The world is moving on and you either move with the times or you become unemployable or out of business. It’s unfortunate that our universities are not helping matters as they continue to offer 18th century courses thus churning out graduates year-in, year-out who are ill-equipped for the 21st century skills needs!
Victoria Travels paid N150,000 to a young man in Makurdi to produce a digital signpost for its Head Office. Before now a carpenter would have constructed the signpost and an artist would have painted it! Both the carpenter, wood seller, artist and paint seller lost out! And come to think of it, the wooden signpost would not have costed even N20k or N30k! But it’s the man who charged N150k that got the job! The young man combined materials, his brain and his hands to earn N150k from a single job whereas university graduates are roaming about with certificates looking for jobs and earning zero year-in, year-out!
Yesterday news broke that Apple Inc the company that makes iPhones, iPads etc hit a market valuation of $3 trillion! Apple made $365 billion in revenues in 2021. In comparison, Nigeria’s FG earned a miserly $19 billion in 2021. So Apple is earning in 1 year what it takes Nigeria nearly 20 years to earn! Apple can conveniently place Nigeria on her payroll! The difference is that Apple is a digital company while Nigeria has pinned itself down as an analogue mono-economy depending on a physical commodity – oil.
10 years ago, the top 10 most valuable companies in the world had 4 oil companies on the list. Today in 2022, there’s no oil company in the top 10. The top 8 are all digital companies with Apple leading the pack followed by Microsoft, Amazon, Google etc. So Nigeria’s continued dependence on oil is harming the nation badly!
It’s become increasingly difficult to advise the Government because those in power are not ignorant of where the world is moving but they simply don’t want to steer Nigeria to that direction for reasons best known to them. The political leaders have also refused to create the enabling environment for the private sector (individuals & corporates) to thrive! The pillars of any economy are the rule of law and security which are very scarce in Nigeria! The FG straddles the power sector feeding the economy of over 200 million people with 3GW of electricity daily whereas the UK is feeding 730GW daily to 65 million people! Because the FG has failed to power the economy, the Government is not generating sufficient revenue to fund the budget therefore the FG has resorted to borrowing. Between January – August 2021, the FG earned N3.94 ($9.5b) trillion but paid out N2.9 trillion ($7b) to debt service. Thus creditors collected 74% of the money Nigeria earned leaving us with 27% to fund the budget which not being enough sends Nigeria to the debt market to borrow more! Nigeria is in a vicious circle of debt!
I supplied the data above on Nigeria’s finances to open our eyes to the fact that the Nigerian Government is in a financial crisis, infact our accounts are in a total mess! So if you are sitting there waiting for the Government to give you a job or repair your road or provide you with water etc, you are wasting your time!
2022 is the year you have to begin upskilling yourself to take advantage of the opportunities that the 21st century digital world offers!
A word is enough for the wise.
Nice day folks.
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