Tag Archives: Politics

Education, issues, Naija, Personal Development, Politics, University

Why Nigeria’s Workforce Debate Is Stuck at the Wrong Altitude

For two weeks, Nigerian commentators have argued over whether Tosin Eniolorunda is right that Moniepoint MFB cannot find 500 qualified Nigerians to fill its vacancies. I have read several commentaries, opinions, and research outputs. Each is responding to something real. But for me, the debate is being argued at the wrong altitude. The real question is not “where is the talent?” The real question is: what is the talent supposed to be for?

When a country commits to a long-term economic and industrial strategy, its education system must become the mechanism for delivering the necessary human capital. The curriculum, the skills pipeline, and the financing for training should not operate in a vacuum. They should be intentionally reverse-engineered from the ultimate goals of the national vision. That is how graduates are prepared for the future economy the country intends to build, making the education system fundamentally downstream of national vision. Three cases make the principle visible.

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issues, Naija, Politics

Reforming Nigeria’s Asset Privatization Approach

I came across a post on X recently that sent me back to the troubled history of Nigeria’s privatization programme.

It reminded me of the 2003 NITEL-Pentascope scandal. NITEL, Nigeria’s state-owned telecommunications company, was not just another public enterprise. It was responsible for critical national infrastructure, including Nigeria’s access to the SAT-3 undersea cable, a major artery for international connectivity.

Yet NITEL was handed over to Pentascope, a Dutch firm that was barely a year old, reportedly had only eight employees, including the janitor, and had no serious experience managing a major telecommunications company.

Within a year, NITEL moved from a ₦15 billion profit to a ₦19 billion loss. More than 250,000 homes reportedly lost their phone lines. It was not a complex failure. It was a failure hiding in plain sight.

For me, Pentascope is not just a bad chapter in our telecoms history. It is the perfect lens through which to examine many of Nigeria’s privatization heartbreaks: ALSCON, Ajaokuta, Delta Steel, and the 2013 power sector unbundling.

In that same X thread, someone argued that Nigerians should simply “move on” from these failures. It reads like an innocuous statement from a frustrated citizen, but never a good idea. Moving on without understanding what went wrong is not closure. It is willfully inflicted amnesia, acting mature. Nations that forget their policy failures do not heal from them. They repeat them, and usually at a higher cost.

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issues

Reclaiming Journalism: Elevating Policy Over Political Drama

Taiwo Oyedele & Anthony Blinken. Images from AB Magazine and The New York Times

One of the greatest needs of human society today is to resist the temptation of letting politics overshadow the narratives of development. Unfortunately, this has become increasingly common, leading to the erosion of qualitative conversations about substantive issues. Add to this the high-speed consumption of information and the democratized media space, and we find ourselves caught in a spiral of ugly dialectics, yielding little more than sensationalized reportage with no progressive value.

More troubling, however, is how journalists, who are meant to shape public discourse by asking intelligent questions of those in power, often veer into the realms of mischief. They court political jesters who “must politic” instead of engaging meaningfully with policy experts. Even when they sit down with individuals who staff the critical nerves of public policy, their focus tends to remain firmly on politics, leaving policy discussions as an afterthought.

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