Unemployment: Review educational system to meet industry needs, says Awosika

THE Chairman of First Bank and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Sokoa Chair Centre Limited, Mrs Ibukun Awosika, has said the path to tackling the nation’s high unemployment rate, which has become a social problem, is to strategically review the country’s educational system to accommodate technical and vocational skills.

Speaking on the topic, Developing strategies for job creation and economic growth, in Lagos last week at the 31st Omolayole Management Series Lecture, Awosika stated that the nation must not stop at that, it must constantly structure the educational system to support the economic growth it desires.

She said this is important so that the country could have the right pool of manpower to take the jobs being created.
According to her, though there is high unemployment in Nigeria, there are jobs being created, which required specific skills but yet there are no qualified and compete hands to take up the jobs, adding that, it is a misnomer and a product of lack of planning.

Delivering her paper, which was about fifty minutes extemporarily, Awosika insisted that the nation never lacked ideas to solve its problems, as it is blessed with brilliants minds and thinkers from generation past to the present. So, for her, the solutions to the country’s problems are not the issue, but the implementation and the commitment of its people to having a national consensus to do the needful to achieve results.

As a nation, we like to go to school but how has our education helped us because right now every parent is caught in the web of giving everything up to give a child an education to go as far as the university to come out a graduate. Whether the poor, the middle class or the rich family that is one thing we all agreed on, one thing we all want to do. The issue is; should we not even challenge our educational system? What kind of long term plan do we have and how have we set up our educational system to facilitate that at different stages, the kind of manpower that we need for the future that we want to build.

Awosika argued that people must learn to read and write, which is very important but once they could do that, then vocational and technical skills must be worked into the educational system so that there are different exist through vocational system.
She maintained that people do not need more than primary education, and once they can read and write, instead of wasting national resources to train people to graduate level, who then go back to learn to make cloth, a total waste of resource and time.

If after primary school, someone is educated enough to read and write well and he or she knows that he is interested in fashion, we set that person on a track where he can get the right kind of education to support entrepreneurship, basic knowledge of management, keeping financial records and learning to manage customers. Apart from that, he then learns the specific skills. If he wants to be in fashion, he must learn how to cut, specific stiches and designs.”

She also argued that if a child is naturally talented in any vocational and that child is forced to graduate out of the university with a pass, ending up with a mind set that says he is worse than his peers, because of this, has low self-esteem, cannot apply or qualify for any job because every job application says second class upper only.
“So you end up with a whole generation of people who are value but the educational system and the society tells them they are of no value. And because of that, we do not challenge their minds to creatively add to the economic growth of the country because our whole system tells them they are useless, unable to deliver any value and not qualified for anything.”

Awosika said that at present a lot of the jobs being created are not being taking up. She noted that the country’s constructing industry is the most active in the region due to the housing deficit; reason a lot of activities are going on the sector. “But the best tillers that you will find and anybody building a decent house is looking for are not Nigerians, it is from the coast of West Africa. We create the jobs, we use our resources to facilitate that part of the economy but our problem is, our system is not design to take the jobs that we created.

So we need a realignment of our educational system that allows the guy who does technical drawing has some detailed kind of knowledge, may be at secondary school level, to understand how lines must be straight and things set properly, have appreciation of knowledge of details, therefore go straight to a vocational school, and after nine months training, he is already qualified as a professional tiller, which gives him the place of respect and honour to know that he is not just a road side tiller. He is a professional tiller and has respect and honour and he is paid a decent wage for the works that he does.

In the last two years or so, we have made a lot of noise about changes in the power sector, we have deregulated and empowered the private sector, but the statistics from the Nigeria data services shows that next to no jobs have been created by that sector in the last 15 months. This is besides we have not planned in advance to start training manpower for the sector.

We ought to be identifying people who through their secondary school education already know where their natural strength are and we design a training programme, 12 or 18 months, that will help them to be professional people that can read meters, install new type of meters and other services that are related to the electricity and power generation industry which we are investing multiple of billions of dollars in right now. The manpower to support that sector, there is no development around it.
“So, we have a Ministry of National Planning, but no coordination at different levels, to see ten years down the line, the sectors we are opening up, and strategically be creating manpower to fill the space.

The requirement of the world is different; there are young boys who are in the ICT related field, who are able to raise 10m dollars from venture capital in Nigeria. Tara Fela Durotoye, who owns House of Tara, is a lawyer, why does she need to have suffered to study law? She is in the beauty and cosmetics industry. The business is in billions, employs over a hundred people. There are new businesses emerging every day, the right kind of manpower for those sectors are required, we need the openness of mind to identify new areas. When you see those boys jumping around, singing all sort of funny things, you get put off and look at them like characters, but the entertainment industry is a major part of our future.

We would be narrow-minded, if we look at the industry as boys that are singing. They are the final result, between the beginning and these guys; a number of businesses and professions that are in between are unbelievable. The value chain of the industry is part of where we need to be looking at. We need to investigate the value chain of all the emerging new areas and look for the manpower that is required in all of those areas. Why, because in most of the traditional areas, there is already saturation.”

She said that Nigeria is blessed, in spite of that to make headway of the abundant resources it is blessed with the youth must be ready to make the right choices. For her, it is just like having very rich soup ingredients in the house, it would not translate into a good dinner if the right choices were not made in cooking the soup.
In her view, the youth must understand that the challenges of the past, the failures and the successes of its leaders are only in the books of records.

What counts for us and the next generation, is what we chose to do from here going forward. The bible says forsaking the things of the past and looking forward into the future. So I do not want you to get caught in the fade that Nigeria has this. We are too comfortable making excuses by recounting our failings and the woes of our country. It is not going to help anybody. I used to fail yesterday, so what. What count is what you do today and how you want your tomorrow to be?

The Chairman of the occasion and the President of the Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM) Dr. Nelson Uwaga, in his welcome remarked praised those who instituted the annual lecture and sustaining in the last 31 years, noting that, no lecture series in the country has been able to achieve that feat.
He said that Dr. Omolayole deserved to be honoured with the annual lecture as a mentor to many in the field of management describing him as an institution for ethics, efficiency and effectiveness.

Commenting on the topic of the lecture, Uwaga called for more support for the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) from government as well as developing a national policy that incorporate entrepreneurship in school curriculum.
The President of AIESEC Alumni Nigeria, Dr Dahiru Sani, in his opening remarks, said the association feel honoured to be organising the annual lecture.

He described Dr. Omolayole as a unique personality in the field of management. He disclosed plans are being worked on to have a prize for the most outstanding management personality.
According to him, since management is a language, it should be taught from kindergarten, noting that many Nigerians do not come in contact of management until after graduation from higher institution. This, he noted, may be a reason Nigeria is not being well managed.
In his speech, Dr. Omolayole commended the guest speaker, saying she spoke passionately and those who speak passionately often speak the truth.