Remember how we were all told as young kids that for us to be successful we had to go to good schools in Nigeria and study good courses and graduate with good grades. We were told that if we had a 1st class or a strong 2’1 we were guaranteed the best jobs. We were even told that having a masters was an overkill and going for a PhD made you a living God. What if I told you all that applied only in 1988 and is now obsolete in the 21st century Nigeria.

Let me use Mass Communication and working in the media for example. Let’s assume you studied Mass Communication in a Federal University in Nigeria, and you had a first class and know all it takes to be an OAP, you speak good and clean English but you have a little bit of a Nigerian accent, there’s a very big chance that big radio stations like Cool Fm, Beat Fm, Rythm 93 and the likes would rather employ a Nigerian who studied fisheries in the UK or the US, as far as he has a thick foreign accent that they can use to make their station exotic. They don’t care if this Exotic Nigerian has little to no experience in the job, as far as he has an accent, can keep a good conversation and can speak well, he has the job.

Same with these oil companies, they do their scouting abroad and aim for the students schooling abroad in their finals, they offer them jobs in Nigeria so that when they return they occupy the big posts. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like your Nigerian degree won’t get you a job, it would, but, the paradigm has shifted and Lagos now belongs to the IJGB’s (I just got back).