As culled from The guardian UK
With unemployment among the world’s worst and those under 35 hit hardest, young Nigerians see their prospects rapidly diminish
Emmanuel Akinwotu in Lagos
Favour Obi graduated in 2016 with a first class degree in biomedical sciences and what felt like reasonable hopes for a career in medical research.
Before a recent shift waiting tables at a fast food restaurant in Lagos, the 27-year-old explained how gradually she let those hopes drift away. “I knew it would be hard to find a job but at the same time I was so determined, I was staying hopeful,” she said.
Her job for the past three and a half years pays 35,000 naira (£60) a month, just above Nigeria’s minimum wage and barely enough to live on. It was initially meant to be temporary.
“But it’s been years now and I’m still here. There are so many people I know in a similar position,” she said, describing friends around her age, who were well-qualified yet grappling with how to do more than just survive.
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Obtaining a graduate degree has always been revered in her family, Obi said, yet her post-university life has been an uphill struggle. Like many of her generation she has been forced to learn trades and pursue other career paths. “We grow up being told that going to university will help you become successful,” she said. “Being qualified makes us proud, our parents are proud, but for many of us, it hasn’t changed our lives for the better because we’re lacking jobs.”
Nigeria’s vast, rapidly growing population of 200 million people has a median age of just 18. Many of its young people have seen their prospects quickly diminish in recent years.
The economic challenges are stark and affect people across the age spectrum, but the rise of youth unemployment has been among the most troubling factors.
The unemployment rate has quadrupled since 2015 to become one of the worst globally. At the end of last year, 23 million people – or 33% of working age people looking for work – were recorded as unemployed, according to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and younger people were worst affected.
Almost half of working-age Nigerians under 35 are either unemployed or underemployed – working part-time when they would like to be full time – the NBS said in March. A shadow has been cast over the young, reinforcing the sense that greener pastures lie elsewhere.
The number of jobs are shrinking and the number of people looking is growing everyday,” said 46-year-old Julius Oshie, a job agent for the past five years, as he explained how the job market had dramatically changed.
“The other problem is that the type of jobs available are not what many young people see as beneficial to them. They are jobs that they take to survive, not to get on in life,” he said. “Cleaning jobs, bar jobs, ‘house helps’ [maids]. And it’s not just the poorer masses taking these jobs. It’s the aspirational classes, the more highly educated,” he said. “It’s been like this for a long time, it’s just you can say it’s getting worse.”
Oshie gestured to a stack of CVs at the end of his desk. “I have people with top degrees in very technical, impressive subjects – physics, statistics – and they come here and after years without work in their field, they’re going to low earning jobs, paying less than 30,000 naira per month,” he said.
Source:- The Guardian
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