Nigeria does not lack people working, it lacks enterprises that are registered, well-capitalised – Abia Commissioner

Uche Eme Uche, Commissioner for Tertiary Education, Abia State, has observed that Nigeria does not lack people working for themselves; rather, it lacks enterprises that are registered, well-capitalised and standards-compliant businesses that employ others.

Uche made the submission, Friday, October 23, 2026, while delivering a paper titled ‘From Degree to Destiny: Creating Value, Generating Opportunity and Transforming Society’, at a

Pre-Convocation lecture of the 9th – 13th Convocation ceremonies of Rhema University Nigeria, Aba, Abia State.

She noted that self-employment was often a means of survival and may require no degree, while enterprise, by contrast, is a development strategy that education should equip graduates to pursue.

She also said that the World Economic Forum, after surveying more than 1,000 employers across 55 economies, projected that technology and demographic change will create about 170

million jobs and displace 92 million by 2030, a net gain of 78 million.

“Yet one in five jobs will be significantly disrupted, and nearly four in ten workplace skills will change. Put simply, the world is not running out of work; it is running short of people equipped for the work that is emerging.

“Africa’s demographics make the issue urgent. Africans now account for about one in five people worldwide and are projected to represent nearly one in four by 2050.

“The evidence I have set before you today points to a single conclusion: that in an economy where 93 of every 100 jobs are informal, where unemployment is higher among the educated than among the population at large, and where nearly four out of every ten workplace skills will change within five years, a certificate is a necessary condition of graduate prosperity and nowhere near a sufficient one.”

She noted that what closes that gap is not another qualification but the disposition to create value, where none existed, to generate opportunity for people who did not earn it, and to repair the portion of the wall that stands within reach. Nigeria will not be secured by certificates.

“It will be secured by graduates, who strengthen the institutions they inherit rather than exhaust them, and who serve without needing to be observed doing so.

“Graduating class, in a few days you will receive a degree; from that moment, the world will ask what you can do with it. Do not wait for opportunity, create it. Do not merely enter society; improve it. Let excellence be your habit, courage your compass, service your purpose, and integrity your unbreakable covenant. Rise above excuses. Outlook limitations, turn knowledge into solutions, privilege into responsibility, and ambition into impact.

“Wherever you go, leave people stronger, institutions better, and your nation more hopeful; create value and generate opportunities to transform society,” she said.