My One Silly Suggestion

Recently, I visited some friends at the University of Benin who are medical students. In their off campus apartment at Osasogie, we branched off into an argument relevant to the unemployment state in Nigeria today. I began by telling them how compressed the labour market was; how graduates jostled for jobs which paid lesser than the minimum wage.

‘I have consistently watched graduates produced since 2010,’ I said, ‘none I know of has had a well-paying job.’

‘That is even better,’ Precious said. He was lying face-up on the only bed in the self-contain, and there was a smile on his face, a kind of perfect smile which made all he spoke bear certitude. ‘My brother’s friend graduated since 2009 without a job. If that was all, it would have been nice. He got scholarship to study in the United Kingdom and came back to embrace a job paying less than thirty thousand naira.’

‘Even the medical field is no longer safer as before.’ I said.

‘You are right,’ he replied frankly, ‘now a days, after medical school, it is very difficult to get a house-job.’

‘It is true,’ Confidence replied me rather gloomily, ‘and once you fail to do your house-manship for three years, your licence might be withdraw until you are able to pass a given exam.’

I felt it was too extreme: the case of unemployment in the country. The situation has started to affect doctors already as it does engineers. I suggested then, that in order to prevent medicine to go worthless the way other courses went as a result of unemployment, the number of persons who are admitted into the course should be further reduced. They both asked how, and when I told them only federal universities should be allowed to admit into medicine and the maximum number of students they should be allowed to admit should be twenty, my friends smiled as if my suggestion were silly. Smiling back at them, I further affirm that it would make doctors scarce, and vacancies available for employment. I nodded reluctantly while digesting my suggestion