Nigeria’s oil and gas industry is hurtling toward a major crisis, not from dwindling reserves or hostile divestments, but from an alarming shortage of skilled professionals to drive the next phase of growth, DAMILOLA AINA writes

When Adedayo Ajibola, a 25-year-old geology graduate from one of Nigeria’s top federal universities in the South-West, woke up at 5:30 am on a rainy Wednesday morning in his parents’ modest bungalow in Sango-Ota, Ogun State, he carried with him the kind of hope only the young can summon. By 9 am, after braving the notorious Lagos traffic and a torrential downpour that drenched his well-ironed shirt, he arrived at an oil servicing firm’s office (name withheld) in Alagomeji, Yaba. It was supposed to be his big job break after completing his National Youth Service Corps assignment in February this year.

Instead, Adedayo left the glass doors of the office with a heavy heart. The interviewer, after scanning his carefully arranged curriculum vitae, dismissed him as “too fresh” for the job. “You don’t have any work experience yet,” the recruiter told him. “It won’t be easy for you to learn. You need to gain some experience. For now, we don’t have any available slots for you,” he recounted during a sit-down conversation with The PUNCH last month. The words, delivered almost casually, cut deep.

Adedayo carries the weight of a second-class lower division degree, a badge he believes brands him undesirable in Nigeria’s cutthroat job market for the oil and gas sector.