Human resource professionals insist Nigeria urgently need to upgrade her education and talent development programmes or risk sleep walking into a future of work where a whole generation of workers lacks the right skills or the opportunity to adapt to change.
They observed that the future of work is upon us and we must take urgent action at all levels to ensure the Nigerian workforce always has the right skills and the ability to adapt in real time and succeed in the direction that work in readiness for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
In the ever-competitive world of employment, it is routine for employers to recruit candidates that parade not just certificates, but candidates with the right working skills that can contribute to the development of the company, says Abraham Laleye, CEO, Robins Begg Consulting Limited.
With a workforce of 85 million people, Nigeria is home to an enormous labour market and the talent must be up-scaled and honed in order to compete successfully in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Laleye, while reacting to the issue pointed out that human capital development is bedevilled by the neglect of the present and past governments regarding promises to the citizens in the area of investment in education, promises that have remained largely undelivered on account of primitive expressions of greed by the political elite.
Laleye notes that the universities should work more closely with the industries, try to understand their needs, have a forum where there could be an exchange of ideas as to the challenges the industries are facing and how they can develop a proper curriculum to address these challenges.
The problem of skill gap, he says, is increasingly becoming a multi-faceted one, noting that organisations are looking for certain skills to help their business improve.
The employment consultant further notes that if organisations are serious about getting the right talents, there are lots of processes they have to go through. “They need to understand that talent requires skills to be able to ensure that it has perfected the art of doing what you want them to do,” he says.
Emmanuel Imevbore, group CEO of CEED International Company, on his part, blames the situation on the education system that fails to tailor learning to employment realities.
Imevbore is worried that the academic contents in the country’s institutions often do not address the real needs of the society.
“Academically, the Nigerian degree is not worthless because it is the basis of determination of students’ ability to think, it is also relevant for admission into institutions of higher learning abroad, but in practical relevance it is worth little. Often, academic contents are not relevant to the needs of the society, especially to the employers. Graduates from these institutions are usually theoretically baked but half-baked for the business/practical world,” he says.
In order to solve the problem and raise the competitiveness and relevance of Nigerian graduates, Imevbore suggests that a steady upgrade of university curriculum is required to meet the needs of the ever-changing world of today.
Ayodele Jaiyesimi, a human capital development expert while taking a holistic view of the situation as it concerns the shortfall of employable graduates in the country today, says the situation has really assumed a worrying dimension.
According to her, “There is a dearth of skilled manpower. Employers hardly find graduates today who have the basics; most of the times we do a basic aptitude test to get people in and you find out that you can’t even get 10 percent of them that will pass appropriately. So, when we are talking of skills, it is a huge problem for us in the banking industry.”
With this widening skill lacuna between industry demands and quality of the nation’s graduates, the human resource practitioner is of the view that there is much work to be done. “I feel we need to be committed to working together to lift up standards in the country,” she says.
