S.O.S ALIEME

A great philosopher, Joseph Addison defined education as a companion which no misfortune can depress, no enemy can destroy, no crime can alienate and no despotism can enslave.  That is the gospel truth about education, which encompasses both formal and informal learning.  But the irony is that in Nigeria, the positive values of education has turned upside down due to inconsistency in policies that govern learning. 

As a teacher and also a researcher, I keep being afraid of what the future holds for education in this country.  Take for instance, in our secondary schools, students go to school for the sake of formality.  Most of them do not even attend classes because they know that at the end of the whole thing, teachers will always assist them to pass their SSCE and as such, there is no need to bother themselves learning, that is a total irony to education. The greatest irony of Nigerian education is that schools spend years teaching students to memorize abstract theories, only for graduates to survive through street smarts, tech hustles, and skills they learned entirely outside the classroom. Millions chase paper certificates in overcrowded lecture halls, while the actual job market rewards practical tech, trade, and entrepreneurial skills completely ignored by old syllabi. Students learn exact 20th-century science models and obsolete history while living in a fast digital world that moves past public schools lacking basic funding and labs.  

The main irony of Nigerian education is that a country producing globally renowned professionals and brilliant minds simultaneously runs a local school system plagued by chronic underfunding, broken infrastructure, and outdated curricula. Millions value schooling as the ultimate key to success, yet graduates often face a job market where certificates fail to guarantee basic employment or practical survival skills. Citizens sacrifice immense resources to pay school fees, yet government funding remains a fraction of national budgets, leaving public universities and secondary schools neglected. Students spend years cramming abstract, decades-old theories in class, but graduate unequipped for a modern, tech-driven economy that requires digital literacy and hands-on training.  Academic strikes by teachers and lecturers routinely stretch a four-year degree into six or more years, punishing students in the name of fighting for a better learning system.  Nigerian teachers and professionals educated at home excel and thrive globally when they migrate, while the local institutions they leave behind continue to decay from a lack of support.

A strange thing is happening in Nigeria. A young man spends 20 years climbing the educational ladder. 6 years in primary school. 6 years in secondary school. 4 to 6 years in university. 1 year of NYSC. By the time he is done, he has invested roughly 6,500 to 7,000 days preparing for life. Then life arrives and asks a simple question: “What problem can you solve?” Silence. Not because he is unintelligent. Not because he is lazy. But because somewhere along the journey, we confused education with certification. We taught people how to pass exams, not how to create value. Think about it. An electrician who never attended university can walk into a building worth N500 million and confidently power every room from the foundation to the penthouse. A graduate with multiple certificates may stand beside him unable to identify which wire powers the building. One has credentials. The other has capability. The market pays for capability. That is why reality often delivers a rude mathematical lesson. If a graduate earns N100,000 monthly, that is N1.2 million annually. A skilled technician charging N40,000 per job and handling just two jobs weekly earns over N4 million yearly. Same country. Different skills. Different outcomes.

The tragedy is not that one earns more than the other. The tragedy is that we keep preparing millions of young people for a race that no longer exists. We celebrate admission lists like victory trophies. We celebrate graduation photos like guaranteed employment letters. Then we are surprised when hundreds of applicants compete for one vacancy. Imagine 1,000 people chasing 10 jobs. Basic mathematics says 990 people will be disappointed. No motivational speaker can negotiate with arithmetic. Yet we continue producing graduates faster than we produce opportunities. That is like manufacturing keys without building doors. The painful irony? The people we once looked down on are increasingly becoming the people we depend on. When your transformer fails at midnight, you do not call a philosophy graduate. When your water stops running, you do not search for a political scientist. When your air conditioner breaks in April heat, theory suddenly becomes less important than technical competence. The economy has a brutal honesty. It rewards usefulness more than status. Nations that understood this long ago built prosperity differently. They stopped asking only, “How many graduates do we have?” They started asking, “How many builders, technicians, machinists, coders, welders, mechanics and innovators can we produce?”

There is dignity in intellectual work. There is dignity in skilled labour. The mistake is ranking one above the other. A society that worships certificates while neglecting competence eventually discovers that framed documents cannot build roads, repair machines, wire factories, manufacture products or create wealth. The future belongs to people who can solve problems. Whether they learned it in a lecture hall, a workshop, an apprenticeship centre or under a mango tree is secondary. Because at the end of the day, the market does not award marks. It awards value. And value has never asked to see anybody’s certificate before writing the cheque.

If care is not taken in Nigeria, education will be neglected and shut down because the next generation will see it as a waste of time and money, The same system that brands informal work as unserious produces graduates who rely on digital freelancing, driving, or trading to make a living. 

God Bless Nigeria!!!