Before we wave it off, let’s sit with the numbers.
In 1974, graduate unemployment in Nigeria was under 1%. By 2020, it had climbed to 28.8%. Today, about 60% of graduates are labelled unemployable by the same market they were trained for. Youth unemployment hovers around 53%.
So when young people say school isn’t working, they’re not being rebellious they’re responding to what they see.
This isn’t anti-education. It’s lived experience.
It’s the child who watched their parents stretch to pay school fees year after year. It’s the student who mastered past questions but never learned how to solve real problems.
It’s the graduate who holds a certificate but has to start from scratch to earn a living—often using skills they picked up outside the classroom.
From their vantage point, the system made a promise it didn’t keep.
And if we’re honest, the system itself hasn’t really changed.
Much of what is taught today was built for a different Nigeria, one that needed clerks for an industrial economy that has since evolved.
Yet students still spend over a decade memorising content for exams that reward recall, not capability.
They leave school with little grounding in:
how money works,
how to think critically,
how to communicate ideas,
how to build or create value,
or even how the economy they’re entering actually functions.
So when business leaders like Tosin Eniolorunda laments about Nigerian graduates being unemployable, we have context to it.
This isn’t excusing vices and unhealthy choices made by young people but essentially the system is flawed and failing.
At its core, education should not be about certificates, but about capacity.
The real question every school should answer is simple:
Are the people who passed through here living better, more capable lives because of it?
If the answer is no, then high exam scores are just decoration.
Because learning that doesn’t translate into living isn’t education. it’s credentialing.
And that’s where the disconnect lies.
African children don’t just need certificates.
They need systems that prepare them to think, to build, to adapt, and to thrive.
Until then, “School Na Scam” will keep sounding less like rebellion and more like truth.