Business
Unemployment: Apprenticeship schemes, IT, skills training centres record huge enrollment
...as Nigerians abandon college degrees, certificates for hands-on skills
Young Nigerian job seekers and college students are daily turning to vocational institutes, apprenticeship schemes, as well as IT and skills training centres for hands-on skills in a bid to be competitive in the labour market, Business Hallmark findings have revealed.
According to BH findings, businesses and institutions that offer trainees and apprentices hands-on skills in place of the more theoretical degrees offered by Nigerian universities and colleges have been recording huge patronage and enrollment lately from skills-seeking applicants.
While the rush for hands-on skills is very high among out-of-work or underemployed youths, college students are also not left out.
Many undergraduates, findings showed, are currently enrolled in entrepreneurial schemes like hairdressing, masonry, woodwork, welding, baking and culinary, tailoring, soap making, shoe making, or studying for skill certification courses like caregiving, auto repairs, software development, machine handling, phone repair, data analytics, truck and forklift handling, book keeping and many others.
Cure for Unemployment
Based on the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) employment figures of 2022, 72.6 million people, representing a third of Nigeria’s population of more than 220 million people, are unemployed, while 52% of the population are underemployed.
But after the statistics office rebased the nation’s unemployment, inflation, and GDP in November 2024, unemployment figure fell drastically to 4.3%, not because of any employment boom, but simply down to the change of formula by the NBS.
Under the old method, the NBS classified only people aged 15 to 64 years who worked at least 20 hours a week as employed.
However, with the review, anyone 15 years and above, who works for pay or profit for 1 to 39 hours a week is now considered as employed, though underemployed based on the International Labour Organization (ILO) guidelines.
Some of the trainees, who spoke to our correspondent on the rush for skill-based certifications, attributed it to their inability to secure jobs after graduating from colleges.
According to them, the colleges they attended and the certificates obtained did not prepare them for the labour market, hence the recourse to skills centres.
A 2022 graduate of electrical engineering from the University of Lagos, Tayo Ogundeji, told BH he was ready to conquer the job market—or so he thought, after attaining his Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from the Federal Government-owned university in Akoka, Lagos, three years ago.
But after spending seven years (the normal 5 years plus 2 extra as a result of years of incessant lecturers’ strikes) studying at the university, Ogundeji said he found employers were unimpressed by his hard-earned certificate.
“Despite graduating with a second-class upper division, HR personnel of most companies I approached did not even look twice at my certificate. They were more interested in the skills I have than will immediately benefit their organizations”, Ogundeji declared.
Ogundeji’s disillusionment is not an isolated case but a symptom of a trend for irrelevant certificates that swept the nation starting from the 1980s.
Challenges of Some Degrees
With the public service jettisoning merit and competence while recruiting personnel for its various ministries, departments, and agencies in favour of personal, ethnic, and political considerations, Nigerian youths started using the trend as yardstick for measurement.
An unemployed young graduate of linguistics from a Nigerian university, who spoke to our correspondent, Joke Badmus, argued that the course one studies in the university does not matter as long as it’s a degree certificate.
When our correspondent explained to Badmus, who’s seeking a banking career, that her course of study may likely be responsible for her inability to secure a job four years after finishing school, she got edgy and started naming popular Nigerians, who made names outside their areas of study.
“If a former history graduate (Late Alhaji Alhaji) could become CBN governor, are you saying I can not also become one”, she fired back at our reporter.
Like Badmus, many young Nigerians have spend their time and resources acquiring irrelevant and out of demand certificates.
And with many courses and certificates unrecognized by today’s employers, the likes of Ogundeji and Badmus are often left stranded in the labour market despite investing significant time and money in acquiring their degrees.
Unlike Badmus, redemption quickly came for Ogundeji, who realized early that there is a strong correlation between a job seekers skills set and career available opportunities.
After roaming the streets for eleven months without securing a job, Ogundeji told BH that he decided to opt for a ‘labourer’ job in a Chinese owned company for a minimum wage.
“After working with them for about two months, I decided to introduced my certificate as a trained engineer. But they were more interested in my physical ability to work overtime than my academic achievements.
“However, I noticed that some of the workers fared better, especially my supervisor, who’s just 26 years old back then in 2024. I observed that he knew how to handle almost every machine in the company despite not having a college degree.
“As a result, he got a good pay and others perks like accommodation and official vehicle from the company
“I decided to get close to him and I learnt that he attended a 6-month course in Lagos, where he was trained how to handle some machines before joining the company.
“While still working with the company, he also enrolled as a part time student in an online Coursera course, where he obtained a professional certificate in book keeping.
“Because of his accounting skill, he was also put in charge of payroll administration in the company. I was so much encouraged by his story that I decided to arm myself with a skill based certificate in automobile engineering and forklift handling.
“Since I completed the two courses in February 2025, many job offers have been coming my way. I presently work with Honda Place as an engineer, where my degree certificate is now recognized. A shipping company in one of the nation’s ports is also wooing me to join it as a dock supervisor/dispatcher”, Ogundeji stated.
Growing Awareness
According to an unverified report by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity obtained online, more than 5 million Nigerians obtained professional certificates in the last two years, with certification for health workers alone increasing by more than 85 percent in 2024.
Meanwhile, a recent study by Coursera, a United States-based training and skills company, shows that Nigeria ranks third globally in enrollment for professional courses on its platform.
According to the US-based training and skills company, Nigeria has been experiencing exponential enrollment growth for professional certificate courses, growing at an average of 80% in the past few years.
Conducted in December 2023, the study found that Sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s highest year-on-year average growth rate for people enrolling for professional courses, with Nigeria ranking third globally.
According to the report, Nigerians enrolled 142,000 learners, behind the United States with 1.3 million and India with 654,000 enrolments.
The report also noted that Africans, especially Nigerians, are most likely to invest in technology skills like web development and user experience and data science skills like geo-visualisation or data visualisation software.
The study noted that Nigeria could become the next digital skills learning hub, and regional leaders must prioritize investments in technology and data science skills
The report also showed that Nigerians posted a competitive score in entrepreneurship of 51% in business courses.
The craze for hands-on skills and professional qualifications by Nigerians is not limited to Coursera, but to local and international firms and training platforms like NIIT, Samsung Engineering Academy, Coscharis Group, GoMyCode, Institute of Skills Qualification and Development of Nigeria (ISQD), MTN Skills Academy, and many others.
While many firms like MTN Nigeria, Samsung, and Coscharis Group set up training academies to help train and develop talents for their use, ISQD, a Federal Government-owned institution, is dedicated to providing comprehensive training programs for skills development to artisans and professionals.
Private Sector Boost
For instance, in January 2025, leading Nigerian automobile firm and representatives of JLR, BMW, Grenadier, Ford, Renault, and Geely auto brands in the country, Coscharis Motors, reopened its training academy for admission into its one-year training programme in automobile technical engineering.
According to the Executive Director, After Sales and Special Duties, Coscharis Group, Mr. Cosmas Maduka Jnr. the main objective of the academy, which is free of all cost at the Coscharis CG Eko, Ikeja outlet, is to deliver human resources to fill the vacuum created by the dearth of professional automobile technicians, who are needed to support the fast, innovatively growing automotive industry, and minimize foreign capital flight resulting from engaging expatriates.
The Coscharis Academy, it would be recalled, initially debuted in 2013 as a public-private initiative in partnership with the Lagos State Government.
The scheme had successfully graduated over two hundred trainees (both males and females), who have been either absorbed into Coscharis, other automobile companies or become self-employed.
“Coscharis has always been driven by its Corporate Vision Statement to build an institution that is timeless in its relevance and to remain timeless.
“We needed to plough back resources in local human capital development that translates to supporting the government human capacity drive and equipping the interested but financially challenged employable market, which in turn, contributes to the overall economy of Nigeria”, Cosmas Maduka Jr had said in January at the relaunch of the academy.
The current class is expected to graduate in October 2025 at the completion of a three-month theoretical and nine-month practical training spread over four quarters, with an industrial training experience at the Coscharis Head Office in Awoyaya, Lagos.
Top performers will receive automatic employment at Coscharis, which has been the tradition from the inception of the programme.
BH reliably gathered that available slots were oversubscribed by interested candidates who have a flair for technical skill development, especially university and polytechnic graduates.
Catching Them Young
In the same vein, young Nigerians have been flooding the two engineering academies established in Lagos and Ekiti States by electronics giant Samsung.
The two engineering academies, sited in the premises of Government Technical Colleges in Agidingbi, Ikeja, Lagos, and Ado-Ekiti in Ekiti State, are equipped with the latest electronics teaching aids, including practical rooms to teach students across three trades, namely audio visual, home appliances and information and mobile technology.
According to Samsung, the Electronics Engineering Academies in Lagos and Ekiti States were set up to address the dearth of technical and engineering skills in Nigeria by providing hands-on and technical skills training for secondary school students in the country.
Selected students go through a 12-month program in engineering skills, aligned to the technical school curriculum.
Upon completion of their programmes, graduating students are automatically eligible for an internship at Samsung’s Channel partners, with outstanding performers retained to work as independent service technicians or employees in the company’s retail channel outlets.
Outstanding students are also qualified to participate in a year-long leadership opportunity at Samsung Electronics headquarters in South Korea as part of the 100 African young leaders program.
Speaking at the launch of the Samsung Engineering Academy in Ado- Ekiti, Managing Director, Samsung Electronics West Africa, Brovo Kim, said the aim is to build success partnerships in Nigeria to equip the country’s youth with the technical and employability skills they need to transform their lives, as well as find jobs or become entrepreneurs.
“The Engineering Academy initiative seeks to address the critical technical and skills shortage in Africa. Samsung has launched its Engineering Academy in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria to provide hands on vocational skills training for youth.
“By opening up well paying job opportunities for its students, Samsung’s quality of service is differentiated and set in line with the government’s drive for creating decent jobs, especially for young citizens”, Kim noted.
Apart from academies, training institutes and technical colleges, where Nigerians now rush to to acquire practical skills, most tertiary institutions, especially privately owned ones, have made entrepreneurial trainings compulsory for all their students in a bold move to prepare them fir the labour market.
Accessing Available Jobs
Many youths, checks revealed, now spend most of their spare time acquiring hands-on skills and studying for professional certifications
“Education is a must, but certifications are the icing on the cake”, said Olugbenga Turner, who obtained his MEC certification in Marine Welding in March 2025 and just secured a lucrative job in an oil and gas company.
A university don, Dr. Tony Ademeso, while speaking on the matter, argued that Nigerian graduates are not less qualified than their counterparts all over the world.
He, however, blamed lack of teaching equipment for making many Nigerian graduates unemployable.
According to Ademeso, a professor of engineering geology, most of the curricula in Nigerian universities are patterned after foreign countries, where their products seem employable.
“There may be some areas where they could be made relevant to the needs of society, but generally science is the same all over the world. Chemistry is chemistry, agriculture is agriculture.
“That is why it is possible for an academic to leave Nigeria for a conference in America, and they will be speaking the same language.
“The major problem that is affecting our products here is that the equipment, materials, and machines that are needed to teach are not readily available.
“Learning cannot be effective where a laboratory that is meant to train 10 students is used for 100 students. Little can be done where teachings are done in theory and equipment is not available to teach practicals.
“Sometime ago, we needed to do a test and it involved something we call ‘membrane’. We were on it for six months, and we could not get it to buy in Nigeria.
“We had to put condoms together and manipulate them to replace them. That was how we managed till we got to buy from China.
“And that is why you should respect Nigerian lecturers and researchers. At times, these things will work, it will fail. So, the onus lies with the institutions to provide adequate equipment for teaching and learning as well as research.
“And this is why university lecturers are asking government to work on making the system workable”, the don stated..