Ad Hoc Employment

Ad hoc employment; a factor of graduate unemployment in Nigeria.

Nigeria, being the most populated black nation in Africa and in the world at large extremely faces the problem of graduate unemploymemt. Hence leaving most of our Nigerian university graduates in a state of idleness and lack of skill utility.

A country with an estimated population of about 160,000,000 people has an unemployment rate of about 63% (national bereau of statistics), i.e about 102,000,000 Nigerians (non graduates inclusive).

Considering this state of unemployment, one can outline many factors or causes of such economical enigma. Some of which are: lack of natural resources, bad governance, economic recession, over population, staff retrenchment, monetary policy… etc. but one factor that wasn’t mentioned is the high percentage of adhoc or contract employment.

‘Ad hoc’ is a latin phrase meaning “for this”. It generally signifies a sokution designed for a certaim problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes. In Nigeria, most of the government institutions and private firms practice ad hoc style of employment majorly because the cost of labour is cheap and affordable. This is a very common during one’s one year participation in the National Youth Service Corps. (NYSC).

A scheme that allows for fresh Young Nigerian graduates to render a one year service to her father land. In the long run, this policy is a very big threat to the graduate employment in the country. Most of the Government and private institution practice the ad hoc style of employment majorly because the cost of labour is cheap and affordable, most of these institutions takes their shade under the wings of this one year national service to the country to employ quality Nigerian Graduates at an undermined labour wage. They make the service personell to render quality service with the hope of retaining the person. As these graduates’ corps members are released out of...