I just received the report from the National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria. Technically, 17,831 Nigerian PhD holders are unemployed but that is because the report focused on the Covid-19 period. The Twitter poster carefully removed “FORCE SURVEY UNDER COVID-19”, and created the impression that the 17,831 unemployed PhDs were in a normal state during peacetime.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is no argument or debate, Nigeria could have more than 17,000 unemployed PhDs as most private universities have frozen departments, fired workers, etc to avoid paying them, during this covid-19 pandemic. I see nothing unusual on the number quoted by NBS. I only disputed a lazy post which was making rounds which had carefully removed the date of the survey. NBS has a good “disclaimer” when it noted that the survey was done “under Covid-19”.
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In Nigeria, what ought to be the means to an end has become the end itself; that’s what we have turned education into.
We gather people and teach them how to create wealth, and when they graduate, they gather another set of people and teach them how to create wealth; the newest graduates gather another set of people and repeat the same. Notice that no one has actually created the wealth, which ought to be the end, but we have already produced hundreds of ‘wealth creation experts’, while still swimming in poverty.
We train people to become engineers, biochemists or marketers, and when they graduate, rather than becoming what we said they would become they instead rack up more degrees, then start jostling to go back to the system, and start to train others to become what they themselves are not.
If you check over the last ten years, the growth trajectories for the professors, PhDs and Master’s production machine are in ascendancy, while the GDP isn’t keeping pace, yet we are producing high-sounding degrees; this has become the end in itself.
The worst that can happen to any human or society is to lie to itself, and this is what we have been doing for years.
Until engineers start doing engineering, the joke continues for now.
This is insightful, Francis!
You are hundred percent (100%) right. Its in Nigeria you will see someone who wanted to be agricultural engineer, after graduation as one will leave his field to solicites for government job instead of establishing his field of endeavors. Is it not an irony?
17000 plus PhD holders in the unemployment stream. We haven’t even started counting the Msc folks yet. This is only a segment of the populace. The uncertainty and possible hardship that would follow would further harden minds. When this pandemic has been nipped in the bud, the mass exodus of talent from Nigeria would not come as a surprise.