The United Bank for Africa Plc, on Wednesday, announced a major shake-up of its corporate structure. According to the bank, its new structure will now consist of six strategic business groups and three strategic support groups. The move, the bank says, is the result of a three-year re-engineering project undertaken to further its quest to become the leading financial services group in Africa.

However, the composition and educational history of the new appointees caught my attention and made me to appreciate the truth in the assertions of those who argue that Nigerian graduates are unemployable: Only about 20 per cent of the new management team announced by the bank had their university education in Nigeria.

Recently, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, said that 70 per cent of Nigerian graduates were unemployable. Of course, that statement drew the ire of some Nigerians, who argued that Nigerians were no less intellectually endowed than their counterparts anywhere in the world. But those who argue in that manner miss the point, I believe. It isn’t about the intellectual prowess of the Nigerian undergraduate or his aptitude, but it’s about the system in which these attributes are maximised for future purposes.

While some may see the employment of foreign-trained technocrats in leading financial institutions and other organisations as somewhat unpatriotic in a nation with millions of unemployed graduates, I do not see it that way. As I have written in this column in times past, the dynamics of the global economy and their effects on local economies now require outstanding––not slightly above average–– professionals to run every business to a globally competitive level. For an employee (particularly in the new-look banking industry as well as other vital sectors like oil and gas) to satisfy his employer as a value-adding worker, his world view must be sophisticated and in tune with those of his counterparts in other parts of the world.

Late Walt Whitman Rostow, a renowned development economist and political theorist, also identified “how to build up a corps of technicians, capable of manipulating new techniques” as one of the series of ‘hows’ which planners must provide answers to in order to achieve successful industrialisation.

Unfortunately, our educational system, which has deteriorated gradually since the late 1980s, has gone so bad that providing an immediate answer to these ‘hows’ by our planners will be a Herculean task. Employers have, since the mid-1990s, complained of having to cope with the huge number of half-baked graduates being churned out by Nigerian universities. However, now that most of them have to get the best in a flat world or make do with the short end of the stick, they have shoved sentiments aside by hunting for world-class brains. Factors like good curriculum, access to up-to-date information, funding, competition and sound infrastructure, among others, combine to make a good university system that is capable of producing the drivers of a sophisticated and developed economy.

I did not realise what I missed during my days as an undergraduate and a postgraduate student of the University of Lagos until I had the cause to do some research at the Michigan State University in the United States. The school library had all I needed, and with the latest data and research tools, too. How would a hardworking student in such an environment not outshine another who had to run from one office of statistics to another, and still end up with stale data dating back to four or five years?

Many of the above factors were still in place in the country in the early 1970s until the establishment of more universities, mainly for political reasons and the reduction in allocations came into play. Over the years, while the demand for higher education has increased by about 80 per cent, allocation has fallen by almost 30 per cent. The resultant relative poor remuneration, incessant closure of universities, strikes and academic curricula with little or no link with international practice, among others, has only succeeded in sending the country’s strong academics in search of greener pastures in developed economies, leaving the education system worse and out of tune with the global requirement.

This spells danger for the economy, as more people will be trapped in poverty with a deteriorating education system. The current global food crisis, which is already draining the purses of many Nigerians, makes the situation more alarming.

A poor education system, which does not guarantee good employment for the people only leads to a situation where a legacy of poverty is the only inheritance that the poor can bequeath to their children, the unborn generation inclusive. It is true that many Nigerians who can afford it now enroll their children in private universities, while the few rich are increasingly sending their own abroad to make them employable. But what becomes of the children of the poor who can hardly feed themselves, much less attend the regular, but fund-starved and sub-standard schools? There is the probability that they will only get poorer as a result of lack of access to good education, which limits them to menial or sub-standard jobs. Then, it becomes really hard to dismantle this dynasty of poverty.

Agreed, the N210bn earmarked for education in the 2008 budget is an improvement over previous allocations, it is not enough to drive the sector to the required height. This is because the norm here is to spend N750m on enlightening the public that a N500m project is unaffordable, while making funds available for the flamboyance associated with government office without batting an eyelid. Succeeding governments are then left to tackle the fall-outs of wasteful spending and selfish leadership of their predecessors.

Revamping the education system may be a long-term panacea for poverty in Nigeria , but it is a precondition for sustainable development. And as the Yar’Adua administration warms up for the celebration of its one year in office, it should seriously begin to think of sparing Nigerians the time being wasted on unproductive probes and seek answers to the questions: Of what nature is Nigeria’s poverty? What are its causative agents? What lessons could be learnt from the mistakes of past anti-poverty measures? What concrete, not superficial, steps should be taken to tackle it? And how can these steps be translated into action within the shortest possible period while working on long-term developmental strategies.

Answers to these questions will put the administration on the right track to make the best use of its remaining years and hopefully make a better bakery out of the Nigerian educational system.