By Bayo fasunwon
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There is something unique about December, and generally, it is the much-awaited month of the year. Usually, it is a period when nets are washed, and celebrations rent the air. Literarily speaking, it is a month of harvest and rewards. A month where calamities seem to have greater impact, and victims receive more sympathy. The month of Christmas and cross over night. Cross over night is interesting as many ensure that the new year meets them in Church, while they continue in more sins, five minutes later.
This is a usual month, where the unusual happens. This month however ushered in a great harvest of prepared youths, as it was the convocation ceremony in many Universities in Nigeria. Both the private, new generation and old generation universities showcased their products and released them into the world to impact their world, and contribute to the development of their society.
To these Ivory towers, they had released the learned men and women who have the character and the intellectual capacity (though of varying degrees) to change their world and make life and living a better place. By the curriculum and training, solution providers, replacements of the tired bones, men and women of vision and dexterity have just been released. Like new born babies, they represent the hope of the nation, their societies and parents. They represent the best gifts that the instructions could give to the world.
If people and nations perish for lack of knowledge, then these products, kneaded, and baked in the oven of values, facts and innovations; trained by the best brains in the universe, are to ensure that the nation and the world survive. They are the heroes and people of valour that would break the chains of oppression wound round the people. Their academic gowns moving in the rhythm of accomplishment suggests that a new dawn is birthed. As far as their lecturers and institutions are concerned, their best is done, and the time is ripe for their products to swim or drown; fly or fall; triumph or fail; dam the flood or get swept off. To the graduands, the general maxim is ‘you are on your own’.
That is where we begin to miss it. Like prisoners who have just gotten their freedom, the duty of society is to absorb these new graduates. One has observed that right from their youth service, it becomes hard for their capacity to be acknowledged and appreciated. The first battle a graduate face, is the battle of acceptance. With this ‘Japa’ mode activated, and vacancies created in many public sector establishments, politicians and men in power, who have reserved places for their wards, relations or bed mates are quick to shout at the top of their voices that our graduates are not employable. Is it not a heinous paradox that the same ‘unemployable’ graduates of Nigeria’s institutions get admitted into foreign universities for higher degrees and perform more excellently than ‘children of the soil’? Is it not also a paradox that these same ‘relics’ get foreign jobs that ensure that they create remittances for the nation?
By the policies of government, many foreign firms are leaving the country in droves, and the private sector is collapsing. Many of the organisations that could absorb and sharpen the skills of the young graduates have been strangled by the bad decisions of the ‘people at the top of the ladder’. Furthermore, the society, which is often anti-dynamism have resisted the innovations of the young. Rather than allow the flow of initiative acquired through contemporary training, society seeks to socialize and indoctrinate the new graduates on the old ways of doing things. So, the society cringes back in fear, and seeks to annihilate the innovations that oozes from the young brains. With time, the young brains begin to think and act like the old brains, and the nation keeps going round in circles, repeating the mistakes of the past, celebrating their staleness over a bottle of liquor.
Often, the graduates, in whichever category, often forget the intents of their basic training. It is often believed that graduates were trained to work, so as soon as they leave school, the search for work begins. When the search becomes frustrating, they (including yours truly) would be willing to just WORK anywhere. So, a celebrated PhD holder would not mind driving trucks to survive. Irrespective of the courses pursued in any university, the basic focus is the same: train people to think. Thoughts are the building blocks for innovation, inventions and development.
The various businesses, organisations, enterprises and monuments we see all around us are the proceeds of thought. This basic endowment is often discarded as the youth roam in search of white-collar jobs. It is not just that government cannot employ all graduates, the truth is that government is not even willing in the first place. When you visit government owned establishments, you would observe that vacancies do exist. So, if jobs are unavailable, graduates who threw their caps in the air as a form of jubilation, ought to put on their thinking cap, think objectively, and create enterprising jobs.
Rather than entertaining the thoughts that the thousands of graduates who convocated are being released to increase the volume of job seekers, it is imperative to think and make them think that another volume of thinkers, whose innovations would change the course of this nation for the better, have just been released. Beyond giving education loans to students, government and society should also develop programmes that would help these young brains bring their good thoughts to life. Now that N-Power is in coma, communities can come together to listen to the thought outputs of their graduates and find means of giving them a lift in the right direction.
So, graduates should understand the need to develop practical skills that would birth their thoughts. Apprenticeship is the systematic and organized programme of understanding and developing skills for better productivity. So, while being a graduate is a great achievement, a greater attainment lies in being productive despite the tides of life. The job of every graduate is to find the problem(s), for which he or she was trained to solve, and solve it. To this end, continuous education becomes not only indispensable but also life-giving. To learn more, to discover more and to utilize the little opportunities that life presents is actually the preparation needed for a better lifting in life.
The graduates have passed in the universities, but now life would examine them to see how well they can pass through life, or how soon they would pass away. The nation should not see the large crowd of graduands as a threat, but as an opportunity to inject new ideas into getting the nation to the promised land. While promises of employment are given to the best, the not too good also have potential that a little help could nurture to greatness. They have been found worthy in character and learning, let the government also put programmes in place that would ensure that depression, oppression and degradation would not corrode their goodness.