Nigeria’s Vice President, Kashim Shettima, has called on universities and industry leaders to build stronger partnerships to prepare graduates for the demands of the global digital economy.

Speaking at the 2026 graduation ceremony of the American University of Nigeria (AUN), the vice president said the debate triggered by a fintech executive’s remarks should serve as a challenge for Nigeria’s higher education sector.

While Mr Shettima did not mention a name, he was clearly referring to Moniepoint’s Chief Executive Officer, Tosin Eniolorunda, who recently said that Nigeria lacks the skilled talent needed to meet the company’s global standards.

Mr Eniolorunda had stated that Nigeria is facing a shortage of skilled talent of global standards, citing the fintech company’s inability to fill 500 vacancies with world-class professionals since 2025.

The fintech boss also noted that most Nigerians applying for roles at the firm do not meet global standards, despite the company’s commitment to hiring more Nigerians.

The comments sparked mixed reactions online. While some Nigerians agreed that the country faces a widening skills gap driven by weak educational foundations and brain drain, others argued that talents are available but local companies often fail to offer globally competitive salaries and structured talent development programmes, hence their hiring struggles.


Shettima speaks

While Mr Shettima acknowledged the need for increased capacity development for Nigerian graduates, he said some of the pushback that followed Mr Eniolorunda’s comments was legitimate.

The vice president, who was represented by the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Abdullahi Ribadu, a professor, said talents are not absent in Nigeria, but noted that they are simply responding to rational signals.

“Some of the pushback that followed was legitimate,” he said. “Compensation structures, currency pressures and the reality that Nigerian engineers now command global opportunities were part of it. The talent is not absent. In many ways, it’s just responding to rational market signals.”

The vice president, therefore, called on the university to formalise and scale industry partnership models capable of creating “structured and sustained pipelines” between universities, fintech firms and emerging industries.

“This is not a task government can accomplish alone, and it is not one that the private sector and corporate investors can do without universities,” he added.

Mr Shettima also urged Nigerian graduates to embrace the more challenging path of tackling the nation’s problems.

He noted that although some graduates may choose the easier route in order to survive, such an approach falls short of what the country truly needs.

“The graduates that this country desperately needs are those who bring their full capabilities to solve the Nigerian problems. In public service, in technology, in research, in agriculture, in health care and in art,” he said.

Mr Shettima said the federal government is already pursuing reforms aimed at aligning the education system with 21st-century labour market demands to cover the kind of intensive economic development that emerging market demands.

He said ongoing reforms under President Bola Tinubu include strengthening institutional accountability, expanding access to education and integrating digital and AI-focused learning into national policy frameworks.

The vice president also used the occasion to praise AUN for graduating 12 former Chibok schoolgirls, describing the achievement as evidence of education’s role in rehabilitation and national renewal.

The girls were among those abducted by Boko Haram from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, in 2014, an incident that drew global outrage under the “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign.

Mr Shettima described the university’s support for the students as “an act of institutional faith” and urged other Nigerian universities to study the model.