By Ejinkeonye-Christian Phebe

Nigeria produces millions of graduates every year, among whom are hundreds with a First Class Degree. Yet, despite this steady academic output, graduate unemployment remains consistently high. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), youth unemployment in Nigeria stood at 6.

This paradox raises a critical question: “why does formal education no longer guarantee employability?” Each year, new companies emerge and both public and private advertise vacancies.

While students invest years in formal education with the expectation of being prepared for professional roles, many struggle to transition smoothly into the workplace. Employers, on the other hand, frequently complain that graduates are Ill-prepared for the demands of modern work and are compelled to spend additional time and resources retraining new hires. At the centre of this persistent challenge lies a dangerous disconnect between higher institutions and the realities of today’s labour market.

Historically, higher institutions were designed to serve as pipelines into the workforce. Degrees were meant to be evidence of workplace readiness, competence, and value. However, with the global advancement and need to remain competitive in the fast-changing marketplace, the nature of work has changed rapidly. Globalization, technological advancement, automation, and digitalization have fundamentally reshaped how organizations operate. As a result, businesses now require a workforce that is agile, innovative, and technologically competent. Unfortunately, many educational systems have not repositioned themselves appropriately to reflect these changes.

Employers no longer merely look for academic knowledge. They are looking for individuals who can think critically, solve problems, communicate effectively, readily adapt to change, and work with digital tools. Sadly, many academic programmes still prioritize theoretical mastery, cognitive learning, and examination performance over practical application. This leaves graduates fluent in theory but unfamiliar with workplace expectations. While they may understand concepts, they end up struggling to apply them in real-world scenarios. Employers then encounter these graduates who are intelligent and eager to work, yet insufficiently equipped for immediate contribution to the execution of company objectives.

This disconnect is not a neutral gap, but one that carries significant consequences. For graduates, the outcome are often discouraging. Many experience prolonged job searches, underemployment, or complete withdrawal from the labour market. Some are forced into job roles that have little or no relevance to their academic training, while others cycle endlessly through internships, volunteer positions, and short-term engagements without clear career progression. Increasingly, many graduates turn to entrepreneurship – not necessarily by choice, but by necessity. However, without the same labour-market-relevant skills that made them unemployable, they often struggle to build sustainable businesses. The same deficiencies that hinder their employability also limit their entrepreneurial success.

For employers, the costs are both financial and operational. Organizations are compelled to invest heavily in retraining staff, a process that consumes time, resources, and managerial attention, as well as reduces productivity in the short term. Some employers therefore resort to hiring based on referrals or prior experience alone, sidelining fresh graduates entirely.

At the national level, the implications are even more severe. When education fails to translate into employability, economic growth slows, youth unemployment rises, social discontent deepens, and the demographic advantage of a young population becomes a liability rather than a strength.

The problem facing Nigerians is not a lack of intelligence or potential. Rather, it is a lack of structure, exposure, and alignment. Curriculum review and implementation processes are often slow and bureaucratic, making it difficult to respond swiftly to changing industry needs. There is also limited collaboration between institutions and employers. Many universities and polytechnics design curricula in isolation, with little input from the industries that will eventually absorb their graduates. When there is no consistent connection or relationship between institutions and employers, academic programmes become increasingly misaligned with market realities. Students graduate without exposure to real tools, real problems, and real expectations of the workplace.

Compounding this challenge is the persistent poor perception of vocational and technical education. Despite its relevance to employability, skills-based education is often regarded as inferior to traditional academic pathways. This bias, hence, limits investment, innovation, and enrollment in technical fields, further widening the gap.

Contrary to popular belief, employers are not looking for graduates with “head knowledge” alone or impressive CGPAs without substance. What they rather seek are individuals with strong foundations and capacity to build upon them. Today’s employers value problem solvers, tech-savvy professionals, creatives, innovators, and individuals who can enhance the competitiveness of their organizations. They want graduates equipped not only with cognitive skills, but also with technical and soft skills that align with market demands. These competencies cannot be developed through lectures alone. They require experiential learning, mentorship, collaboration, and consistent exposure to real work environments and tools, which remain underemphasized or entirely missing in many higher education programmes.

Fixing this disconnect requires intentional collaboration and systemic reform between organizations and institutions. Curriculum development must become more dynamic and inclusive. Higher institutions should work closely with industry experts to ensure that academic programmes reflect current and emerging skill needs. Industry relevance must be deliberately integrated into learning. Practical skill development should be embedded into teaching methodologies. Project-based learning must be prioritized, and education should not complete where affective and psychomotor learning are absent.

Experiential learning must also take center stage. Internships, apprenticeships, industry projects, and practical laboratories should be structured, supervised, and treated as essential components of academic programmes, not optional add-ons.

Furthermore, vocational and technical education must be repositioned and rebranded. Skills-based learning should be recognized as a powerful and necessary pathway to economic participation. When aligned with modern technology and market demand, technical and vocational education can provide faster, more sustainable routes to employment.

Employers, too, must play a more active role. Rather than lament skills shortages, organizations should engage institutions through mentorship programmes, guest lectures, curriculum advisory boards, and workplace training opportunities.

The future of work will continue to evolve, driven by technology, globalization, and innovation. Education systems that fail to adapt risk becoming increasingly disconnected from workplace realities. Bridging the gap between higher institutions and employers requires recognizing that both theoretical and practical learning are essential components of graduate employability and economic development. The way forward lies in collaboration, flexibility, and a shared commitment to relevance. When institutions and employers begin to speak the same language, graduates will no longer be caught in the middle. Instead, they will become critical drivers of economic growth, innovation, and Nigeria’s relevance in the global economy.

Ejinkeonye-Christian, a certified life coach, and business educator, is the CEO of Phebeon Consulting and Media Solutions Ltd, Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria (+234(0)708-048-0510; ceo@phebeon.com.ng).

By Isaac Asabor

The fierce national reaction to the Senate’s handling of electronic transmission in the Electoral Act amendment is not a dispute about technical procedure. It is a confrontation over credibility. The controversy now unfolding around Clause 60(3), discretionary language, and the rejection of mandatory real-time uploads is not simply legislative disagreement; it is a public referendum on whether Nigeria’s electoral system can be trusted to carry the will of voters intact from polling units to final declaration.

Recent developments have sharpened that question dramatically. Labour unions threaten mass action and election boycotts. Civil society organizations demand investigations into alleged procedural irregularities.

At the heart of the dispute is not whether electronic transmission exists in law. It does. The conflict lies in whether it should be mandatory and immediate or discretionary and conditional. That distinction is not semantic. It defines the difference between a system designed to guarantee transparency and one that merely permits it.

Supporters of mandatory real-time transmission argue that leaving the process to administrative discretion creates vulnerability at the precise point where electoral credibility has historically been weakest, the collation stage. This concern is neither abstract nor speculative. Nigeria’s electoral controversies have rarely emerged from the act of voting itself. They arise in the transition from polling unit results to aggregated outcomes. It is this transitional space that citizens seek to close through compulsory digital transmission.

Opponents of mandatory provisions frame their stance as continuity rather than regression. By retaining the wording that results are transmitted “in a manner as prescribed by the Commission,” they argue that flexibility is preserved. Yet critics interpret that same flexibility as institutionalized uncertainty. Where lawmakers see administrative latitude, citizens see a loophole. Where officials speak of procedural options, the public hears permission for selective compliance.

The Nigeria Labour Congress’s threat of mass action captures the emotional charge surrounding the issue. Its warning that elections without real-time electronic transmission could face boycott is not merely a political tactic; it reflects a growing belief that participation without verifiable transparency risks legitimizing outcomes that cannot be independently trusted. The Congress’s insistence that votes must not only be counted but seen to be counted encapsulates the broader public sentiment.

Civil society reactions further illustrate how the debate has shifted from policy to principle. Organizations have not limited their concerns to legislative wording; they question process integrity itself. Petitions demanding investigation into alleged removal of provisions signal anxiety that procedural opacity is not accidental but systemic. When lawmaking itself becomes contested terrain, the credibility of the laws it produces inevitably suffers.

Political organizations across ideological and regional lines have converged on a similar warning: discretionary transmission preserves the very vulnerabilities reform was meant to eliminate. Whether expressed by opposition coalitions, regional socio-political groups, or electoral reform advocates, the argument is consistent; ambiguity in result transmission invites contestation of outcomes. And when outcomes are contested, governance itself becomes unstable.

Perhaps the most revealing dimension of the controversy is generational. Youth organizations have framed the debate not as a technical dispute but as a test of democratic sincerity. Nigeria’s young population constitutes the largest voting demographic. Their engagement is driven not by nostalgia for past processes but by expectation of institutional evolution. When reforms perceived as minimum standards of transparency appear diluted, disengagement becomes rational rather than apathetic. A democracy that cannot convince its youngest participants of procedural integrity risks eroding its own future legitimacy.

The Senate’s emergency session, convened to approve votes and proceedings necessary for legislative harmonization, therefore carries symbolic significance beyond procedural necessity. It represents an institutional moment of choice: whether to reaffirm public confidence or deepen suspicion. Reports of internal divisions and confusion about what was actually passed only intensify public unease. A legislative body uncertain about its own decisions cannot easily reassure a skeptical electorate.

Underlying the entire controversy is a profound struggle over narrative authority. Electoral bodies traditionally define legitimacy through compliance with legal frameworks. Citizens, however, increasingly define legitimacy through transparency of process. These perspectives are not inherently incompatible, but they diverge when legal compliance does not produce visible accountability. Electronic transmission bridges that gap by transforming procedural compliance into observable action.

The warnings that the controversy could affect the credibility of the 2027 general elections are not rhetorical exaggerations. Electoral legitimacy is cumulative. Each unresolved controversy compounds skepticism. Each perceived retreat from transparency amplifies doubt. By the time ballots are cast, public confidence may already be predetermined by how reforms were handled years earlier. Trust is not built on Election Day; it is constructed in the legislative and administrative decisions that precede it.

Critically, the national response demonstrates that Nigerians no longer interpret electoral reform as a matter reserved for political elites. The breadth of stakeholders now engaged, labour unions, civil society, regional organizations, youth coalitions, opposition figures, and policy advocates, signals that electoral transparency has become a shared civic priority. This convergence is itself a democratic development. It reflects a society increasingly unwilling to delegate the credibility of its political system to institutional assurances alone.

Electronic transmission has thus evolved into a metaphor for a deeper democratic aspiration. It represents the desire for a system where results are not only accurate but verifiable, not only lawful but observable, not only declared but demonstrable. In this sense, the controversy is not about technology but about the architecture of trust.

It would be misleading to suggest that mandatory electronic transmission alone can resolve Nigeria’s electoral challenges. Technology does not eliminate political contestation, nor does it guarantee institutional integrity. However, institutional design shapes opportunity. Systems that reduce discretion at critical points reduce the scope for dispute. Systems that prioritize transparency encourage acceptance even among those who lose.

The resistance to mandatory provisions, therefore, is interpreted by many Nigerians not as caution but as reluctance to fully close avenues for post-voting intervention. Whether that interpretation is fair or not is secondary to its political consequence: perception becomes reality in matters of legitimacy.

The language used by critics, phrases such as “weaponization of ambiguity” or warnings of democratic erosion, may appear dramatic, but they reflect a broader public frustration with processes perceived as perpetually inconclusive. Nigerians are not demanding perfection. They are demanding clarity.

The unfolding debate ultimately reveals a country negotiating the terms of its democratic future. The question is no longer whether elections will occur, but whether outcomes will command belief. Electronic transmission has become the visible battleground where that question is being fought.

Trust cannot be legislated into existence, but it can be undermined by ambiguity and strengthened by transparency. The Senate’s decision on whether to retain discretionary language or mandate real-time transmission is therefore not merely a technical choice. It is a declaration of how Nigeria intends to reconcile institutional authority with public expectation.

In the end, the uproar is not noise. It is evidence of democratic consciousness asserting itself. Citizens are demanding that power reflect participation without distortion. They are insisting that the journey from ballot to result be as transparent as the act of voting itself.

Nigeria’s battle over electronic transmission is, fundamentally, a struggle over whether democracy will be something citizens are asked to trust, or something they are enabled to verify.

By Kayode Adebiyi

For decades, Nigeria’s healthcare system has been held in a tight grip by recurring industrial actions, with a cycle of ultimatums, warning strikes and indefinite industrial action.

These disruptions have become a grim and agonisingly regular occurrence.

Even in the turn of the New Year, the sector continues to face turbulence over salary adjustments and working conditions.

Recently, after 84 days of downing tools, the Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) suspended its nationwide strike following an agreement with the Federal Government to implement unsettled salary adjustments and other outstanding demands.

The suspension was announced in a communiqué jointly signed by JOHESU National Chairman, Mr Kabiru Ado-Minjibir, and National Secretary, Mr Martin Egbanubi.

“After exhaustive deliberations and review of the terms of settlement of the conciliation meeting, the expanded NEC-in-Session voted unanimously to suspend the ongoing indefinite nationwide strike action to allow for the implementation of the FG-JOHESU Terms of Settlements,” the communiqué read.

According to the communiqué, key resolutions include the commencement of Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) negotiations and immediate prioritisation of outstanding issues on the adjustment of the Consolidated Health Salary Structure (CONHESS).

While the suspension of the strike comes as a relief to many, some stakeholders are questioning why non-implementation of agreements often triggers such strikes.

In the case of JOHESU, the strike was called on Nov. 15, 2025, as a result of the non-implementation of a 2014 demand for CONHESS adjustment and other outstanding welfare issues.

It is important to note that JOHESU only constitutes a fraction of workers’ unions in the health sector, as its membership constitutes health workers such as laboratory technicians, pharmacists, health registrars among others.

Recall that JOHESU’s counterparts in the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) only recently suspended a planned nationwide strike scheduled for Jan. 12.

The decision to suspend the strike followed negotiations with the government, but the union issued a 4-week ultimatum to address demands.

NARD is demanding the payment of 2025/2026 Medical Residency Training Fund (MRTF), 25-35 per cent CONMESS arrears, and improved and safe working environments.

The suspended strike was supposed to be a follow up to NARD’s strike in late 2025 concerning unpaid salaries, poor working conditions, and inadequate infrastructure.

Also, in August 2025, the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) had to force the Nigerian government to the negotiating table after a four-day strike.

The association was demanding, among other things, an end to unsafe staffing ratios, poor wages, and failure to gazette the 2016 Nurses Scheme of Service.

In the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with NANNM, the government agreed an accelerated implementation of some of the union’s demands within four weeks of the formalisation of the MoU.

Experts such as Dr Obinna Oleribe, a Public Health Management Consultant, have constantly emphasised that the first step towards ending incessant strikes by health workers is to end institutional distrust fueled by years of unfulfilled promises.

They point out that the primary trigger for strikes is not just the demand for more money, but the failure of the government to implement signed MoU.

“What is the essence of going into an agreement with a group, signing that you will implement your side of the bargain at clearly defined timelines only for you to renegade?

“How do you want the other party to perceive you when you can’t fulfill a promise you made willingly?” a health practitioner, who prefers anonymity, asked.

He said it had become typical of the government to treat industrial disputes with a “fire brigade” approach.

He said there had to be a fundamental shift in how the government and other stakeholders approach labour relations.

“It is not peculiar to the health sector; a similar approach is deployed in responding to labour disputes in other sectors such as education, petroleum, judiciary, and so on,” he said.

To this end, some stakeholders suggest the establishment of a National Health Labour Relations Commission to serve as a permanent mediator that tracks and enforces the implementation of agreements.

However, beyond non-implementation of agreements, some stakeholders have also identified inter-professional rivalry as a driver of incessant strikes in the health sector.

They say the rivalry between doctors (NMA/NARD) and other health professionals (JOHESU) often comes to the fore when one group receives a pay rise and the other often goes on strike to seek fairness.

JOHESU leaders such as Felix Odusanya have been on record arguing for a “presidential prerogative” to adjust the CONHESS to match the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS) adjustments.

To address this rivalry challenge, experts recommend a unified salary structure or a transparent, job-evaluation-based system.

It is therefore heartwarming that the Federal Government has unveiled a structured framework aimed at resolving protracted industrial disputes in order to restore harmony in the nation’s health sector.

Recently, the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission (NSIWC) also noted that a comprehensive job evaluation is currently underway that is essential to determining fair placement for all cadres, thereby reducing the supremacy friction.

According to stakeholders, it is imperative for the government to pay better attention to improving the welfare of health workers, as well as providing modern infrastructure if it wishes to end the spate of strikes.

The Minister of State for Health, Dr Iziaq Salako, recently highlighted that excessive work hours and poor environments pose risks to both staff and patients in public hospitals.

Stakeholders, therefore, urge the government to continue the aggressive recruitment seen in 2024 and 2025 (over 37,000 new clinical staff) to reduce the workload that leads to burnout.

They also commend the Federal Government for recently approving an upward review of the retirement age for skilled clinical health professionals in federal tertiary hospitals and centres.

Under the new arrangement, skilled clinical health professionals’ retirement age has been increased from 60 to 65 years of age, or from 35 to 40 years of service, whichever comes first.

Experts say the policy will ensure the retention of specialised skills, strengthen manpower capacity, and ensure employment security.

“Evoking the policy of “no work, no pay”, often used as a deterrent, should also be abolished because it only toughens the resolve of unions and deepens animosity,” an expert said.

He warned that ending the incessant health workers’ strikes requires the government to treat them as partners in progress rather than adversaries.

Ultimately, experts warn that it will be difficult to have a healthy nation if those who provide health are themselves in a state of professional despair. (NAN)