The Silent Workforce: Untrained Youth in Nigeria and the Missed Opportunity

They’re everywhere: in your street, your local compound, the market, the bus stop.

Young people in their 20s and 30s, jobless but not lazy. Idle, but not unintelligent. Waiting, but for what?

Nigeria is sitting on a silent workforce, millions of youth who are neither in school nor in formal employment, and worse, not learning any skill that could lead to self-reliance and it has gradually become a crisis.

Who Are the Untrained?

• They’re the young man who finished secondary school but couldn’t go further

• The woman who dropped out of university due to funding

• The boy who’s always “on the road” but has nothing concrete to do

• The girl who stays home all day because no one is teaching her anything

They are intelligent, aware, and mobile but disconnected from the system.

According to NBS data, over 13 million youth in Nigeria fall into the NEET category (Not in Education, Employment, or Training). That is more than the population of some West African countries.

What This Means for Nigeria

Every day this population remains idle:

• Our GDP loses potential contributors

• Social unrest increases

• More youths fall into dependency cycles

• And informal crime networks grow

Yet this same group could be the engine of innovation, entrepreneurship, and service delivery, if trained.

What’s Blocking Them?

• Vocational training centers are few and far between

• Many programs are expensive or theoretical

• Gender and cultural norms still keep many girls at home

• Some youths are literate but not fluent in English — making traditional models inaccessible

The Missed Opportunity

These untrained youth could:

• Be running baking businesses from their kitchens

• Be learning solar panel installation for rural energy jobs

• Be repairing phones or cutting hair in their neighborhood

• Be earning, contributing, and growing

Instead, they are waiting. Not by choice, but because the system has failed to reach them.

How Suwk Is Bridging the Gap

At Suwk, we’ve designed our model to speak directly to this forgotten group. Our approach:

• Prioritizes hands-on, visual learning

• Minimizes literacy barriers

• Offers courses that don’t require large capital to start

• Provides post-training support through apprenticeships and job placement

We believe that talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. Suwk is working to close that gap.

This workforce isn’t lost, they are just untapped

Every day we delay investing in vocational training for this group, we lose another generation to dependence, disillusionment, and waste.

Let’s not keep calling them “lazy.”

Let’s build the systems that help them rise.