Shaking Off the White Collar Blues

Welcoming his MBA class, a professor made this stirring speech to his new group of students, some taking a break from their first 2-3 years of toil in the corporate work place, others whose undergraduate degrees were still wet from the print ink certifying their first ‘escape’ from the universities they attended.  He said: ‘If you took this leap because you wanted to enhance your knowledge space in order to command a larger salary than your peers that are still hard at work in the labour market; if you've decided to spend these years of your life to show that you have a higher aptitude for complex financial algorithms and management theories only to update your resume in order to land what will be, hopefully, long term stable employment, then you are wasting the seat that has been assigned to you.  You might as well give it up now and return home.  Indeed you will get a head start but, if these are the only reasons you are here, those hungry enough in the workforce out there will catch up with you, and they will eventually overtake you.

‘While you are here, your goal should be to expand the frontiers of economic development.  You should start to ask yourself, and plan for, what it is YOU can do to instantly create real value in your respective economies, and not to mint a shiny new resumé.  Have this at the back of your minds and these two years will be one of the most exciting years of your life, and will hopefully lead you to the beginning of something profound’.  Now I just made this all up, but it wouldn’t be farfetched if I said that these kinds of speeches are required to kick our paper-pushing, suit-loving white collar generation up the backside.  Our collective psyche has so much been affected that we tend to abhor all things that require physical exertion as a means to creating value.  Not denigrating whatever we, as individuals, do for a living presently, but in order to move the Nigerian economy to the next level, a closer look must be given to the real sector.  Not the kind of review the Federal Government gives to burning issues (you know, the ‘announce it and hope they’ll forget that we said anything’ kind) but taking active steps to creating our own empowerment revolution.

Be that as it may, the place that technical education has in our current educational system needs to be significantly reviewed.  Those days when school pupils that did not have the aptitude for ‘pure academics’ were told to transfer to technical colleges in order to learn a life skill, presupposing that these skills were, to be politically correct, for the academically challenged, should now be made history.  There is ample evidence to show that a lack of skilled artisans has caused an influx of foreign stonemasons, carpenters, electricians from Europe and China, and even our neighbours Benin Republic!  Not saying we should all become handymen, but emphasizing the importance and apparent value of these skills in the school curriculum, and allowing young people to find their paths would go a long way in shaping their creative future.  Making things that work should equally be as valuable as understanding and applying concord in sentences and memorizing the ‘almighty formula’.  A closer look may actually reveal that these are intertwined, and will add value to each other when effectively applied.

Entrepreneurship studies should be more than what it adds to the CGPA, and it should be more than just another subject for a bored lecturer.  It should be the web that ties our major study disciplines together.  This might be asking too much of our venerated intellectuals in our esteemed ‘citadels’ of education, but I’m sure they can figure something out; a way to suffuse engineering, architecture, medicine and the other ‘primary’ university disciplines with the ideology of the social science disciplines.  It is not enough that such is a mere course that needs to be taken before a student graduates.  They should instil it in their teachings, letting those undergraduates know how important it is, just in case a curious one intends to strike out on his/her own, as opposed to joining the large multi-nationals.  Let us remember that these companies we so desperately want to work for were seeds sown by individuals who wouldn’t accept the norm.  A generation of intellectual non-conformists; those who strive to challenge the status quo.

And for those of us who are already in the labour market, who know of no other way to earn a living, all is not lost.  We grew up believing that being an accountant or a doctor was the only way to make it in the world.  I remember being asked by my primary school teacher what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I proudly said: ‘Personnel Manager’ just because my father was one.  I’m sure many of you fall into that category: holding diplomas that you had no passion for, and following in the paths set for you just because there was no other way.  All is not lost though.  We can recreate for ourselves a semblance of that life that we would have wanted.  Look for that thing that you’d rather be doing and do it;  If you don’t know how to, learn it.  If you think it is too late for you, provide support to someone that can.  And when you have children, encourage them to be all they can be.

There’s a limit to which foreign investment can add value: they’re deployed to achieve a stated return, and all that is necessary, including importing manpower, will be done to help them achieve this.  Our challenge is to grow ours, and to create a value chain that supports our vision for a better economy and country.  Like we were taught, the three basic needs of man are food, shelter and clothing.  Once we redirect our purpose along these lines, and all that is required to make them available to everyone that needs it, we will do just fine.  For those that have already started, I salute you.  For the rest of us, it’s time to get cracking.