By Dele Sobowale
“NECO Exams, 90 per cent failure recorded” News Report

This was followed in a few days by heart-breaking report of the results of JAMB examinations. Together, they point to a bleak future, which follows inexorably on a dreadful present and a woeful past about the quality of secondary school leavers the nation had been producing for more than twenty years.

One of the greatest fallacies, to which we hold tenuously in this country, is the idea that Nigeria is blessed with abundant manpower or labour – despite the fact that the two words are not strictly speaking synonymous from the standpoint of ability to function in the modern workplace.

The millions of man- and woman- power we boast of are just as useful for a modern employer as the same number of chimpanzees. They lack basic knowledge of work in any field of endeavour; they are bereft of skills and they invariably possess the wrong attitude.

Yet, knowledge, or ability and willingness to acquire it; skills and the correct attitude to work are the basic components of what human resources managers require of a worker. Without all these, what we, increasingly, are releasing to the job market are hordes of totally unemployable dunces, at best, or destructive elements, at worst.

Before, the reader gives up reading because all what had been written so far flies in the face of conventional notion about our tremendous blessings (abundant resources and manpower) let us consider two facts which are totally irrefutable and which give the lie to our claims about abundant labour; when in reality what confronts us are scarcities of knowledgeable and skilled people. MTN, GLO and all our oil fields will grind to a halt if all foreigners leave today. The 160 million of us are hanging on the sleeves of about 250,000 expatriates!!

Total illiteracy, meaning the inability to read and write, still afflicts about 55% of our population; and the older the generation the higher the percentage of illiterates and over 10 million school-age kids are not in school. In the modern work place, at least those new industries which define the present and the future, anyone sending a person unable to read and write to work might as well send a log of dead wood.

Out of our population, now estimated at 160 million, and those over the age of 18 constituting only about 45%, what we have are about 40 million potential workers. Remove about fifteen per cent representing those over the age of 55, and mostly too old for strenuous work, and the number reduces to 34 million workers.

However, before, anyone declares that even with 34 million workers, Nigeria has a larger work force than Singapore or South Korea, we should again consider the partially illiterate. Quite apart from the fact that our secondary school leavers fail mathematics and English in frightening numbers, over 90 percent of Nigerians are ICT illiterate. Yet, advancing technology, inextricably tied to the computer, means that, in Nigeria, less than four million of our abundant population is fit for work in the modern work place.

Take a modern bottling plant as an example.  From 1987 to 1989, as a General Manager, Chief Executive Officer in a soft drink plant, producing 250,000 crates daily, at full capacity, my work force totaled 315 people – mostly unskilled workers, both totally and partially illiterate.

In fact, there were only seven graduates in the entire plant. None of us was computer literate. Yet, we produced and sold millions of crates of soft drinks. Today, not a single bottle of drinks can be produced with that sort of work force; for the simple reason that nobody, anymore, manufactures equipment for bottling which is not mostly or fully automated. That means computer application. Furthermore, a plant that size will employ less than 50 workers – virtually, all knowledgeable except for the divers and security staff.

Furthermore, it is self-deceptive to point to the hundreds of thousands of university graduates turned out each year by our tertiary institutions. A shocking percentage of them also lack ICT knowledge; whereas there is no single university graduate in Singapore, South Korea or even South Africa who is ICT illiterate. That’s not all; they arrive at the work place almost totally unprepared to work for various reasons – one of which will be dealt with next.

If knowledge and skills are in short supply, attitude is even worse. Perhaps, one can offer an excuse on behalf of the kids, irrespective of whether they are secondary school leavers or graduates of tertiary institutions. The Nigerian society, which had evolved since the first military coup of 1966, had increasingly, and is still relentlessly, corrupting the young ones.

Consequently, they approach the work place with the wrong attitudes – chiefly, the “get rich quick” syndrome. Back in the 1970s to early 1980s, a disclaimer, of a former staff, by an employer published in the media, was a rarity. So infrequent were they that the Personnel Managers of every company cut and filed them away – just in case such a discredited individual seeks employment in their companies.

Today, it is virtually impossible to wade through major newspapers, any day, without encountering mug shots of young men and women (God help us), repudiated by their former employers or wanted by the Nigeria Police for fraud or embezzlement.

A disproportionate percentage of small and medium scale enterprises, in Nigeria – the sector providing the majority of employment opportunities worldwide – goes bankrupt on account of corrupt practices by employees. Unfortunately for Nigeria, whereas fraud and embezzlement by employees is still severely punished in Malaysia or Thailand and a person caught with his hands improperly inside the till is socially ostracized, the thief here receives a different treatment.

If caught, all efforts are made to ensure punishment is evaded – even if it means piling more corruption on the crime committed. There are complaisant police officers, prosecutors and even, magistrates and justices to ensure that crime pays. Yet, capital accumulation is a tough task – even with the best firms and honest employees.

Inevitably, one, or a few people loot an enterprise employing scores or hundreds of people. Yet, there is no remorse. In 1992, one of my classmates in the university, working then for the World Bank, was on official visit to Nigeria. Asked why corruption, which, admittedly, is universal, continues to retard progress in Africa more than any other continent. After apologizing for what he was about to say, he delivered the verdict. “Even when he is caught red-handed in wrong doing, the African shows no remorse”.

Incidentally, there are over one million jobs already going begging in Nigeria; but nobody wants them; apparently. At least half of them are in agriculture; they offer no opportunities for fast and corrupt self-enrichment. But, they provide steady jobs. Given the wrong attitude of our young ones and the search for work with Chevron and banks, the vacancies remain unfilled.

Federal and state government officials, who run around promising to create millions of jobs should re-direct their efforts towards filling the vacancies existing now. But, more importantly they more create workers. Garibaldi, 1807-1882, the father of Italy once reportedly pronounced, “We have created Italy, now we must create Italians”. In Nigeria, we have job opportunities; we must create workers. Those who looted Pensions go to offices; but they don’t work. Now we can see the economic problems they have created with ATTITUDE!!!