I had a shocker two weeks ago when I asked some undergraduates who sent me SMS reactions on a story I wrote to send to my email box detailed comments in long hand. Since SMS sometimes limits the expressions, I thought it appropriate they be given the opportunity to say what they wanted to say without limiting themselves due to cost or word constraints. I was surprised when they still sent the same coded messages to my email box; I sent another SMS repeating the same instruction and back came the same coded messages; I gave up and knew that my fear which dates back a few years back may have started manifesting. So it is not out of place to say we may be having another challenge with this generation regarding the mode of communicating in English and communication generally without realising it.
Since almost everything has become like instant coffee to this generation, processes are truncated and they want the expression of something that could take say five years to manifest in hours, this has permeated all facet including education where teachers and lectures often complain of the ‘horrible’ written English of this generation. And of course, this has repercussions in the larger society, especially when it comes to the area of employment. It also breeds a high level of mediocrity which is now a major concern among us as it has permeated even our leadership.
For the average Nigerian youth, the two most difficult hurdles to cross in the quest to become a productive member of the society and a responsible citizen that is acceptable are gaining admission into the university and getting a decent job thereafter. As we are all aware, several factors have been linked to the rising number of the unemployed in the country. From inadequate capacity building, hostile business environment leading to the closure of many companies, funding problems for educational institutions, archaic style of educational institutions, to most recently, the influence of the social media on youths’ writing style.
Writing style and skill is critical now as it has always been, if we beam the searchlight on the employability or otherwise of many Nigerian graduates we will see the link. What the dearth and depth of coherent writing skill has done is that it has led employers of labour to keep redefining their recruitment strategies each time they notice new trends from this generation. Most times, employers’ first priority is to engage graduates with strong profession-specific skills and then to consider if they have the potentials to be ‘groomed’ for employment.
This potential includes graduates’ personal characteristics and attributes, the diversity of their experiences and skills, as well as their understanding of what the workplace actually is. This is fundamental because employers of labour have complained that many youth definition of the workplace is at variance with conventional norm, some just need jobs ‘to get by’. While skills and others all seem necessary, English language proficiency seems to be an emerging key factor influencing access to skilled employment, but I am afraid that SMS ‘incursion’ into English has done more harm than good in this area.
So what are employers, either directly or in most cases through their management consultants looking out for? They are likely to be influenced by a range of perceived attributes, including the quality of graduates’ prior training, their level of cultural enclosure, relevant work experience, and demand for courses studied by the applicants in the labour market. But recently, the test for English Language proficiency has become a tool for employers to screen applicants before the interview stage and this is where most of them are ‘weeded’ out.
Beyond the progressively declining quality of Nigerian graduates, we are also dealing with a very narrow employment space, so the issue is not excess supply but quality. I recollect that it was Prof Charles Soludo, the erstwhile governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), who was among the first that raised the alarm on the ‘unemployability’ of many Nigerian graduates. He cannot be further from the truth. I interact with a number of Nigerian graduates regularly and I find appalling the quality of youths that parade themselves as graduates today.
And one of the illusions some of them have is the dangerous mindset that jobs come automatically with being a graduate, and you don’t need to justify why the employer should hire you. One of such ‘graduates’ called me recently from Abuja and said he wants to be a writer since a job was not forthcoming, though his spoken English was something else I still gave him the opportunity to send in his story. When I managed to read through his two page story that took me almost an hour to decipher, it would be a miracle if anyone hires him. How would any employer employ an individual that cannot speak and write simple English in a country where the mode of communication is English?
Brig.-Gen. Nnamdi Okorie-Affia, the Director General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) raised this concern recently when he said some universities have been sending “graduates” to the scheme who can hardly speak English. According to him, the quality of these graduates is so appalling that employers who can’t find any use for them are left with no choice but to send them back to the NYSC.
Trying to find out why things are the way they are is not difficult, most, if not all Nigerian undergraduates have mobile phones or one form of mobile device or the other. With these devices they immerse themselves in text messaging, and other forms of social media chats. This has resulted in a situation that some teachers, parents and students themselves are expressing concerns that student-writing skills stand the risk of being sacrificed on the altar of text messaging.
With the emergence of the new media, beginning with the SMS communicative style, attention seems to be no longer given to the grammatical rules of the English Language. English remains the language of ‘all’ official proceedings, communication, administration, education, law, commerce/trade, executive and legislative use in the country.
Prior to the emergence of the e-mail, ours was a letter writing and voice-centric society through the telephone, and do Nigerians love to talk! But we began to see a shift to the written word once e-mail became widely available for business and personal use. The short messaging and instant messaging habits are like every other habit, which when formed becomes difficult to control or stop.
There is little doubt that the use of text messaging is common among youths, students in secondary and tertiary institutions in Nigeria and has come to stay as most of them have formed the habit of using text messages in most of their communications. The reasons are obvious; it is quick, it does not adhere to the rules of English grammar and it is relatively cheap, more convenient, used in establishing new and re-enforcing old relationships among others. As a result of this influence, many students find it difficult separating formal and informal English as they freely use “U” for “you”, “4” for “for”, “pls” for “please”, “2mrw” for “tomorrow” among others, during formal writing”. Hardest hit are the conventions of capitalisation and punctuation, which has been sacrificed on the altar of good writing.
With youth unemployment rate – which currently stands at 37.5 per cent, according to Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s Coordinating Minister of Economy – it appears there is no rainbow in the horizon. Statistics from the Ministry of Youth Development show that over 4.5 million Nigerian youths enter the labour market yearly, while that of the Federal Bureau of Statistics revealed that over 40 million Nigerian youths are unemployed, translating to at least one unemployed person in every household in the country. Scary statistics, but what would stand an individual out is to shun mediocrity and be exceptional.
