06/05/2026
I was eating shawarma recently, and something annoyed me.
Why do we wrap shawarma with paper…
When foil clearly does a better job?
Paper gets soaked. It tears halfway. Everything starts falling apart before you’re even done eating.
Foil?
Foil holds structure. Keeps everything intact. No mess.
So why paper?
Because it’s cheaper. Faster. “It’s how it’s always been done.”
And that’s when it clicked.
This is exactly how we treat talent.
We keep complaining:
“Graduates are not job-ready”
“There’s a skill gap”
“We can’t find good people”
But look at the system we built.
We trained people for theory (paper) and then expect them to perform in real-world environments (foil-level expectations).
Ofcourse it falls apart halfway.
You can’t wrap a real-world problem with classroom-only knowledge and expect it to hold.
This is why I keep talking about undergraduates.
Not after NYSC.
Not after 2 years of unemployment.
Early.
Give them:
- real projects
- real tools
- real expectations
- real feedback
Now you’re not patching talent.
You’re building it properly from the start.
Because the truth is,
Nigeria doesn’t have a talent shortage.
We have a structure problem
We’re still using paper where foil is required.
And until we fix that, we’ll keep blaming the shawarma… instead of the wrap.
