NIGERIA DOES NOT HAVE ONLY A TALENT PROBLEM.
WE HAVE A TALENT-USE PROBLEM

Why capable people underperform inside incapable systems

By Dr. Omolaraeni Olaosebikan

There is a peculiar thing that happens to some Nigerians when they leave Nigeria. The employee once described as difficult suddenly becomes a star performer. The young professional told to “calm down” for asking too many questions becomes valued for initiative. The doctor, engineer, researcher or technologist who struggled to make an impact inside one system begins to flourish inside another.
We usually call it brain drain. Perhaps we should also ask what the brain was draining from. Nigeria unquestionably has a skills problem, but we have spent so much time asking whether our people are sufficiently skilled that we have paid too little attention to an equally uncomfortable question: what happens to capable people after we put them inside our institutions?

The skills deficit is real. A 2025 report cited by the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund found that 65 per cent of Nigerian employers regard skills gaps as a major barrier to organisational transformation. Employers are also searching for capabilities in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, data, systems thinking and customer service. Nigeria therefore cannot pretend that every struggling employee is simply a misunderstood genius. Our education-to-employment pipeline needs serious repair.

But that is only half the diagnosis. A country can suffer a shortage of particular skills and simultaneously waste a disturbing amount of the talent it already possesses. Those realities are not contradictory.
Consider the labour market itself. The National Bureau of Statistics reported that informal employment accounted for 93 per cent of employment in the second quarter of 2024, while time-related underemployment stood at 9.2 per cent. The official unemployment rate was 4.3 per cent. The figures remind us that the question is no longer simply whether Nigerians are working. It is what kind of work they are doing, under what conditions, and how productively their abilities are being used.
Employment is not the same thing as productivity. Possessing talent is not the same thing as creating an environment in which talent can perform.

Put a highly capable person inside a system where approvals take weeks, initiative threatens hierarchy, technology is inadequate, promotion bears little relationship to merit, mistakes are punished more severely than inertia, and the safest career strategy is to agree with the most senior person in the room. Eventually, something predictable happens: the employee adapts.

Curiosity becomes caution. Initiative becomes compliance. Ideas become things discussed privately after meetings rather than offered during them. The organisation then looks at the diminished version of the employee it helped to create and concludes: our people are simply not good enough.
The cost goes far beyond individual frustration. The World Bank’s Human Capital Index Plus now looks not only at health and education but also at how skills develop during working life. For Nigeria, its 2025 assessment places the education pillar at 64, below the lower-middle-income-country median of 88. It estimates that increasing effective schooling to 12 years could raise labour earnings by about 20 per cent over the long term.

The important point is that human capital does not stop developing on graduation day. The workplace can sharpen ability, stretch it and reward it. It can also slowly diminish it.
That should make employers reconsider the fashionable complaint that “young people don’t want to work.” Some do not. Every generation has its share of entitlement, indiscipline and mediocrity. But leadership becomes lazy when anecdotes become a diagnosis of an entire generation.

Before declaring that talent has disappeared, organisations should examine what they reward. Do we reward the person who solves the problem, or the person who never challenges the boss? Do we promote competence or proximity? Can an employee respectfully disagree without being branded arrogant? When somebody brings a new idea, is the first instinct “How could this work?” or “Who authorised you?”
These questions are becoming more urgent because Nigeria is not operating in a closed labour market. The World Bank says about 3.5 million people enter Nigeria’s labour force every year. Weak creation of quality jobs, limited entrepreneurial opportunities and rising emigration make the challenge even sharper.
Our demographic advantage will therefore not become an economic dividend merely because Nigeria has millions of young people. Population becomes productive capital only when ability meets opportunity, tools, accountability and competent leadership.

This is also where the japa conversation deserves greater honesty. Salary matters. Security matters. Infrastructure and quality of life matter. But people also migrate towards systems: systems in which equipment works, processes are clearer, expertise carries weight, professional effort can produce an outcome and performance has a reasonable chance of being recognised.
When trained people repeatedly conclude that their abilities can create greater value elsewhere, retention cannot be solved entirely with patriotic appeals. Sometimes the problem is not simply that another country pays more. It is that another system allows the person to do more.

The private sector should resist reading this as criticism meant only for government. Dysfunction has no exclusive address. A beautifully branded company can still have a culture where information is hoarded, managers are insecure, meetings replace decisions and talented employees spend more energy navigating personalities than solving problems.
None of this absolves the Nigerian professional of responsibility. Talent without discipline is potential wasted. Qualifications without continuous learning expire quickly. The future workplace will increasingly reward adaptability, digital fluency, critical thinking, communication and the ability to learn faster than a job description changes.

Accountability must therefore run in both directions. Employees must keep developing themselves. Organisations must stop demanding world-class performance while preserving systems that punish world-class behaviour.
Nigeria needs to broaden the question. Yes, how do we produce better talent?

But also: how do we stop wasting the talent we produce? Our schools must improve. Businesses must train. Young professionals must keep learning. Yet organisations must also build cultures in which merit can breathe, managers lead rather than merely supervise, technology enables rather than frustrates, and intelligent disagreement is not mistaken for insubordination.

Perhaps, then, the Nigerian who suddenly excels abroad has not acquired an entirely new brain at Heathrow, Toronto Pearson or JFK. Sometimes what has changed is the ecosystem around that brain: the tools, expectations, incentives, consequences, processes and permission to perform.

That does not mean every Nigerian system fails or every foreign one succeeds. It means that before we conclude that our greatest problem is a shortage of capable people, we should examine the machinery into which we place them. A nation cannot complain indefinitely about losing its best minds while refusing to interrogate the conditions under which those minds are expected to work.

The story we tell about talent determines where we look for the solution. Blame the people, and we keep searching for better people. Examine the system as well, and we begin building places where good people can become exceptional. Nigeria needs both better-prepared talent and institutions capable of using that talent well and this is why the narrative matters.

Dr. Omolaraeni Olaosebikan
Strategic Communications & Reputation Management Expert | Founder, The Narrative Matters®

By Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D
When teachers abandon their classrooms in protest, the consequences extend beyond the dispute between workers and government. Lessons are suspended, academic calendars disrupted and children lose instructional time that cannot always be recovered. Yet behind every teachers’ strike may lie grievances that deserve attention rather than dismissal.
That is the dilemma confronting the Federal Capital Territory, where the Nigeria Labour Congress commenced an indefinite strike on 7 October over teachers’ promotions, career progression and administrative decisions affecting education personnel.
The confrontation escalated when FCT Minister Nyesom Wike directed the six area council chairmen to enforce no work, no pay against participating workers. He described the action as politically motivated and maintained that legitimate demands were being addressed. Labour disagrees.
At the centre of the dispute is a requirement that teachers can only be promoted when vacancies exist. The NLC argues that qualified teachers have consequently suffered prolonged career stagnation despite meeting advancement requirements. It also seeks reconsideration of teachers excluded from the 2025 promotion examinations and reversal of certain redeployments and demotions.
These are serious concerns. Career progression affects morale, professional dignity and commitment to public education. But government’s position also warrants examination. Promotions have implications for staffing structures, budgets and public service rules. The question is whether the existing framework fairly recognises professional growth or traps qualified teachers in positions they have outgrown.
A teacher may acquire additional qualifications, develop competence and accumulate valuable classroom experience without a senior administrative vacancy arising. Should such development count for nothing until somebody retires or resigns? The FCT Administration owes teachers a convincing answer.
There is, however, disagreement within organised labour. The FCT Trade Union Congress and the Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools have reportedly distanced themselves from the strike, questioning the consultation preceding it and warning about its consequences. Their reservations complicate any suggestion that all affected workers speak with one voice.
Industrial action is a legitimate bargaining instrument, but it carries responsibilities. Union leaders should demonstrate that negotiations have been meaningfully pursued, their demands clearly defined and their mandate properly established. Equally, government should not dismiss employment grievances merely by questioning labour leaders’ political motivations.
Wike has alleged that FCT NLC chairman Knabayi Adalo is pursuing a political agenda. Adalo disputes that characterisation and maintains that teachers have endured prolonged stagnation. Even if political motives were established, they would not automatically invalidate genuine employment concerns.
The proper response is evidence. How many teachers qualify for promotion but remain stagnant? How many vacancies exist? Which agreements have been implemented, and which remain outstanding? What financial or administrative constraints prevent resolution? Both sides should place verifiable answers before the public.
The no work, no pay directive introduces a legal dimension. Government may invoke applicable rules concerning remuneration during strikes, while workers retain rights associated with lawful collective action, subject to statutory requirements. Whether deductions are lawful in these circumstances should be assessed against the law, not political rhetoric.
But there is a third party whose interests risk disappearing beneath the confrontation: the child.
Children neither negotiate promotions nor determine employment policy. Yet when classrooms close, they suffer consequences without any influence over the dispute. Examination candidates lose preparation time. Children from disadvantaged households may have no access to private lessons or digital alternatives. Repeated disruptions can therefore deepen educational inequality.
The right to education must remain central to the debate. It would be unfair to demand that teachers endure indefinite injustice simply because their work is indispensable. A demoralised workforce ultimately damages educational quality. But it is equally troubling when unresolved employment disagreements repeatedly interrupt children’s learning.
The solution lies neither in humiliating teachers nor in treating classrooms as permanent bargaining instruments.
The FCT Administration and labour representatives should establish a transparent, time bound mechanism to review the promotion policy, identify outstanding entitlements and resolve contested administrative decisions. Where negotiations have failed, independent mediation deserves consideration. Any settlement should include a credible plan to recover lost instructional time.
Beyond this dispute, Abuja should examine whether education sector employment conflicts require a standing resolution framework capable of intervening before disagreements escalate into school closures. Prevention is preferable to emergency negotiations after pupils have already lost weeks of learning.
Nigeria frequently promises improved educational standards and a more competitive workforce. Such ambitions require fair career structures, accountable administration and consistent classroom teaching. The present confrontation offers an opportunity to address all three.
Wike and organised labour may disagree about who caused the strike, and each may consider its position justified. But neither can transfer responsibility for resolving the dispute to children sitting at home.
When government and teachers fight over the conditions of teaching, both must remember the purpose of teaching.
Whatever the eventual outcome, Abuja’s schoolchildren should not be made to pay the price of a dispute they did not create.
Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D, FIMC, CMC
Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com
WhatsApp ONLY: +2348069716645

Why capable people underperform inside incapable systems

By Dr. Omolaraeni Olaosebikan

There is a peculiar thing that happens to some Nigerians when they leave Nigeria. The employee once described as difficult suddenly becomes a star performer. The young professional told to “calm down” for asking too many questions becomes valued for initiative. The doctor, engineer, researcher or technologist who struggled to make an impact inside one system begins to flourish inside another.
We usually call it brain drain. Perhaps we should also ask what the brain was draining from. Nigeria unquestionably has a skills problem, but we have spent so much time asking whether our people are sufficiently skilled that we have paid too little attention to an equally uncomfortable question: what happens to capable people after we put them inside our institutions?

The skills deficit is real. A 2025 report cited by the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund found that 65 per cent of Nigerian employers regard skills gaps as a major barrier to organisational transformation. Employers are also searching for capabilities in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, data, systems thinking and customer service. Nigeria therefore cannot pretend that every struggling employee is simply a misunderstood genius. Our education-to-employment pipeline needs serious repair.

But that is only half the diagnosis. A country can suffer a shortage of particular skills and simultaneously waste a disturbing amount of the talent it already possesses. Those realities are not contradictory.
Consider the labour market itself. The National Bureau of Statistics reported that informal employment accounted for 93 per cent of employment in the second quarter of 2024, while time-related underemployment stood at 9.2 per cent. The official unemployment rate was 4.3 per cent. The figures remind us that the question is no longer simply whether Nigerians are working. It is what kind of work they are doing, under what conditions, and how productively their abilities are being used.
Employment is not the same thing as productivity. Possessing talent is not the same thing as creating an environment in which talent can perform.

Put a highly capable person inside a system where approvals take weeks, initiative threatens hierarchy, technology is inadequate, promotion bears little relationship to merit, mistakes are punished more severely than inertia, and the safest career strategy is to agree with the most senior person in the room. Eventually, something predictable happens: the employee adapts.

Curiosity becomes caution. Initiative becomes compliance. Ideas become things discussed privately after meetings rather than offered during them. The organisation then looks at the diminished version of the employee it helped to create and concludes: our people are simply not good enough.
The cost goes far beyond individual frustration. The World Bank’s Human Capital Index Plus now looks not only at health and education but also at how skills develop during working life. For Nigeria, its 2025 assessment places the education pillar at 64, below the lower-middle-income-country median of 88. It estimates that increasing effective schooling to 12 years could raise labour earnings by about 20 per cent over the long term.

The important point is that human capital does not stop developing on graduation day. The workplace can sharpen ability, stretch it and reward it. It can also slowly diminish it.
That should make employers reconsider the fashionable complaint that “young people don’t want to work.” Some do not. Every generation has its share of entitlement, indiscipline and mediocrity. But leadership becomes lazy when anecdotes become a diagnosis of an entire generation.

Before declaring that talent has disappeared, organisations should examine what they reward. Do we reward the person who solves the problem, or the person who never challenges the boss? Do we promote competence or proximity? Can an employee respectfully disagree without being branded arrogant? When somebody brings a new idea, is the first instinct “How could this work?” or “Who authorised you?”
These questions are becoming more urgent because Nigeria is not operating in a closed labour market. The World Bank says about 3.5 million people enter Nigeria’s labour force every year. Weak creation of quality jobs, limited entrepreneurial opportunities and rising emigration make the challenge even sharper.
Our demographic advantage will therefore not become an economic dividend merely because Nigeria has millions of young people. Population becomes productive capital only when ability meets opportunity, tools, accountability and competent leadership.

This is also where the japa conversation deserves greater honesty. Salary matters. Security matters. Infrastructure and quality of life matter. But people also migrate towards systems: systems in which equipment works, processes are clearer, expertise carries weight, professional effort can produce an outcome and performance has a reasonable chance of being recognised.
When trained people repeatedly conclude that their abilities can create greater value elsewhere, retention cannot be solved entirely with patriotic appeals. Sometimes the problem is not simply that another country pays more. It is that another system allows the person to do more.

The private sector should resist reading this as criticism meant only for government. Dysfunction has no exclusive address. A beautifully branded company can still have a culture where information is hoarded, managers are insecure, meetings replace decisions and talented employees spend more energy navigating personalities than solving problems.
None of this absolves the Nigerian professional of responsibility. Talent without discipline is potential wasted. Qualifications without continuous learning expire quickly. The future workplace will increasingly reward adaptability, digital fluency, critical thinking, communication and the ability to learn faster than a job description changes.

Accountability must therefore run in both directions. Employees must keep developing themselves. Organisations must stop demanding world-class performance while preserving systems that punish world-class behaviour.
Nigeria needs to broaden the question. Yes, how do we produce better talent?

But also: how do we stop wasting the talent we produce? Our schools must improve. Businesses must train. Young professionals must keep learning. Yet organisations must also build cultures in which merit can breathe, managers lead rather than merely supervise, technology enables rather than frustrates, and intelligent disagreement is not mistaken for insubordination.

Perhaps, then, the Nigerian who suddenly excels abroad has not acquired an entirely new brain at Heathrow, Toronto Pearson or JFK. Sometimes what has changed is the ecosystem around that brain: the tools, expectations, incentives, consequences, processes and permission to perform.

That does not mean every Nigerian system fails or every foreign one succeeds. It means that before we conclude that our greatest problem is a shortage of capable people, we should examine the machinery into which we place them. A nation cannot complain indefinitely about losing its best minds while refusing to interrogate the conditions under which those minds are expected to work.

The story we tell about talent determines where we look for the solution. Blame the people, and we keep searching for better people. Examine the system as well, and we begin building places where good people can become exceptional. Nigeria needs both better-prepared talent and institutions capable of using that talent well and this is why the narrative matters.

Dr. Omolaraeni Olaosebikan
Strategic Communications & Reputation Management Expert | Founder, The Narrative Matters®