Thread by @adamugarba

Do you know that there are more university graduates and professors in Northern Nigeria than the whole of South Africa?

That ordinary people in Maiduguri can speak better English than ordinary people in Aba? (Not condescension on Aba but illustrative).

A Thread...

The issue in the North is not lack of education but unemployment, underemployment or Mis employment.

Some can be due to culture of conservatism, entitlement to bigger things mentality by not starting small or waiting for white elephant government jobs.

This is true based on my personal experience as an employer of labor. Most of the people (not all) I employed from the north are either too big to accept lack of experience salary, too busy to pay attention, be patient and learn on the job, too dependent on I-know-someone who....

can keep me here rather than their individual competency or too aggressive to compete with the employer and grab their share from the investments and move away instead of focusing on growing the business so we all grow along.

More than anything else, this pose the greatest threat to the employability of the people of the north than the academic background. Employers hire attitude these days not your degrees on PhDs.

Thus we in the north must work hard to change that culture and fight it away.

For example:

Out of the 44 million people employed in Nigeria, only 4 million of such are employed at all government level, from federal, state and local Govt, including uniform men, the remaining 40 million are coming from the private sector where it is dominated by the south.

You may have many people from the north working in the federal civil service due to quota but all contracts, jobs, service work orders goes to those private companies which are predominantly of the south. This in return create more employment opportunities for the south.

Looking at this arrangement, you’ll see clearly that lack of involvement of the north in private real businesses is dangerously affecting the employment of people in the north. Meanwhile most industries are in the south and most consumers are from the north.

With no jobs, no industries, no private sector, cultural restrictions, no good public image due to bad media, the present arrangements in the country might not guarantee the much needed development of the soft infrastructure the north badly requires.

Government is an event but the people are always around, we must have to rethink how the north can build private institutions that can keep the youth engaged without the need for government jobs.

The north need to re-industrialize like the south have done, so jobs can be created