Public universities’ fees increase: A blessing

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This is not the time for acquiring certificates. We all know the statistics and see the real-life after-effects of our university graduates on our streets with A4-size envelopes containing their CVs and in text messages with requests for “urgent 2k.

Reports emerged recently that public universities’ fees across Nigeria have increased by as much as 200 percent. Nigerian youths, particularly those who are forced to pay fees themselves or rely on the goodwill of others outside of their nuclear family, should look at this situation as a sign to double down on embracing entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is about identifying problems and solving them for a price. Do that for seven to 10 years and you will be hiring university graduates.

There are Nigerian PhD, Masters and first-degree holders working for Nigerians who barely graduated or never went to the university. This is a relic from the colonial times which we haven’t fully shaken off.

It is also the result of a culture that traditionally looked down on service jobs, meanwhile service jobs play a huge part in keeping Nigeria moving.

Many Nigerian youths have created these service businesses and employed others to assist. Hence my clarion call to double down.

There are a lot of fears when considering entrepreneurship, particularly when a young person sees their peers earning livable salaries in air-conditioned offices.

Welcome to the real world where getting an air-conditioned livable salaried job goes beyond having a degree! Soft skills such as emotional intelligence, time management, managing up/sideways/down, public speaking, business writing and business administration, should be taught in all Nigerian secondary schools, public and privately owned.

In developed countries, many youths enter the workforce as entrepreneurs or at the bottom of a company at 16, 17 and 18 years old, either because they cannot afford to go to university, or they don’t want to be saddled with the debt of the fees after they graduate in their early 20s.

This debt will take years to pay back and they would rather not add it to their problems. Before anyone points out that those are developed countries I am referencing while Nigeria is a lower middle-income economy, I ask how do you think they became developed? Not all their office jobs require a university degree.

But in Nigeria, even micro enterprises are looking for graduates, thus depriving a large pool of Nigerians who can read and write from being employed.

Dear young Nigerian, do not let the fact that your country/parents/secondary school/university has failed you cause you to remain in that condition.

Develop yourself! Look for problems around you and go about solving them.

Success is a result of many failures and years of hard work. What you start off doing is not necessarily what you will finish with. Nigeria is your oyster!