•Loses 2000 trained personnel in 2022

•Operators willing to employ, but country lacks required skilled hands

By Juliet Umeh

OVER the years, the Nigerian telecommunications sector has grown in leaps and bounds. The sector has attracted over $75.6 billion. It has contributed as much as 15 percent to the gross domestic progression, GDP of Nigeria. Infrastructure, services and digital assets have expanded tremendously, as well as the number of users and subscribers that now depend on them.

However, the digital future of Nigeria’s telecoms industry appears bleak if nothing is done to begin to groom and retain technology talents in Nigeria.

Also, worrisome is the volume of skilled personnel leaving the country in a fashion known now as the Japa syndrome.

During the recent  Nigerian Telecommunications Indigenous Content Expo, NTICE 2023, organised by the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, the Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria, Engr. Gbenga Adebayo raised the alarm that Nigeria is losing the brightest and best hands in the industry. 

Adebayo said: “We are losing a lot of our best and the brightest to ‘Japa syndrome.’ But you can’t blame the people,  because as a country,  we have not been able to provide enough social guarantees that will keep these young ones here. 

Similarly, Convener of Policy commission Assisted Forum, PIAF Omobayo Azeez, who delivered a paper on indigenous telecoms sector development,  in the same event said while the sector is growing in geometric progression, the same thing cannot be said of its workforce and the talent pool behind it. He described it as a Ticking Time Bomb.

Azeez said many factors are responsible for the current skill and capacity gap challenges in the IT and telecoms sector in Nigeria.

He said: Generally, Nigeria is faced with a massive exodus of skilled workers across sectors.  Over 2000 trained telecoms personnel left the country in 2022, we could become labour-stranded by 2030.

He also added that defective educational system, lack of funding, old syllabuses, little or no practical experience, read to pass syndrome and too much emphasis on degree rather than skills are part of the factors contributing to the high level of decline of skilled labour in the country generally.

For him, global demand for tech consumption is on the rise and there is tremendous local and global high demand for skilled workers, because the world generally is short of skilled labour.  Nigeria is the largest and fastest-growing telecoms market in Africa, it craves more trained hands daily.

He said that although emerging technologies create skill gaps, learning, unlearning and relearning the workforce, will help a country cover up effectively

Azeez also worries that operators are willing to employ more hands, but prospective employees lack the required knowledge and skills set.

He itemised skills in demand in Nigeria as:  Internet Protocol, IP Networking, software development, Automation,  Fiber optics engineer, Network security, Hardware engineering, Very small aperture terminal skills, VSAT, Network devices operations skills.

He said talents such as routers,  switchers, gateway engineers, firewall developers, load-balancers, wireless technology engineers are also in high demand.