Isa Pantami, minister of communications and digital economy, says Nigerian graduates are unemployable and are too dependent on “government jobs.”
“The main challenge is not unemployment,” Mr Pantami stressed. “I am not discarding unemployment, but the major challenge is unemployability, a situation where I cannot be able to do the technical work that my certificate has stored that I have studied.”
The minister stated this at the prize presentation ceremony for the Katsina National Talent Hunt Challenge in Katsina on Tuesday, adding, “As the situation is today, most of our young people after graduating from school are not in any way thinking of entrepreneurship. They are only interested in looking for government employment.”
Continued: “There are many job opportunities in engineering, ICT, oil and gas but most of our youths with (a) certificate if you employ them, you will discover that they will not be able to do the work you have employed them to do.
“So on (a) daily basis, foreigners are coming to Nigeria to come and do the job for us. Most of our technical people are engaged in administrative work, while we rely on other people to come and do the technical job.”
