When Moniepoint founder and chief executive officer, Tosin Eniolorunda, stood on the stage at The Platform and lamented that his company could not find enough Nigerians to fill nearly 500 vacancies at “global standards,” many people understood the frustration behind his comments. Nigeria’s labour market is undeniably broken. Companies struggle to recruit highly skilled workers, while millions of graduates roam the streets jobless. Yet beneath the surface of his remarks was an argument that deserves a gentle but firm response.
Tosin, at 41, is young enough to be like a son to many of us who have watched Nigeria rise and decline through successive generations of political failure. That is precisely why this conversation must be approached with caution, empathy and honesty rather than outrage. He is clearly one of the brightest products of Nigeria’s technology ecosystem, and his success with Moniepoint is worthy of commendation. But brilliance can sometimes lead successful people into the dangerous illusion that individual achievement exists independently of the system around them.
At The Platform, he said Moniepoint had decided to hire only Nigerians but was struggling because many applicants lacked the quality required to compete globally. He further expressed fears that “the level that people are reasoning in this country is not as high as it used to be,” while blaming the education system, social media culture and the growing attraction to quick money.
Some of his concerns are valid. Nigeria’s education system is indeed in deep crisis. Universities are underfunded, laboratories are obsolete, lecturers are poorly paid, and millions of young people are pushed through an examination-driven system that rewards memorisation over innovation. Technical education has collapsed. Industrial apprenticeship structures barely exist. Employers routinely demand years of experience from fresh graduates while refusing to invest in training pipelines themselves. These are realities nobody can deny.
But where Tosin’s argument becomes troubling is in the subtle anti-intellectualism running through it — the tendency to reduce a deeply structural national crisis into a moral or intellectual failing of Nigerian youths themselves. That framing is dangerous because it shifts attention away from the political and economic elite who created the conditions under which these young people were raised.
Nigeria did not accidentally become a country where millions of graduates are unemployable. The nation was systematically stripped of quality public education by decades of corruption, policy inconsistency and elite negligence. Politicians looted funds meant for schools while building private empires abroad. Public universities became battlegrounds of endless strikes. Research funding disappeared. Manufacturing collapsed. Industrial growth stagnated. Electricity remained unstable. Young Nigerians were left to survive in an economy that rewards survival instincts more than intellectual development.
In such an environment, what exactly did the ruling elite expect to produce?
This is why it is unfair to stand atop the wreckage of a broken state and ask why the survivors are not polished enough for “global standards.” The real question should be why Africa’s largest country failed to build an educational and industrial system capable of producing those standards consistently in the first place.
Ironically, the same Nigerian youths being described as inadequate are the very people sustaining businesses like Moniepoint under impossible conditions. Across Lagos, Kano, Aba, Port Harcourt and Onitsha, young Nigerians run POS businesses, manage inventory systems, navigate unstable networks, improvise around inflation, and build entire commercial ecosystems despite operating in one of the harshest business climates on earth. These are not signs of intellectual collapse. They are signs of resilience under pressure.
Indeed, many Nigerian youths who leave the country continue to excel globally once they enter systems that work. This writer knows this personally. Tosin is only a few years older than my first son, Olorunfemi, whom Nigeria itself pushed away to the United States through its dysfunction and lack of opportunity. Today, like countless other Nigerians abroad, he has distinguished himself as a software engineer in an environment that rewards competence, supports innovation and provides institutional stability. The Nigerian mind did not suddenly become more intelligent after crossing the Atlantic. The difference was the system.
That is why comparisons to the infamous remarks by former President Muhammadu Buhari are unavoidable. Buhari once triggered outrage by suggesting Nigerian youths were lazy while ignoring the economic collapse, unemployment and governance failures surrounding them. Tosin’s comments, though undoubtedly less harsh and more nuanced, unfortunately echo part of that same flawed logic: blaming the victims of systemic decay for not thriving inside systemic decay.
What Nigeria needs now is not another elite narrative portraying young people as defective products. What the country needs is honest introspection from political leaders, corporate executives and economic elites alike. Companies seeking world-class talent must also be prepared to help build world-class talent. The greatest corporations in the world did not merely recruit polished professionals; they created training ecosystems, apprenticeships and internal talent pipelines that transformed raw potential into expertise.
Even Tosin himself is a product of such institutional grooming. Before founding Moniepoint, he passed through Interswitch, where he gained exposure, mentorship and technical experience that helped shape his entrepreneurial journey. Someone invested in his growth. Someone gave him room to learn.
That same opportunity must now be extended to the next generation rather than dismissed as unavailable.
Nigeria’s youth crisis is therefore not fundamentally a crisis of intelligence. It is a crisis of governance, institutional collapse and elite failure. Until that truth is confronted honestly, the country risks repeating the same cycle: blaming its young people for conditions they did not create while refusing to hold accountable those who did.
Login Required
Loading login form...