“The unexamined life is not worth living” – Socrates
This apt saying by Socrates seems to explain our national life in Nigeria where we often engage in activities without reviewing or possibly examining the consequences ahead. For a man to achieve the goals defining a meaningful life which is the basic essence of living, our lives must be subjected to regular examination.
The alarming rate of joblessness in the Nigerian state has become an issue of public discuss. First is the perpetual pressure on state and consequent destabilization of state activities.
Nigeria on daily basis experiences the influx of wandering jobless youths on the streets which has exposed them to vulnerability in various illicit and illegal deals for survival sake.
Morality which ought to be at the nexus of national life has been found wanting due to this pervasive malaise that has bred ruthlessly into every facets of life and has rendered the entire political and administrative systems dangerously precarious, shaky and wobbly.
Overtime, the Nigerian society has been programmed in such a manner that citizens are constrained to rely on government for every basic necessity for survival via an educational system that lacks feasible practicability and necessary skills acquisition for productivity.
Overrating of education, ethnicity, religion among others have been identified as the causative agents of institutional breakdown and disfunctionality of the political and administrative structures of the country thereby paving way for division and laziness among potential engineers of development.
Ordinarily, one would have believed that when a child is educated, job opportunities and an enabling environment for talent display awaits him after graduation from school but reverse is the in our plity where education has become a crime and mediocrity placed over meritocracy and intellectual uprightness.
A glimpse at the aviation sector shockingly reveals the untold hardship and trivializes ones aspiration of becoming an Aeronautic Expert including, engineering and designing, piloting and other aviation professional fields of endeavor with the proliferating rate of joblessness among graduates and certified expatriates in this sector.
Not quite long, it was reported that ‘’Over five hundred (500) unemployed pilots and aviation engineers have taken to menial jobs and taxi driving in Nigerian’’ according to an online media report. It is also said that if you have three unemployed pilots in a place, you may be having five or more Aero Engineers meaning there may be more unemployed Aero Engineers than Pilots.
Should we blame it on the country for not providing a national career? The parents? The industries? Should we scrap the course from Nigerian universities? Although experts have claimed that unemployment is an international phenomenon as report has it that there are over ten thousand (10,000) unemployed pilots in India. It is a global issue that needs urgent attention. Howbeit, the deteriorating rate of Nigerian aviation industry really calls for expedient rehabilitation especially when one realizes that employment into few vacant positions is based on tribalism, nepotism, and religious sentiments resulting to recruitment of unprofessional and unqualified persons of unrelated academic field of endeavor. Of course, you cannot put something on nothing and expect something good, it will rather crumble. The end point will surely be low output and decay of the system.
In curbing these challenges, unfavourable policies should also be withdrawn while investor-friendly ones should be made to open a favourable atmosphere for investors to operate. Privatization with strategic partnership of some sub-sectors will also be of advantage while government should also encourage a national career and innovations.
Nigeria must also stop overrating education, religion and ethnicity.
