There are no jobs in Nigeria

“Accommodation is your first problem when you arrive into Lagos…”

Thirty-three years after Tony Allen, founding father of Afrobeats and a member of Fela Kuti’s Africa 70 Band, lamented that there was No Accommodation for Lagos, let me propose a modern remake: No work for Nigeria.

“Before you get the job… you go bribe… you go beg… you go waka so tey you go tire…”

There are more people looking for full-time work in Nigeria and cannot get it than those actually in full-time jobs.

This is a country with the third-highest official unemployment rate globally—a country where nearly 1 in 3 young people has nothing to do.

Nigeria has a huge unemployment problem. Yet the scariest part of the problem is that the data only shows us the tip of the iceberg, as we will see later.

First, there are a few terms to get familiar with, because the