#ENOUGHSAID with @Philasuquotes: Unemployment, Unemployable Youths and Our National Work Force

I remember telling this to the CEO and Managing Director of
a company who got me employed in their firm after I consulted for them for just
a few weeks.

They actually sacked a friend of mine to replace him with
me. It was a sad moment for me and that friend but I understood that the
company needed results and results were what they would get.

I was ready to give results..I didn’t care what my position
in the company was.

Just like in other places I had been employed, I came in as
a consultant but the management decided to give me a position in the company
and within few weeks, they offered me a partnership in the company.

This was not because I warmed the chair in the office so
well. It was because of results they saw and the ones they saw coming

When I work, I put in all I have into it. Most times when
some other staff slack, I fill in and get the job done there.

Why? Because I understand that efforts put in determine the
result. Once we have a target and find out that there is a weak link in our
chain, something needs to be done to strengthen that weak point. If it requires
me folding up my sleeves and jumping into work in that direction, I do so.

Yet, there is an amplified cry over the rate of unemployment
in our African countries. How ready for employment are our Youths? How
competent will they be on th job? Should the debate really be about
‘Unemployment’ or ‘Unemployability?’

I remember a friend of mine putting up a notice calling for
the services of a sales girl in one of her fashion shops. I was privileged (or
was it mis-privileged?) to be around when two girls walked past her shop and
came back right in to ask for the position.

Now, I had to give them space for the interview to be
carried out but after it all, I spoke with my friend and she told me the girl
that answered the questions asked for the salary and then told her she would
have to employ her and her friend. Obviously, she can’t be employed while her
friend is unemployed…or is it that she needs her friend’s company while
working?

Is that supposed to be to the additional cost of her
employer?

Having your friend to gist with while working and having
your employer pay you both?

 

This is sad.

 Really sad.

 

 obviously, the young girl is not aware that she will have to
start and build her career at a point in her life without the apron strings of
her parents or cordial cords of her friends.

 

We need to take work seriously. This lackadaisical attitude
to work really needs to stop.

 

I was speaking with a team mate of mine recently and pointed
out that if we each don’t work on the tasks put before us in our positions on a
team or project that it would affect the overall project.

 

A thing stops working when we stop putting work into it. A
company fails to work when it’s workers don’t work.

 A nation doesn’t work when its workforce are not working
either as a result of unavailability of work opportunities or their
unemployability.

 The issue of unemployment has been on the front burner in
Africa. Recently, the EFCC was made to probe the 2014 Immigration Employment
racket that led to the loss of the lives of several Nigerian youths in Abuja.

 I took a look at the pictures of the youths at the stadium
and what I saw made me cringe with a tinge of gloom. The crowd that came out to
get recruited into the Immigration was more than a football crowd. The stadium
was filled to the brim with young Nigerians who were assumed to

 be unemployed all
clamouring for the few advertised vacant positions.

 Now, amongst those in the crowd, how many of them were
really unemployed? Were they seeker another means to make money from a
government parastatal? We all know how most civil servants seemingly ‘laze’
through the months while awaiting their month-end salaries. This has been
repeatedly decried yet still seems to hold sway.

  

We’ll get back to this but let’s look at how many of those
youths were actually ‘Employable’. You see, the problem of the
‘unemployability’ of our youths is as much a bane as the ‘unemployment’ we
complain about.

Many youths today are not just unemployed but are actually
unemployable. You see, Robert Kawasaki once said that when you are young you
should work to learn more than you work to earn. That doesn’t seem to be an
ideology our youths thumb print to these days.

Many youths you see today that want to work are actually
concerned about how much they will get paid even before knowing what the job
entails. Many more would do just about anything as long as it puts some money
in the pocket or bank account. Yet still, many haven’t realized that they
should put in work in a field that relates to the one they will end up in.

What’s even more sad is that a lot more get to put tags on
themselves even without being qualified for what the tag says they do. We have
a lot of ‘Consultants’, ‘Life Coaches’, ‘Journalist’, etc that don’t even know
how to offer their services to themselves talk less of offering such to other
people.

  

Indeed, you should learn before you earn.

You should learn under someone that is already in the field
you want to go into. You can also research and enroll for some trainings that
would help up your ante on that career you see as a choice.

  

The work you put in while young should get to pay off when
you eventually start practicing your profession. So, you need to ensure that
wherever it is you seek for a job or some short-term engagement should be
somewhere that will add up someday to what you want to do or become in the long
run. Don’t do it just for the money.

Do it to learn first.

Now, let’s go back to our nation. Our civil service is
really a cause for concern. It has become more of a social cause than our
nation’s work force. Civil servants are supposed to render services in the
parastatals they serve in but we have more of them who are there just to while
away time, do some routine and ‘ancient history’ work and collect salary when
it is made available. Even the ones that join the civil service with gusto
eventually seem to get sucked into the rigmarole.

  

It is like a gorging cyst of ineptitude, routine of
incompetence and ofcourse laziness. Yes, there are civil servants who are
proactive and whose input can stir a change in the system but the system itself
needs more than a stir. It needs a heavy shake and a revival.

Many gifted and competent persons end up working in the
private sector or starting up their own companies but it sure is necessary for
us to have a civil service that is competent and innovative.

Imagine if the likes of Dangote, Fela Durotoye, Steve
Harris, Leke Alder, Tara Durotoye, etc were civil srvants or heads of
parastatals and were all given the free will to innovate and move that sector
to the optimum it can become?

  

Well, those mentioned names have made their marks in life
and in the nation. We will not wait for a Dangote or a Tara Durotoye to make
that move. It can be made by me and you. Let’s take work serious and make
whatever it is we put our hands to work…even as we put the nation to work.

Philip Asuquotes is one of the Strategic minds that have been concerned
about the growth of Africa through her youths. He is a strategy consultant and
a seasoned mediapreneur. You can reach him via philipasuquo360@gmail.com or
07063607101.