TETFund Creates a Program to Improve the Employability of Graduates in Nigeria

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has started to conduct a National Employability Benchmarking Program in Nigerian universities to close the gap of the 33% of unemployment rate in the country, as revealed by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). TETFund announced that the program would be in conjunction with the International Finance Corporation and other local partners.

The words of the TETFund spokesman

The Executive Secretary of the education agency, Sonny Echono, said this decision was part of the ways to make better employability in Nigeria and help higher education of learning towards having a better alignment with what the market wants.

While speaking in Abuja, he said IFC (International Finance Corporation) uses its vitae employability tools to create a diagnostic macro snapshot of how universities in Nigeria can use the best employability practices. 

Also, the organization would measure how higher learning institutions will establish a baseline for employability and potentially support the development of the strategic approach to sector intervention.

"The IFC Vitae is a global first-of-a-kind, survey-based, diagnostic instrument which assesses, processes, structures, and supports employability outcomes for higher education institutions. "The program provides system and institutional-level insights that help identify key intervention areas that will enhance the employability ecosystem and improve graduate employability outcomes." 

 The TETFund boss went further and said, "One of the key roles of TETFund is to develop an enabling system for young graduates to be part of the active labor market soon after graduation. "This diagnostic led by the IFC is the first phase of designing an intervention to improve graduate employability outcomes. The program will help improve where higher education institutions in the country are now, in relation to the global best practices." 

"The program's first stage was to develop a snapshot of current employability practices, specifically to understand how the current regulatory policy framework may act as an enabler or barrier to success. The focus was to collect, validate, and analyze the data of participating universities in Nigeria. The Cognity Advisory coordinated this stage, a local development consultancy working on behalf of the TETFund with the IFC global employability experts. 

"IFC Vitae has been deployed in different countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean to hundreds of higher education institutions, helping them develop a pathway for improving graduate outcomes and implementing institutional goals for graduate employability.  

"The recent stakeholders' roundtable in Abuja brought together leadership from Nigerian higher education institutions and provided an opportunity to share early findings from the program, highlight policy and process gaps, and discuss sector-level and institutional opportunities for improvement of practices supporting graduate employability."

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More on Employment in Nigeria

TETFund Executive Secretary also talked about the country's unemployment rate, particularly youth unemployment, which is on the high side. He went further and said The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had put the rate of unemployment in the country to be around 33.3%, while youth employment is at 42.5%, and youth underemployment is at 21%.

Another report by the NBS shows that about 133 million people in Nigeria are below the poverty line. Around 63% of the citizens of Nigeria are multi-dimensionally poor.

In addition, Sonny Echono said that aligning its intervention activities to meet the changing needs and strengthening the country's education sector delivery towards fostering an entrepreneurship culture are the best ways of realizing the massive potential of youth. This will also address unemployment, with other things like societal problems and advancing the economy.

The National Employability Benchmarking Program is overseen by The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), and supported by the Federal Ministry of Education, also with the National Universities Commission (NUC).

Final words on TETFund Employability for Tertiary Institutions

There is no doubt that Nigeria's unemployment rate is on the high side, which has made so many people live aimlessly. With the stats from the National Bureau statistics, it is really on the high side, and we hope that this new initiative by TETFund will reduce or help fight the unemployment rate in the country.

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