Nigeria’s soaring youth unemployment crisis is being compounded by deep-rooted flaws in the country’s education system, alongside other systemic challenges, according to a report from the ongoing 2025 Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja.
Speakers at the 31st Nigerian Economic Summit (NES #31), themed “The Reform Imperative: Building a Prosperous and Inclusive Nigeria by 2030,” emphasised that faulty education, graduates’ skills-mismatch and limited depth of the private sector, among others, are functional to the surging unemployment in Nigeria.
“Those in schools are not learning as they should, fueling the learning crisis in the country. Besides, students there are instances of graduates’ skills-mismatch syndrome.
Moreover, the private sector firms are too small to create the number of jobs needed in the country,” they stated.
To tackle the soaring unemployment crisis, experts at the NES #31 posited that Nigeria must create at least 4.5 million jobs every year to absorb its teeming unemployed population.
Read also: NESG outlines 6 approaches to improve Nigeria’s labour market situation
The discussants emphasised that the kind of jobs that will take people out of poverty are not being created in high numbers.
They advocated a reform of the technical and vocational institutions in the country to upskill graduates who will not only be fit for jobs but would also become job creators.
From outdated curricula and limited vocational training to a mismatch between graduates’ skills and labour market demands, experts warn that without urgent reforms, the nation’s young population will continue to face bleak job prospects.
Nigeria’s future hinges on its youth. With innovation and resilience, young Nigerians are not just demanding change but driving it, forging new paths in technology, art, and entrepreneurship.
“Empowering them with quality education and opportunities isn’t a choice; it’s the only sustainable strategy for a prosperous and stable,” they say.
The 31st Nigerian Economic Summit, with the theme “The Reform Imperative: Building a Prosperous and Inclusive Nigeria by 2030,” comes at a pivotal moment in Nigeria’s development journey.
With bold reforms already underway, NES #31 convenes a diverse gathering of global leaders, senior government officials, CEOs, economists, development partners, scholars, and change-makers to build consensus on the next phase of Nigeria’s transformation and shape actionable policies and practical solutions for Nigeria’s socioeconomic development.
The summit adopts a pragmatic, future-facing lens to shape a cohesive national agenda that balances macroeconomic stability with inclusive growth.
The principal objectives of NES #31 are to forge a consensus on Nigeria’s reform trajectory, balancing stability and inclusion; develop sector-specific reform strategies; galvanise stakeholder input into the National Medium-Term Development Plan; scale proven subnational reform models; and strengthen public-private-development partnerships for reform