Dr Niran Oyekale, an Information Technology expert, says Nigeria’s skills gap is real, structural and solvable if the country adopts the Future Proof Economy Model (FPE), as a national framework for digital competence.
Oyekale, Executive Chairman, Commit Technology and Consult Limited said this on Thursday during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
He was reacting to Mr Tosin Eniolorunda, the Chief Executive Officer of Moniepoint Inc. who was quoted as saying that many Nigerians were not skilful enough to handle some jobs in his company.
Eniolorunda had disclosed that Moniepoint was struggling to fill more than 500 vacancies because many Nigerian applicants failed to meet global competency standards.
Oyekale, agreeing with the opinion, said the situation reflected a systemic failure in Nigeria’s education and skills development ecosystem.
He identified weak industry-relevant curricula, talent migration, poor work ethic culture and lack of globally recognised certifications as major factors affecting employability.
“We are confronting a systemic, structural crisis that has been decades in the making.
“Mr Eniolorunda identified that Nigeria’s education system fails to equip graduates for real-world industry demands, while the ongoing “japa” exodus drains the senior technical talent pool.
“This is further shifting social values, the get-rich-quick culture amplified by social media erodes the foundational work ethic and cognitive discipline that global competitiveness demands. He is correct on all three counts.
“I would add a fourth: for decades, Nigeria’s tertiary institutions have delivered curricula that are disconnected from the digital economy curricula designed for a world that no longer exists,” he said.
According to him, graduates arrive in the labour market without verified digital literacy, without globally recognised credentials, and without structured exposure to the career-specific competencies that global competitiveness demands.
“He was not insulting Nigerians; he was diagnosing a long-standing structural crisis,” he said.
According to him, the FPE Model, developed in collaboration with Certiport/Pearson and adopted by the Federal Government under the National Digital Literacy Framework (NDLF), offers a practical solution.
He explained that the framework was designed as an eight-level national competency ecosystem with globally recognised certifications in digital literacy, software development, cybersecurity, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data analytics.
“The core challenge identified by Moniepoint is quality verification.
“The FPE model solves this through internationally recognised certifications administered by global partners including Microsoft, AWS, Cisco, CompTIA and EC-Council,” he said.
Oyekale said every participant completing the foundational phase of the programme would obtain at least six internationally verifiable certifications.
He said that the model had already been adopted under resolutions of the 13th National Council on Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy (NCCIDE) held in Jos in December 2025.
He called on the Federal Government to immediately implement the resolutions, including integrating FPE Foundation certification into tertiary institution graduation requirements.
According to him, universities, polytechnics and colleges of education should make digital literacy certification compulsory for all graduates from the 2026/2027 academic session.
He also urged the government to operationalise VAT exemptions and official foreign exchange access for certification materials to reduce the cost burden on students.
The IT expert further called for the establishment of a Presidential Digital Literacy Management Structure to coordinate implementation across ministries, agencies and educational institutions.
He appealed to development partners, including the World Bank, African Development Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF to align future interventions with globally verifiable certification systems.
Oyekale also linked the FPE Model to the Federal Government’s National Talent Export Programme (NATEP), which targets one million export-linked jobs and 10 million certified digital professionals within five years.
He said Nigeria’s demographic advantage could only translate into economic gains through structured, certified and globally competitive talent development.
“Nigeria is not short of talent. We are short of structured, certified and verifiably competent talent,” he said.
(NAN)
