rigorous certification process,” said Sunday Adeyemi, Registrar/CEO Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria at the launch of a research report on human capital development.
Yet many youths leave the university without requisite skills to function in the workplace hence companies spends millions of naira retraining them. A bank official recently said his bank spends N2million training each new hire yearly.
Many young people excel with talents like modelling, singing, dancing, and acting and earn huge income through corporate endorsement deals however they add little to real national development. Nigeria has many rappers with Masters Degree in medicine who can’t use a stethoscope.
The explosion of social media and technology has also increased enthusiasm for computer programming skills and there is a new drive towards digital revolution.
Benchmarking against excellence
While Nigeria does not need another policy, it needs commitment to operate existing policies. It can also benefit from models elsewhere.
The German government realised early on that some students loathe regular schooling and lack aptitude for higher education but are quite adept at using their hands.
So they built a vocational education system that partners employers and match interests of students to useful skills.
It is operated by the country’s Federal Institute for Vocational Training and Education and students learn in the classroom and outside of it practising what they have been taught.
Theories, general studies take one or two days while the bulk of the time is devoted to apprenticeships in their chosen fields. Some also work in factories. Trainees are paid a third of the actual salary of a trained skilled worker.
According to the country’s Federal Labour Agency, as at February 2017, unemployment rate stood at 5.9 percent – its lowest level since German unification in 1990. Germany is now exporting its VTE model.
It is often said that common sense is like deodorant, those who need it the most never use it. Vocational and technical education is fast proving this saying true in Nigeria.