NOW HEAR THIS Nigerians all over the world. ” It’s not about prayers and fasting alone it’s WORK and WORK. It’s not about going to Synagogue Church and Mosque alone, it’s about WORK and WORK. The Creator Almighty GOD ALLAH JEHOVAH worked for six days, please kindly ponder on that per chance you may Reflect.”
SCANDAL IN NIGERIA
11,000 Indians hired to work in the Dangote refinery!
Dangote, India, and the burning mirror: what is happening to Nigeria is happening to all of Africa
There are truths that do more than wound pride; they puncture illusions, strip hypocrisy bare, and throw us—naked—before our own contradictions.
The Dangote case is one of them.
11,000 Indian technicians recruited because Nigeria couldn’t find 100 locally.
In a country of 235 million inhabitants, Africa’s largest economy, the self-proclaimed giant of the continent.
This is the clinical diagnosis of an illness that affects not just Abuja: it runs through the entire African body.
Many are shouting “scandal.”
I see a mirror.
And a mirror never lies.
1. Africa wasn’t defeated by tanks, but by polytechnics
People accuse Dangote of preferring Indians.
False.
Dangote prefers people who know how to run a refinery. Period.
It isn’t India that is humiliating us; it is our inability to produce skills that match our ambitions.
While Africa organizes summits, “national dialogues,” endless conferences, India organizes classrooms.
While we politicize technical education, India professionalizes it.
While we glorify long chains of theoretical diplomas, India trains thousands of hands-on technicians.
Indians didn’t take Lagos by force.
They are entering with their screwdrivers, their software, their skills.
2. Without skills, even our billionaires become dependent
Dangote is not the problem.
He’s actually the proof that wealth cannot compensate for weak human capital.
We may have oil, bauxite, gold, cobalt, lithium…
But until we have the men and women capable of transforming them, we remain tenants of our own development.
We provide:
the land,
the raw materials,
the tax exemptions,
sometimes even public money…
Others provide the brains.
And in the end, they walk away with the largest share of the added value.
Africa is a continent where you can build a port in 18 months—using foreign labor.
But where it takes 25 years to modernize a technical high school.
That should wake us up.
3. Technical education: our silent Waterloo
Our technical schools, where they still exist, operate with:
machines from the 1980s,
teachers who haven’t been retrained,
frozen curricula,
workshops turned into dusty museums,
students considered “less brilliant” than those in general education.
This is where everything begins.
This is where India beats us.
Not at Dangote.
Not in Lagos.
At school.
African parents dream of lawyers, doctors, and MPs…
Rarely of industrial mechanics, electromechanics, maintenance technicians, or process engineers.
Our societies continue to look down on technical jobs, even though the modern world depends entirely on them.
4. Nigeria’s problem is Africa’s problem: DRC, Kenya, Cameroon, Senegal… same fight
What is happening today in Nigeria is not exceptional.
It is the predicted future of all African countries if they do not wake up.
Across the continent:
Our power plants are repaired by foreigners.
Our mines are calibrated by foreigners.
Our dams are built by foreigners.
Our data centers are configured by foreigners.
Our roads are paved by foreigners.
And we applaud, as if development were about cutting ribbons.
Real development begins when we no longer need them for basic operations.
5. The mental revolution: turn every technical school into a talent factory
No magic.
No slogans.
No hollow “Vision 2030.”
Development requires:
qualified welders,
certified electronic technicians.
Culled
LEADERSHIP BY TONY OYATEDOR
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