Every year about 600,000 Nigerians are born who never get
the chance to step into a classroom.
These Nigerians represent about 10% of the six million that get into the
world through the Nigerian birth route.
Of the remaining that steps into the classroom many never
get the chance to walk into the four walls of a tertiary institution. The story
of these missing students in the school ladder is one of the interesting
findings in the report “Nigeria’s Human Capital Challenges: Insights from HR
Professionals” recently published by BusinessDay Research.
Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa'i-Minister of Education
Data obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)
shows that an average of 20 million students are enrolled in public primary
schools in any school year in Nigeria. This comes to an average of 3.3 million
students per level, knowing that we have a six year school ladder at the
primary school level.
At the secondary school level however, this figure drops
dramatically to an average of five million students enrolled or about 833,000
per level since we also have a six year school ladder at the secondary school
level. This means of the 3.3 million that enrolled at the Primary School level
in any particular year, just an average 833,000 eventually made it to the
secondary school level in any particular year implying an average drop-out rate
of about 2.47 million per annum or 75% between primary schools and secondary
schools in Nigeria. Over a six year cycle, this could translate to about 15
million students out of the school system, assuming this figures remain
unchanged.
The figures from the NBS shows that on the average only
about 700,000 students get enrolled in all Nigerian universities in any year.
Giving an average of four years study period in Nigerian universities, this
implies an average of 175,000 students at any level. Another 600,000 are enrolled in polytechnics
and colleges of education in any year. There is also an average of four year study
period in our polytechnics, so this translates to an average 150,000 students
at any level implying that of the average of 833,000 ready for tertiary
education in any year, only about 39 percent actually enrol in any tertiary
institution in any particular year.
The question then arise what happens to the about the three million
students every year that got some taste of primary and secondary school
education but never crown it with a passage through any of Nigeria’s tertiary
institutions. The first obvious choice would be for these students who drop out
of the educational system to join the vocational education system.
The challenge however is that, though the vocational
education institutions exist in Nigeria, they are poorly equipped and lack well
trained manpower. The report shows that Nigeria currently has 132 technical
colleges and 70 vocational enterprises, but most are understaffed with obsolete
facilities.
Perhaps, the strongest evidence that Nigeria’s vocational
institutions are not worth much is the fact their graduates experience the
highest unemployment rate among any group of graduates in Nigeria. The
unemployment rate for those who have attended any form of vocational school in
Nigeria stood at 28.9% in 2011, according to NBS data. This is higher than the
unemployment rate for those who never attended any form school, which stood at
22.4% and higher than those who attended primary school, which is put at a low
21.5%. This seem to indicate Nigerians who never attended any form of school or completed just
primary school, has a better chance of being employed than the Nigerian who
obtained a vocational education.
The national impact of the weak vocational education option for
Nigerians who drop out of the educational system is the low quality of
vocational and technical skills in the country. This is the reason we have auto
mechanics without mechanical skills, brick layers that cannot lay bricks,
painters that cannot paint, and many more basic skills that are lacking in the
country.
It is the reason behind why most Nigerians would prefer
artisans from Ghana, Togo and Benin republic than artisans from Nigeria. As the
report notes, most artisans in Nigeria do not learn their trade in any formal
environment. They learn from other artisans who have also learnt from other
artisans. There is no science in the learning. It is learning by the “rule of
the thumb.” The implication is that false concepts are passed on from one
generation of artisans to another to the detriment of the consumers or
customers.
Nigeria’s “Okada” phenomenon is also largely a symptom of
these high numbers of missing students with little options. With no skill or
poor marketable skills, many of these Nigerians have had to turn to Okada
(commercial bikes) to make a living.
What emerges clearly is the need for an urgent reform of the
vocational education system in the country. Nigeria cannot continue to have
this number of its citizens just roaming the streets without the required
skills to survive in a modern world. It
has critical implication for the security situation in the country and most
importantly for economic growth.
Global trends show that increasingly, a country’s
competitive advantage does not lie in its natural resource endowment but in the
quality of its manpower. Quality manpower is able to innovate, improve
efficiency and therefore hasten economic growth.
Where the quality of a country’s manpower is low, the
country is forced to either import manpower from other countries or suffer low
productivity or even zero productivity in the sectors where it lacks manpower.
Low quality manpower also leads to high levels of unemployment due to the
general low productivity and lack of innovation that takes place in such an
economy.
This article was first published in BusinessDay.
