Let's not blame David Moyes, lets not even blame Yakubu at all, he is just a reflection of the "system" that produced him. Let’s not even blame those Nigerians who are 'openly' calling a spade, a spade or who queue-up behind Moyes to give us a slap in the face (after beating ourselves silly in the first place).

In a country where AGE is everything and the CALENDAR rules, what do you expect?

This write-up was motivated by posts and responses to a recent remark by Everton Manager, David Moyes where, instead of lauding Yakubu Aiyegbeni for a brilliant performance in a UEFA competition, he not only went to dilute the footballers prowess but “rub dirt” on the face of his country! It was posted in NVS, by “Concerned Nigerians”!

In Nigeria for example, the University calendar has turned out to be something like:

(4 + X) years, for a 4year course, where 'X' is a variable that ranges from one to ten, depending on whether ASUU will go on a legitimate (or illegitimate!) strike, whether government would shut down the school as a result of student agitation over a very unfair increase in school fees without a commensurate value being-added or whether the student themselves will shutdown the school as a result of "cult-induced' fracas.

Now, a student within the system mentioned above would have done almighty JAMB, over and over again (failed to meet the cut-off or unfortunate to come from a state whose quota is already exhausted or lucky enough to write his Jamb exams in a center where there was “expo” and the whole result got cancelled or some other sundry reasons), before gaining admission to this same the university.

The same university where a computer science graduate cannot replace the hard-disk of a desktop (apart from the usual yahoo-yahoo), the only preparation they equip him with to confront the cruel “job-seekers world” is to cram all the historical development of the computer, from Charles Babbage to the Mark IV, but he does not know a single application of the computer to business development, networking, E-commerce, VOIP and telephony, communications or problem solving!

The same graduate of Mechanical Engineering will still take his car to "Sule, road-side mechanic", for a change of plugs and fuel filter! Yet he can brandish his "University or Polytechnic, designer-certificate", well laminated and preserved.

Now, after all the effort and suffering of national service (he came out with a brilliant 2-1 otherwise called second-upper!), he applies for this dream job and he is subsequently turned down: “we are sorry, you did extremely well in the aptitude test but the vacancy advert says "a graduate of no more than 23 years and you're 28 years as stated on your CV. That must be a crude joke

Over and over again, he gets the same reply; what do you think will be the "next move" of this young man whose dream is about to be killed? No, you're dead wrong, he won’t take to armed robbery, he comes from a decent home and would never soil his family name. He has so much self-belief and has vowed to ‘slug-it out’, no running to queue for a visa at the nearest embassy. Nigeria go survive, he continuously hums to himself.

Pronto, armed with a borrowed 500 naira, he trots off to the nearest local government and some illiterate tout turns out to be the savior of our 2-1 graduate.

Within five minutes, our 28years old second-upper graduate has suddenly become a 21year old born-again, highly eligible applicant. Don’t worry, the extra two years is for “insurance purposes” should another job opportunity take close to two years to surface; you cant afford to square-out five-hundred quid each time your application is turned down, on age reasons, can you?

So, he re-applies and since the “Human Capital” interviewers, insisting on employing a 23 year old graduate, who themselves started their first job when they were over thirty years old, and rode through higher education with a few government scholarship under their belt, don’t even have records or any means of checking- out my guy’s (except the revealing “weather-beaten shine” on his fore-head) real age, he is eventually given the job! Just another Yakubu.

Within a few years, he’s done so well that he has been rapidly promoted (now he is where his ‘age-mates’ should really be on the corporate ladder) and he one day, is sitting on an interview selection-panel and he is about to disqualify a “qualified graduate” on age basis but wait, his conscience is pricking him, he will love to recommend this guy but its “corporate policy”, a further reflection of the “national policy”. Finally, he blots-out the same story; we require a 23-year old for this job.

Except the guy is “sharp” or desperate enough to take a trip to the local government and get his birth certificate, thus, his future, sorted out fast, after-all, here he is, doing excellently-well,  despite shaving some years off his real age! Just another Moyes?

That is the state of our nation. Some questions are begging for answers:

1.)    I always ask, what has age, to a certain point, got to do with it? Especially for jobs that are not physical in nature or blue-collar jobs?

2.)    Which scientific data supports the idea that what a 23year old graduate can do, cannot be done by a 28year old, or done even better?

3.)    Bearing in mind the epileptic nature of our educational system and the lack of social-welfare educational fund within our system, which magic wand, or what chance are we giving this young people?

4.)    How did we come about this age factor? In the Europe and Americas, you will see men of all ages doing the same thing, as long as their legs can still carry them and their brain can still lead them. They even encourage people to return back to gainful employment in middle-age but in Nigeria, once you are over twenty-six years and you don’t have a job, panic will set-in and that is why we have graduates of fifteen years, still roaming the streets looking for that job that will use his acquired university ‘skill’.

5.)    How does someone who is not given the opportunity to “start working in the first place” acquire the often and callously stated “three-years minimum” work experience?

6.)    How come age has so much eaten into our consciousness? In U.K, some of the top level jobs are occupied by relatively young men of average-age of thirty two, David Miliban is an example but in Nigeria, even you need to be a certain age to qualify to run for certain office! And the same set of people who make the rules have been recycling themselves in office since 1960, with no apparent success?

7.)    Same goes for other “national celebration of mediocrity” like Quota system, catchment-area, zoning formula, The whole idea is to deny some group of people, opportunities which they hitherto, would have been entitled to or just to create an uneven playing field.

8.)    Why must a variable like age or state of origin be included in a form for employment into a government position?  How can Nigerians unite and see themselves as one when we intentionally create such ‘demography and criminal profiling’ of our own people?

We need to take a second look at this issue and totally expunge such variables from our national psyche; let every citizen be free to live and settle-down in any part of the country; let the voters decide who is capable of leading the country, not based on age or zoning system or rotation; let the best candidate get that university admission, irrespective of where he is from or which ethnicity or language he speaks.

To do otherwise is to continue to create liars, falsifiers, ‘yahoo-yahoozee’ and cheats out of our ordinary decent young men.

A nation’s future advancement is a function of its investment in its youth; you get what you pay for.

Robot  # 1 | 24.02.2008 22:53

Let's not blame David Moyes, lets not even blame Yakubu at all, he is just a reflection of ...Read the full article.

Exxcuzme  # 2 | 25.02.2008 00:05

Nigeria media should be the one orienting the people about this issues but they are busy with awards and musical jamboree plus their Amala journalism.

Rapon92  # 3 | 14.05.2008 13:55

I can kind of understand companies or firms trying to look for younger employees to hirer, due to the fact that you can not teach an old dog new tricks. this form of discrimination is actually seen and done in most european countries, but the difference is that there are laws reduce it. I also agree that the nigerian media should try and address the issue. the only problem there is most if not all the nigerian media is usually politically motivated. Nigerian people need to be more proactive in the different issues that Nigeria is facing.