 6334. Education or Miss Education. Kando was always a strong student. She was a child of hard-working parents who taught her the dignity of hard work. She was almost a straight A student throughout primary and secondary education, even university. Kando finished her youth service and was expected by most of her classmates to end up in a Fortune 500 company. Kando can get a job. She has applied for years. She has attended many interviews, still. Nothing. Kando's story is a story of millions of Nigerian youth today who have gone through 6334 plus one system of education. If you count now you know sorry the NYSE in Nigeria and after giving those long or just 21 years of your life to get in a good education then what? In many cases years and years of you know waiting for gainful employment. What begs the question? What is the point of giving all those years? I mean if we're going to end up still being dependent on our appearance you know our guardians. Many employers argue that it's not a question of unemployment but unemployability which means there are lots of graduates but they're not just employable. Perhaps they have a point. They look at the daily's or job advertisement platforms, reveal their hundreds and in some cases thousands and hundreds of thousands of vacancies across various industries in Nigeria. Every day you get those emails, you get you know those job vacancies. So why aren't these in oil employed people? Why aren't they scooping up all these you know vacancies considering there are millions of people that are unemployed? Do you know that most people that are already employed actually stand a better chance at getting another job than those who have never had a job before? So where does that leave those inexperienced graduates who are tossed out of an interview many times because they lack experience. They don't have job experience. Where does that leave the remaining millions of undergraduates who will soon be joining the labour force? So let's look at some numbers from you know 2018 and 2020 to start with. There are about 308 degree awarding institutions in Nigeria. There are 134 polytechnics and 174 universities. They have an enrollment population of about 2 million and they produce about 600,000 graduates yearly. Let that sink in. 600,000 graduates every 365 days. How many Nigerians are unemployed? 13.9 million. That is 34.9% of Nigerians used aged 15 to 34. Those are the unemployed ones. How many Nigerian graduates are unemployed? Almost 3 million of Nigerians unemployed hold graduates and postgraduate degrees from tertiary institutions. So they've gone through polytechnics, they've gone through universities and about 3 million of them are still unemployed. Between 2008 and now there has been a steady year on year increase in unemployment. We urgently need to start rethinking education as we know it. Because how many more candles can possibly be handled over the next 10 years? Not so many I must tell you. Not so many. And the issue is not so much about the education system. The issue is so much about the fact that you are educating them but there is no job for them to come and do. Now the problem is in two phases. One, there is no job for them to do. Two, they themselves cannot even apply themselves to create a job or to actually stay on the job. What do I mean? First of all, something as simple as ketchup, we are importing it. Remember that ketchup we are importing. Somebody in another country is farming the tomato. Another person in that country is bagging the tomato, grinding it, bagging it, packaging it. And that person is loading it onto the truck. And that person is driving that truck to the airport, putting it in the container, not carrying that container. Put it on the ship. That ship will now, and that person will manoeuvre the ship, drop it in Nigeria. Then what are we going to do? Very simple. We'll carry the tomato, put it on the shelf and now come and buy our tomato. All the stages behind that humans should have operated and contributed and would have been employed to create capital and labour. We don't have those. That's why we don't have the job sitting down for the candles to come and take. Point number two. Candles finished university and an entrepreneur like me, I now start my very small business, which of course, this is a real life story. I start my very small business and my books. When I tell my staff, there's a customer in Kalabada who wants our books to be dispatched to her. Go and find out how much it will cost for me to dispatch the books to Kalabada and the procedure. Then the staff comes back and tells me, Madam, to dispatch it to Kalabada is three five. And I tell the customer, customer will send it to Kalabada three five. It takes two days. Then she asks, what is the name of the cargo company? Then I ask my staff that I give transport money to go and investigate. And the person says, I did check the name of the logistics company. Let it out. Let out the laugh. What you're saying is it's interesting that this conversation is coming off quite coincidentally because one thing I have come to understand and see is that we have a problem that is beyond just the educational system. And like you rightly said, it's not about the fact that the educational system has a problem. It's actually about what is the educational system actually imputing. So we have a situation where mayhaps what has been imputed into people is an obsolete system of education. Maybe, for instance, the situation in the entire world and in reality has certainly changed. I remember when I was in secondary school, I read a book called The Mayor of Caster Bridge. And I was quite fascinated with that book because at that time my dad was an entrepreneur and he remained an entrepreneur. And I went home and I said to him that, Daddy, I presume that you are going to be out on business very soon. He almost slapped me like this guy is mad. Like, how do you come home? I was an SS1. And I said to him that, from what I read in this book here, they are talking about different revolutions. At that time, the mayor was pretty much doing things in a manual method. And I can see that automation is taking over from this book. And I see you here. You go to your office in the morning. Now you're a lawyer. You went into maritime and many other things there after maritime molested. But your system of oppression is still pretty much very, just you. It's you and your team members. You have a fax machine that is not even functional. So people are going to have to call you and talk to you. I said, Daddy, what I saw here is that you are going to need to improve on something. I had no idea what I was talking about fully at that time. So I'm thinking here that we are taking on a system of education that has taken an old methodology. We are teaching people outdated, obsolete things. And the reality is that research has shown now, and I'm sure that you in academia can testify to that, that in the near, in the new years to come, we're going to have people and the roles that they have right now, currently speaking, they will not have jobs for them. Some of those in employment, for instance now, I mean by training, okay, yes, so I'm a lawyer, I've been in journalism, but I realize a lot of the things I have done are totally not going to take me through this year and into the next year. I am going to have to embrace a lot of new thinking. So I think what we may be advocating for is that the educational system needs to begin to infuse new blood, needs to begin to look at what exactly are we teaching. The teachers themselves also need to reskill and upskill. So it might be a situation that Kando may actually need to take on what are the skills of the future. What are the technical things that need to be done. Destructive technology, thank you. Absolutely, I agree with you. Which is why I say the system is the problem. The system is the problem because you cannot rise beyond the system that you've gone through for 20 years. And I'll tell you why. Let me tell you why. Most classrooms today, they teach for exams. They don't teach for life. But the job of your job is to include yourself. I remember when I finished university, when I was 10, when I was 6 years old, it was not quite the same. Do we allow students to join us? That's true. When I was in year 3, I remember I told myself that I have to go to a computer school. So I took my pocket money, I remember vividly, 5,000 and I saved it up. And I took that money. And I went to a computer school. So year 3, that's one year. Sisi, please join us. Yes. So no, I need you back. Sisi, please join us. Sisi, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. You know, you guys are just infuriating me because this is what I've been advocating for for the past, I don't know, 6, 8 years. And this, what you guys are saying, it's scaffold. It's scaffold my notion of inclusive education. My call as an activist, I am calling for a revolution in the education system. And then I'm saying that education, it needs to be tailor made. Education, it needs to be tailor made. Because I'm feeling that the kind of education that we are giving now, it is not preparing for, it is not preparing actually, you know, for the present dispensation, you know, looking at the industrial revolution. What kind of skills and knowledge are we giving them? You know, for, for example, it is very important that everyone, I feel that, you know, as part of my call or as part of my advocacy, I feel that, you know, things like entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, it should be, you know, entrepreneurship and financial literacy. It should be the fundamentals or the course that every student, irrespective of the field that they go into. Because right now, we are no longer, you know, we shouldn't be producing employees. Children should not go to university with a mindset that, you know what, when I qualify, I need to go get a job. We want them to say that I need to create something. I realize that there is a gap. And this is, we need to produce, you know, a graduate that are problem solvers. That is why when you look at the 21st century skills, problem solving is one of the skills that we need to incorporate. We need to teach our students. When they say, I want to become a doctor because of one, two, three. Now that I want to become a doctor so that I can have money. We find, even if others get the same thing, we've got like time. Thank you. Thank you, Sisi. Sisi, thank you very much. Thank you, Sisi. We are waiting for a job with the skills and knowledge. We need the education system that will actually propel. Oh, yes, certainly. In compelling them, we'll get the entrepreneurs. Like Sisi said, the entrepreneurs are going to take the forefront, disrupting technology and the ability to get the children to have the skills they need to survive in the 21st century. Absolutely, I agree. I think that, yes, certainly from a young age, we want to start to include entrepreneurship skills and financial skills, decision making skills, problem solving skills from a young age. Thank you very much, everyone. That was an excellent conversation. Who is your symptom for the skills for the future Nigerian? Is it us or the government? Any time it lightens us after the break.