CHIME CHUKWUAGOZIEM J. LL.bChukwuagoziem2003@gmail.com
There is an uncomfortable question Nigeria must eventually answer: what is the social value of an education that confers a qualification but fails to confer meaningful economic capacity?For generations, the Nigerian university has operated almost as an article of faith. Go to university. Obtain a degree. Find a job. Build a career. Contribute to society. But the compact is beginning to fracture. The problem is not simply that graduates cannot find jobs. It is that, increasingly, the skills acquired within the university and the skills demanded beyond it appear to inhabit different jurisdictions.The World Bank has identified a skills mismatch in Nigeria, noting that curricula can evolve more slowly than economies, while graduates simultaneously face an experience gap: employers demand experience from people who have barely been given an opportunity to acquire it. This is not an entirely new indictment. Earlier World Bank research reached an equally sobering conclusion: Nigeria’s education system has historically produced qualifications that do not always correspond with the practical requirements of the labour market.The question, therefore, is one of social obligation.When society spends public and private resources educating a generation, what obligation does the educational system owe that generation? A university cannot, of course, guarantee employment. Neither can government manufacture a job for every graduate. But surely the legitimate expectation of higher education cannot be reduced to the mere issuance of parchment. A degree should be more than evidence that one survived examination. It should be evidence of capacity.Yet the modern labour market increasingly demands what the traditional university does not always sufficiently cultivate: technological literacy, communication, analytical reasoning, adaptability, entrepreneurial competence, practical experience and the ability to solve problems that do not appear in examination scripts. The irony is profound. We are producing more educated Nigerians while the economy struggles to create enough productive, high-quality opportunities to absorb their education. World Bank analysis of Nigeria’s labour market has similarly warned that education improves employment prospects but does not guarantee access to high-skill or quality work; skills mismatch and the scarcity of suitable jobs operate simultaneously.But universities should not stand alone in the dock. The labour market itself must answer some difficult questions.How can an employer demand three years’ experience from a fresh graduate? How does a graduate acquire experience without someone first taking the constitutional risk of giving him an opportunity? And why should universities be expected to anticipate every commercial skill the economy might require when industries themselves often fail to articulate their needs to educational institutions? The solution, therefore, is not to declare the university obsolete. It is to reconstitute the bargain between education and employment. Universities must move beyond the production of examination-ready graduates toward the cultivation of adaptable human capital. Industry must become a participant in curriculum development rather than a distant critic of university output. Government must create an economic environment capable of absorbing skilled labour, while apprenticeships, internships, vocational pathways and work-integrated learning must cease to be treated as peripheral alternatives. The law teaches us that rights without remedies can become hollow declarations. Perhaps education without employability faces a similar danger.A generation can possess certificates and still lack economic agency, and that is the uncomfortable truth confronting Nigeria. The question is no longer simply whether our young people are educated. It is whether the education we give them is preparing them for the economy that actually exists. For if the university continues to teach yesterday’s economy to graduates who must survive tomorrow’s labour market, unemployment will remain only the symptom. The deeper pathology will be the disconnect between what we teach, what we need, and what we are preparing our young people to become.
