Turning passion to profit - Looking beyond white collar job

Nigeria houses about 10 million unemployed youths, for these youths to make an impact in the society and help nurture Nigeria's economy, Is it better to be patient for a firm to come calling or to bring out the entrepreneurial skills in them by 'starting out small ?

You don't need a soothsayer to tell you that being self employed is far better. Which company can pay Dangote, not even conglomerates can pay him. As a self employed, you're the master of yourself. You also have the opportunity of being employer of labour.

The white collar job syndrome is becoming a thing of old among fresh graduates, as they finds it hard  to get their way into the labour market with several factors ranging from dichotomy, incompetence and to the idea to "many labourers to few work". 

Why then do we even go to school?  The answer to this question is left unanswered. So many graduates and undergraduates cannot  point out or clearly state their reasons for being in school because the certainty of getting a good job after school is slim,chessy and seems unrealistic.

At the face of this dramatic menace, the idea and thought of skill acquisition for self employment sets in and to also stand as a saviour against unemployment among graduates. One is left to ponder on these troubling and storming questions. Has there been right channels to aid skills acquisition programs among graduates and undergraduate? Also, looking at the so called skills acquisition program organized on rare occasions, has there been an appropriate empowerment scheme after this program? and so many other questions that follows. One will of course question the" help" of a so called government who claimed to have trained undergraduates and graduates in different skills but fails to empower them to be able to maximize the skills and as such to do away with the white collar jobs hunting.

Looking away from all these, government at different level have claimed to create one empowerment program or the other. A good example of this is the ReadySetWork(RWS. 02) of the Lagos State.  The  RSW Cut across all tertiary institutions in Lagos  state which are Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education (ACCOED), Lagos State College of Health Science (LASCOHET), Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH), Lagos State University (LASU), Michael Otedola College of Education (MOCPED) and University of Lagos (UNILAG). 

The vision of the RSW is that every graduate from a tertiary institution situated in Lagos must have the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to gain meaningful employment or be self-employed and plan is to train all graduates in tertiary institutions through the RSW, as it proposed to train students for thirteen weeks on labour market, mindset reorientation, 21st century skills, entrepreneurship, employability skills and teacher track. 

Also, beneficiaries of the  RWS would be helped to secure internship placement and given skill for life, while there would also be seed funding for winners of the business pitch competition to be held as part of the training.

All these promises seems unachievable, as students who participated made it known that only 80 students from all institutions in Lagos State were given internship which is a failure prior to the vision of RSW. 

Therefore, the unanswered question pops up again, Are the necessary empowerment provided in place after the skills as been given? 

Another eyesore aspect of this self employment thing is the YouWin connect. The YouWiN Connect is a multimedia enterprise education initiative of the Federal Ministry of Finance (FMF) which aims to support young entrepreneurs as they PLAN, START and GROW their businesses. YouWiN Connect is saddle with the responsibility to promote entrepreneurship as a viable career option for young Nigerians which in turn will create jobs and wealth. The YouWin cannot be neither be recorded as a success prior to its vision because there is no proper sensitization on the nitty-gritty of the initiative. 

Narrowing this down to our immediate environment, the entrepreneurship class  of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Skills Acquisition(CESA) of an institution,  is not left out of this drama because one will definitely find it funny when the lecturer for a photography class tells the students that the school does not have a camera of its own and as such, the students have to go rent cameras for their classes. What then is the need for an entrepreneurship class when the appropriate medium to learn is not made available?

Furthermore, the clamour to look beyond getting a white collar job has been greatly achieved, as a reasonable amount of undergraduates and graduates now see reasons to be self employed but the medium to get necessary skills and empowerment has failed greatly and as such, joblessness has become the order of the day.