NIGERIA'S ROAD TO INDUSTRIALIZATION AND GRADUATE EMPLOYMENT MUST GO THROUGH OUR UNIVERSITIES AND TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTIONS
by
Kayode J. Fakinlede Ph. D
Our university students and the graduating ones are very smart and intelligent individuals. This means that if they are ranked with students from other parts of the world, they will perform honorably. The conventional wisdom, among university graduates of the previous generation is that the level of education is dropping and that our new graduates are of cheaper quality. However given the level of information available to them, the present day graduates are definitely better educated and indeed, more ready to compete in a global market.
The lecturers and professors responsible for providing education to these students are also no less qualified than those in other parts of the world. In spite of the enormous handicap faced on an everyday basis, they still manage to do well with what little is availed them.
If, therefore, the students are good and have received sound education, how come the level of unemployment among our graduates, are quoted as high as eighty percent? The answers to this vexing problem seem obvious. A variant of this would be: If only government would provide the atmosphere for employment - electricity, water, or even money for the graduates - the problem of unemployment would be no more or drastically reduced. Another variant would be that the government itself must create employment for the graduates.
Our incoming president has offered a 'radically' new approach to the problem of unemployment. He will invest in agriculture and mining. These assertions have been made time and again with not a whimper of assessment or contradiction from the academic community. He may have assumed that once food is being produced abundantly, the problem of poverty would be reduced. Defining the issue of unemployment as that of eliminating hunger misses the point. Unemployment, hunger, and poverty are often not synonymous. The problem of unemployment among our graduates will not be solved by investing in food production. And for sure, investing in the means of producing more farm products, and thereby producing more cash crops will not have a measurable effect on unemployment. This does not mean that investment in technology using agricultural products as raw materials is wrong. That process, in essence should be categorized as technology and not agriculture. I am yet to conceive of the way mining would improve the employment level among our graduates.
The quickest way to solving the problem of unemployment, among our university graduates, is massive industrialization using available or developed technology. The question then is how do we expedite the process? And the answer is to empower those that already have the intellectual capacity. These people are in our universities and colleges of technology.
A rather intriguing question is how graduates from developed countries manage to get employed immediately after leaving school. It must be understood that many of these countries have had vast industrial bases existing for decades, and even centuries before the advent of a systematic learning environment called the university. University students in these countries already have an array of choices as to where they will work on graduation. In our developing world system, the tertiary education system has been created in vacuo, not giving thought as to what the students would be doing after graduation.
This means that for our students to become meaningfully employed after graduating there must be an industrial base created to assimilate them. In creating this industrial base, the very nature of our university system must be modified. It is no longer a case of the university educating a person and leaving him to fend for himself thereafter. The university must take a holistic approach to education. Whether a student is employed after leaving school or not, should concern the university from which he is graduating. This will mean the creation of a university-industrial complex.
THE UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
Within the university-industrial complex, professors and lecturers will exist not just to train students for future careers, rather they, themselves, will be part of the system that ensures the success of that student even before he graduates. They will exist within the university-industrial complex to leverage their intellectual capabilities there and then to create products which are technologically marketable in a global economy. The university will serve as incubators and laboratories for developing ideas and getting them ready for the market. As it is, the average professor or lecturer in our universities, in spite of his academic attainment, has very little industrial experience. The university-industrial complex will make his training in industrial processes a reality. His experience in facilitating technological and industrial processes will be as seen as rewarding as writing academic papers. Nigerians and others from overseas industrial facilities will be evaluated for employment within the university system. These be free to nurture their own projects to success. The complex will render the unproductive constraints placed on academia that they must not engage in extracurricular activities null and void. As a matter of fact, a professor will be bountifully rewarded for doing the exact opposite. While still engaged with the university, he can be sent to train in the great industrial facilities of the world. Thereafter, he can come home and build chemicals and drugs research laboratories, manufacturing concerns, engineering facilities, industrial research and development facilities, drug manufacturing industries, computer based laboratories, tools making workshops, automobile parts industry, food research and processing concerns, wineries, etc. and engage students in areas of need. It will be that every university lecturer or professor will actively engage himself in some form of technologically sound, financially rewarding activity that will make use of his mind and intellect in creating wealth and, therefore employment. It should be that all universities have industrial satellites around them where these professors and lecturers continue to work on their discoveries and ideas. With this method, three or more technology based industrial concerns could be created every year.
In the present dispensation, all our brilliant and talented people are gathered in this place called the university, and ordered not to participate in any form of wealth creation other than mentor students and do research. The more universities we build, the more we deprive our communities of the talent of those who should be masters of industry. The activity of creating wealth is left to politicians who usually have no clue as to how to formulate simple technological or economic policies. And for certain are ignorant as to how to industrialize the nation. And if people within academia want to express their God-given talent, they have to write what is called academic papers that benefit only the industrialized world. This is crazy. Within the university-industrial complex, a person is given a chance to develop his own ideas for the benefit of himself and the society. He is free to engage in research using locally available materials and talent, and benefit financially from the product of his research. Employment of others will of necessity be a by-product of this endeavour.
While the next president will engage the nation in agriculture, there must be hundreds and even thousands of other ideas to propel our nation towards economic empowerment and therefore employment. This is the main idea behind the university-industrial complex.
FINANCING THE UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
The issue of financing a university-industrial complex arises due to our misplaced priorities as a nation. Those members of our society who have the skill and intellectual capacity to move the nation forward are often times devoid of the financial means to do so. A simple solution to funding the complex would be for the federal and state governments to make available benefits accruable to anyone wishing to take the risk when they a requested. This means that a professor with ten years in the university should be able to access his own retirement benefits and a loan of ten to twenty million naira to pursue a worthwhile idea that will benefit him, the state and the nation. Once a professor or a lecturer in a state university can prove, to the satisfaction of the university authorities, that he has a well researched idea that will benefit the state and employ people, and that he is willing to risk his own retirement benefits, money should be made available to him to pursue his goal. In any case, once a lecturer has served about five years in the university and comes up with a wealth creating idea, he should have the right to tap into his own retirement benefits to pursue the idea.
Let it be stated that the scheme as envisaged is not meant to facilitate the establishment of mom and pop stores. It must be monitored by the university since it is logically an extension of the university till the pioneer of such a scheme repays the university fully. The scheme must be based on the development of a well researched product, idea or industrial process, and seen to add value to the university and the state. It must be capable of providing meaningful employment to graduates of the university while developing the skills of those still in school. It must be profitable and capable of returning value on investment.
Rapid industrialization in a nation can only come about by empowering those who have the intellectual capacity to engage in it. Let us use what we have to get what we want.
Dr. Kayode J. Fakinlede
Federal University of Technology
Akure
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