Nigeria, Oct. 2 -- A few days ago, during my panel discussion on Channels Television, the question that dominated the airwaves was not abstract but painfully urgent: Why are so many Nigerian graduates, full of ambition and credentials, turning to menial jobs to survive? The answers lie not in individual shortcomings but in a tangled web of structural weaknesses in our economy, education system, and policy environment. It is a crisis that speaks to the very heart of Nigeria's future: How a country treats its young and educated is the clearest mirror of its development trajectory.

Nigeria produces close to 600,000 graduates every year from its universities and polytechnics. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the youth unemploy...