The Credential Crisis: Dismantling Nigeria’s Factory of Unemployability

In the seventh installment of his policy series, "Blueprint for National Transformation," Amofin Beulah Adeoye delivers a scathing diagnosis of Nigeria’s educational sector, identifying what he terms a "statistical tragedy." The report argues that the nation has confused the mass printing of certificates with the cultivation of human capability, effectively creating a "factory of unemployability". According to Adeoye, this system hums with the appearance of progress—churning out graduates and convening exams—but ultimately leaves millions of young people stranded without the cognitive or technical skills required to thrive in a modern economy. The crisis is characterized not by a loud collapse, but by a quiet, systemic disorder where invigilators look away, lecturers trade grades, and ministries draft policies unanchored to evidence.

The analysis traces the root of this dysfunction to the secondary school level, where the foundation of learning is often fatally compromised. Citing data from WAEC and NECO, Adeoye notes that year after year, a significant percentage of candidates fail to secure credits in five core subjects, including Mathematics and English. In 2025 alone, despite over 1.9 million candidates sitting for WASSCE, barely 62 percent met the credit threshold for these critical subjects. These are not merely episodic failures but symptoms of a deep-seated diagnosis: the majority of students are moving through the system without meeting the basic cognitive thresholds necessary for further education, yet they are pushed forward as if progression is synonymous with preparation.

The bottleneck tightens at the tertiary level, where the annual admissions process by JAMB reveals a "struggle for comprehension" rather than a mere competition for space. The policy paper highlights the damaging impact of the "catchment area" doctrine, a well-intentioned policy designed to remedy regional inequity that has metastasized into a mechanism for institutionalizing educational asymmetry. By admitting candidates with vastly different scores into the same classrooms under the guise of regional development, the system creates a "two-speed" education model under one roof—one leg of gold and the other of clay—destabilizing the entire academic structure.

Adeoye reserves particular criticism for the state of Colleges of Education and Polytechnics, which he argues have become holding bays for the academically undernourished rather than engines of development. He notes a cyclical failure where weak students enter teacher training programs, only to graduate as weak teachers who return to the classroom to breed another generation of fragile learners. Similarly, polytechnics, intended to drive industrialization, are plagued by outdated tools and a funding model that prioritizes enrollment numbers over graduate competence, forcing employers to create their own "boot camps" to retrain hires who lack basic skills.

The human cost of this system is vivid. The report paints a picture of the "lived realities" of Nigerian youth: the teenager in Lagos retaking JAMB without the pedagogical tools to succeed, the student in Kano purchasing a "clean result" from a syndicate, and the engineering student taught with obsolete equipment. These scenarios illustrate an "unemployability factory" that did not emerge from chaos but from decades of policy inertia, where reforms are announced in communiqués but never implemented in the classroom.

To dismantle this factory, Adeoye proposes three specific, implementable reforms. First, he calls for a "unified baseline competency audit" that links outcomes from WAEC, NECO, and JAMB directly to teacher-training benchmarks. This transparency would map student failure rates back to specific institutions, allowing the government to remediate the source of the rot rather than blaming the students.

The second reform is a radical renewal of national teaching capacity. This involves raising admission thresholds for National Certificate in Education (NCE) programs and instituting independent assessments for lecturer retraining and promotion. Adeoye argues that the teaching profession must cease to be a refuge for the unemployed and instead become the primary engine of national intelligence, supported by a wage structure that attracts top talent.

Finally, the blueprint advocates for a "labour-anchored restructuring" of polytechnic education. This would require curricula to be updated annually based on industry validation, with federal funding tied to the employability of graduates rather than enrollment statistics. By incentivizing institutions to partner with the private sector, the skills taught in lecture halls would align with the requirements of the factory floor, ensuring that the nation’s potential is converted into genuine productivity.