Leke Alder Profile picture
25 Oct, 25 tweets, 8 min read
1. My dear son, let’s discuss a little bit of policy this morning, let’s look at the educational system. Your generation is going to take over soon, and you’ll need to design policy. #NigeriaNotes
2. The high-level unemployment you’re seeing is an indication something is not quite right with our educational system. #NigeriaNotes
3. Of course, it will be wrong to ascribe all the factors to the educational system. The economy plays a huge role in employment creation, but the fact remains a good educational system creates jobs. #NigeriaNotes
4. Except for her needs, government should not be creating jobs. Every time government takes the easy way out on the issue of employment by simply absorbing people into the civil service a bloat is created. #NigeriaNotes
5. Too many hands will start chasing a few jobs. This generates bottlenecks, administrative blackmail, and corruption. #NigeriaNotes
6. The reason our educational system is backward is because it’s testing for memory not creativity. You cram and regurgitate, and you pass! The problem with that is, it’s only good for school. #NigeriaNotes
7. After school life is not going to give you a memory test. Life will not ask you, What is Physics? It’s a useless question. We need to integrate the real world into the classroom. #NigeriaNotes
8. I’m proposing we make our educational system demand driven if we want to solve the unemployment problem going forward. I’m looking at six streams of employment creation through education reform. My focus in this letter is higher education. #NigeriaNotes
9. The first stream is the corporate stream. It’s for those going into the corporate world. The corporate world should conceptualize the curriculum, not an inexperienced bureaucrat in Abuja. #NigeriaNotes
10. It’s how to make the educational system employment driven. There’ll be fit for purpose. Of course, it’s a bit of a radical idea but that’s what we need. #NigeriaNotes
11. The second stream should be the technology stream. Our colleges of technology should be colleges of technology – as in coding and programming institutions. They should be incubators for startups. Yaba must be integrated into the classroom. #NigeriaNotes
12. A venture capital system should be incorporated as well, accelerator programs created. Businesses should start in school. The students should be coding for real. They won’t need to look for jobs after. Fintech fits in here. #NigeriaNotes
13. The third stream should be the enterprise stream. These are the entrepreneurs. The training aim should be to turn them into employers of labor. #NigeriaNotes
14. If we can train 100,000 entrepreneurs who over a period of five to ten years can employ an average of 20 to 50 people, that’s 5million jobs! #NigeriaNotes
15. I’ve averaged out - some will scale much higher, employing much more people, while some will employ lower. And some businesses will fail. But we will have had the opportunity to create at least 5million jobs. #NigeriaNotes
16. The fourth stream is the culture stream. These are the entertainers, fashion designers, film makers, musicians, media creators, entertainers, chefs, etc. We hardly have culture curricula in our universities and that’s unfortunate. Your generation is strong in culture.
17. That just goes to show there’s no generational fit. We’re running a forced anachronistic system that is neither adaptive nor responsive to native generational competences. #NigeriaNotes
18. There should be training of support stream for this group too – the artiste managers, studio technicians, business managers, etc. It’s two streams in one. #NigeriaNotes
19. The fifth stream should be the social services stream – the doctors, nurses, teachers, firemen, etc. Society needs these people. The numbers should conform to population growth in our strategic planning. #NigeriaNotes
20. The sixth stream is the agric stream. Your generation has brought incredible innovation to bear in this area. The value chain includes finance, real estate, export, and services. That value chain is going to grow. It will include equipment leasing and other specialties.
21. Of course, there will be regional specialties. Each state or region will fashion out a needs-based educational program based on vision. #NigeriaNotes
22. If we want to solve the unemployment problem our higher educational system must become demand driven, bring the real world into the classroom, create employment early, and integrate with the corporate world. #NigeriaNotes
23. I’m saying let’s make the educational system adaptive, responsive and needs-based. And it should take cognizance of generational nativism, as well as create the future. #NigeriaNotes
24. We need creative thinking. Our situation is desperate. #NigeriaNotes
25. Your Dad, LA. #NigeriaNotes

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More from @LekeAlder

26 Oct
1. My dear son, this is my seventh and final letter to you on Nigeria. I hope I’ve stirred your consciousness. #NigeriaNotes
2. Given the incredible resources of the country, Nigeria ought to be great. I’m not talking about natural resources, I’m talking about the human resources. #NigeriaNotes
3. Our youths should never have visa problems, they should be in high demand, recruited before we’ve finished minting them. #NigeriaNotes
Read 23 tweets
24 Oct
1. My dear son, the elephant in the Nigerian parlor is the subject of federalism. It’s a pity it’s rather been reduced to two things – control of natural resources and the question of state police. #NigeriaNotes
2. So framed, the idea becomes foreboding. The issue of control of natural resources raises the question of economic viability of certain regions; the question of state police raises the specter of the feasibility of a dismembered Nigeria. #NigeriaNotes
3. Truth is, when you study the mineral map of Nigeria, Nigeria is a mineral dump. We have 52 minerals. There are actually more minerals in the North than in the South. #NigeriaNotes
Read 22 tweets
20 Oct
1. My dear son, today I want to address a fundamental issue. It’s so fundamental it’s affecting our approach to governance. You see, we have a choice. It’s either we run a country, or we run a nation. #NigeriaNotes #ENDSARS
2. Running a country is about administrative chores – files, bureaucracies, meetings, parastatals, memos, departments, mindless directives... Running a nation on the other hand focuses attention on the people. There’s empathy. #NigeriaNotes #ENDSARS
3. You can run a country and not a nation, and we seem to have a predilection for ablutions of governance to the detriment of concern for the people, whereas it ought to be about the people. #NigeriaNotes #ENDSARS
Read 26 tweets
19 Oct
1. My dear son, when I was young, I used to hear the phrase “fejerun”. That was a Lagos slang. They came up with it same way your generation came up with #sorosokenodeydisguise. #NigeriaNotes #ENDSARS
2. It’s the picture of a man manually powering a bike strenuously uphill. Unlike a motorized bike, it is said to run on human blood, hence “fejerun”. “Eje” is blood in Yoruba. #NigeriaNotes #ENDSARS
3. To me that’s the picture of Nigeria. We’re powering uphill, and the reason Nigeria is a strenuous effort is because we like to turn logic on its head. #NigeriaNotes #ENDSARS
Read 19 tweets
18 Oct
1. My dear son, let me tell you your main advantage over my generation. You’re digital natives, we’re Neanderthals. There’s a digital divide, a middle wall of partition separating my generation from yours, to use a Pauline-speak. #NigeriaNotes #ENDSARS
2. To build the future of Nigeria you have to bring digital tools and digital thinking to the game. It’s how Elon Musk changed the game in the car industry. He replaced the dashboard in the car with a tablet, brought Silicon Valley thinking to car manufacturing. #NigeriaNotes
3. Technology creates culture. Our political culture needs radical change. #NigeriaNotes #ENDSARS
Read 24 tweets
17 Oct
1. My dear son, I was very proud you took part in the demonstration yesterday - very proud you didn’t consult me, you and your sister. She’s at the barricades in Lagos. #NigeriaNotes #EndSARS
2. I was discussing with my law school set on our WhatsApp platform the other day and I told them our generation just witnessed a phenomenon – we just watched our kids take over from us. #NigeriaNotes #ENDSARS
3. My generation doesn’t exactly get it. There’s no visceral connection. That’s because we’re used to taking another road to fight these issues, and we’ve gone too far on that road to appreciate your approach. We’ve invested our lives. But we identify with you. #NigeriaNotes
Read 19 tweets

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