Not all Nigerian kids need to go to University

There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. Failures teach us how to more intelligently begin again. The important thing is to ensure we are standing on top of our mistakes, not lying under them.

Nigeria has made a mistake in neglecting its educational institutions and not ensuring that the country has the capacity to educate the millions of children currently out of school. Nigeria currently has the highest number of children out of school in the entire world. 

However, all is not lost. I believe putting many of these children through the traditional educational system would be a waste of their time and the country’s resources.

Here’s why:

My school friends can testify that I was probably the biggest geek in the entire school. After medical school I applied for even more education at the post-graduate level in Japan where I combined my clinical work in intensive care with laboratory studies. I traveled all over the world for conferences and workshops. I published articles in journals and even published two medical textbooks.

But after all this, found myself unable to balance a profit and loss account. I didn't have any basic financial skills. So when it came to starting a business, I was forced to start from square one.

At the age of 24 I was just getting to grips with business, whilst my neighbor Emeka, who started his business at the age of 14, was celebrating his 10th year in business with revenues of nearly $8m and staff strength of nearly 100 people. Ashish Thakkar, “Africa’s Youngest Billionaire” also dropped out of school at 14, and he was a billionaire by the time most of us were graduating from University with student debt. I loved my education, every minute of it. But I could have bypassed most of it and still been able to run a successful business.

Nigeria, has a population of over 170 million people. Our biggest problem is the economy. Nigeria is home to more unemployed graduates, trying to get jobs with blue chip companies, than almost anywhere on earth. There were 13,000 graduates who applied to drive lorries of cement for Nigerian Billionaire Aliko Dangote, 6 of the graduates were Phd’s, over 700 where Masters degree holders. No one even remembers what university Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote attended or in fact whether he has a degree at all.

This means above and beyond the technical skills that can be learned in the traditional education system, the number one skills gap we have, is entrepreneurial skills. We must entrepreneurialze Nigeria and do it quickly. There are currently over 20 million people looking for employment in Nigeria this number rises exponentially every year.

Getting young people to work does not mean getting them jobs with blue chips, but creating the environment that will help them build their own blue chips.

This means ensuring that every single government policy, voice, speech and activity is focused in some way on helping people create and grow businesses.

Nigeria and in fact the whole of Africa must get down to business. Our continued existence depends on it. 

Nothing and I mean nothing on this earth happens till someone makes a profit. Governments pay their salaries from profit, mothers feed their children from profit, even non-profits fund their organizations with profit.

Small to medium size enterprises are the lifeblood of any economy. They are our GDP. The skills required to build and grow them are not emphasized by the traditional education system. By creating an entrepreneurial environment/apprenticeships, I believe the out of school kids, will gain the skills to employ our currently unemployed graduates.

Its important that our kids know how to read and write. They must also be trained in skills that the workplace needs. We also need a lot of them to start businesses and save our economy.  I believe that traditional education is outdated. It is no longer fit for purpose and does not produce  enough of  the type of people that Nigeria needs right now.

There is so much room for apprenticeships, skills acquisition programs, business training and even coding academies which are all good alternatives to the traditional education system. To simultaneously solve our unemployment and our economic problems, quickly, we need to create fewer Ola's and more Ashish's and Emeka's.