Nigerian youths

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Pantami, has alleged that most graduates from Nigeria institutions are unemployable and are too dependent on “government jobs.”

He decried the trend among Nigeria graduates chasing government employment rather than venturing into entrepreneurship which gives them the impetus to employ others, thereby bridging the unemployment gap in the country.

“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.”

Mr Pantami, currently facing the accusation of fraudulent professorship, further accused the youths of being too lazy to start a job on their own.

“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,” Mr Pantami said of Nigerian youths. “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.”

The minister stated this at the prize presentation ceremony for the Katsina National Talent Hunt Challenge in Katsina on Tuesday.

“So on (a) daily basis, foreigners are coming to Nigeria to come and do the job for us,” Mr Pantami added. “Most of our technical people are engaged in administrative work, while we rely on other people to come and do the technical job.”

Mr Pantami himself is being accused of academic fraud. The Academic Staff Union of Universities deemed the minister’s appointment by the Federal University of Technology Owerri as a professor as illegal.

“You cannot be a minister and a lecturer in a university. It is an encouragement of illegality,” Mr Osodeke said. “Pantami has to quit as a minister and be tried for doing double jobs within the same federal system. He is not qualified. Pantami should not be treated as a professor.”

In documents seen on the media, Mr Pantami said he accepted the professorship on the instruction of President Muhammadu Buhari.

“This decision is sequel to my briefing to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on Friday, March 26, 2021, and his permission for me to go ahead and share my knowledge and experience in the academia, which is a form of community service to our citizens,” Mr Pantami had defended himself.

Mr Pantami had accepted the position at the Imo-based institution before it had been formally offered to him, based on the reported documents. 

The Islamic cleric accepted the position in March. However, the appointment letter offering the professorship post to Mr Pantami has August 20 as its date.