Certificates or in-demand skills:which way Nigeria/Africa

The world of work and job search has become increasingly challenging and dynamic. With the pandemic, essentials skills are becoming more pronounced and in demands. Nigeria’s approach to this since pre and post-independence has been on certificates and not majorly on skills and deliverables. The demands for certificates over skills had done a lot of damage to national development and especially so for educational sector. The drive is more of acquisitions of certificates and not the quality of individuals and skills acquired. We have more ‘certificated’ individuals with less in-demand skills. Certificate over skills had also driven all manner of corruptions within the sector and others. Many paid to get certificates they do not work for. Hence we have different forms of certificates.  We have ‘Toronto certificate, Oluwole certificates  etc The difficult question today is ‘should Nigeria continue to place emphasis on academic qualifications or shift to in-demand skills?’ How do we address the skill gap? The reality is there is nowhere across the globe where academic qualification is celebrated over in-demand skills. Academic qualifications are good, many keep investing Millions into acquiring them but not at the expense of in-demand skills. But here are the reasons in-demand skills are important 1-They gets the job done 2-Efficiency and effectiveness are guaranteed 3-Development can be accelerated faster with right skills 4- The nature of work and careers is changing fast, in the future, the right skills will be prized over academic qualifications alone. 5-Certificates without right attitude hinders corporate and national progress. 6-Many universities across Nigeria and other developing nations are not in touch with realities on the street -Employers’ pain increase daily with people without skills but have numerous certificates. Having right certificates may be good in today’s world but without right skills, everyone pains rises beyond necessary.  What then is Nigeria’s policy drive in this area? Thank you for your time. Please do subscribe and follow our Facebook, Instagram, Youtube handles