I Finally Figured Out Why Employers Say Nigerian Graduates Are Often Not Immediately Employable and Solutions

Many may strive to argue otherwise. However, employers believe they are not.

Keep a graduate, a Nigerian or other nationality, of any big-name university such as Harvard, UCL, Oxford, INSEAD, Cambridge and a Nigerian university product of say UI, Unilorin, Sokoto, Unilag, Covenant, etc.; most employers would speedily grasp from the first list above.

Are graduates from those top schools having better brain cells than Nigeria's? Not necessarily! It boils down to the quality and quantity of what they learned.

Speaking of intelligence, there aren't significant differences among people from different nationalities. At least, no scientific research has proven it so far. It is only the differences in the environment created and the inputs available that influence the quality of the output.

I heard a case of two Akwa Ibom State (Nigeria) brothers at MIT, Boston and Imperial College London whose record in Engineering had not been broken since many years ago.

So, why should anyone ever think Nigeria-trained graduates could be half-baked?

Perhaps the clue is found in the way most lecturers have failed to teach all their prescribed course contents. For example, if you listed 10 topics to teach in a specific course in a semester, however, you ended up teaching 5, and this is repeated over the course of a degree programme, then, the candidates have only received half of their training, hence the half-bake! Lol!

Recently, a university lecturer observed in a study that more than 70% of lecturers surveyed haven’t been completing their prescribed course contents. I assessed this situation earlier. In fact, they teach 40-50 percent of the contents. And you would know how it’s nearly impossible for undergraduates to study any not-introduced course topics on their own.

The Master’s candidate I narrated in today’s post was fortunate in a way not many persons are, for she's blessed with a chartered accountant dad who went a step further to put her on track. 

A case in point can be myself. I got admission into the university with the record of taking 1st position for 26 out of 27 times (a little self-indulgence there!). I was by all standards regarded as a brilliant boy! Thank God for this. With 6 alphas in the West African Secondary Schools Exam in the 90s when WAEC exam was WAEC exam!!! But I ended up struggling in the university mostly because of poor guidance and management from the university.

What’s the difference between say a UK University like Oxford and University of Ibadan?

?? The University only admits talented people: you must have A-scores in 3 Cambridge A ‘level exams. This is what separates the boys from the men!

?? Candidates must have curiosity toward learning

?? There’s a rigorous admission process

?? No rule bending

?? The way exams are taken; cheating is almost a taboo

?? How lecturers mark exams, their attitudes to work; there’s almost a zero incidence of corruption in the academics

?? Quality of lecturers employed are at the highest level

?? The quality of facilities and book access

Hope

Whether you self-suspect there was half-bakery or not, there's hope. The solution now is: SELF-DEVELOPMENT. Jim Rohn writing about self-development being the secret of world's billionaires said, "Formal Education Will Make You A Living, Self-Education Will Make You A Fortune."

Self-development happens after you had left formal classroom training. The quality of books you collect and read, the seminars and conferences you've attended, the online training you've gone out of your way to enrich yourself with among others ALL point to the premium you place on self-development! Do you agree?

Final Advice

For Nigerian university graduates to rise and take their prideful place among their global counterparts, the managers should adopt rigorous quality assurance mechanisms to raise and maintain world quality.

International standards such as those listed above ?? should always be the minimum comparison yardsticks for everything Nigerian universities do.

Until Nigerian university managers have the political will to fix any observed anomalies, her graduates might continue being half-baked for many years. Meanwhile, the students should always insist that exams should not be taken unless the lecturers had exhausted the prescribed contents. Do you agree or disagree?

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