After spending a lot of money on various tech courses that promised the future of wealth creation and financial freedom Ahmed was still downcasted with daily loads of rejections, silent emails and no responses from clients.

Nor be wetin dem tell am, wey make am wan be tech bro be this oo!

After leaving a stable job that was paying something small as he had always complained about and spending his savings to learn a tech skill, he was now more unemployed than he ever was.

Ahmed, at 25, found himself living in a state of utter confusion and uncertainty.

That kind of confusion wey you go de pity your life, wether na spoil e wan spoil so!

For Ahmed It started with a casual conversation he had with a friend that the tech space was the new gold mine and he rushed into it without thinking twice.

For you or those around you it might have started with a tweet, a video, or a testimony about tech money.

No doubt money really de tech, but how dem take de get am, nobody de talk about that one.

Because if you show someone a road, you should actually tell the person how you scaled and passed through that road, if there was any obstacle and how it was surmounted.

You might have probably heard it too—tech is the future, tech money is different. Soon enough, the image for many of you is complete: laptops in cafés or your rooms, pitching for remote work, anticipating dollar salaries, cleaning and refurbishing LinkedIn bios and portfolio all laced with the thrill of the “tech bro” confidence, and the quiet prestige that comes with saying, “I work in tech.”

That is the reality that everyone wants to see, but khaki no be leather and nor be as e de play na e de show.

In a video that I watched recently, a man speaks abi spoke—sha you know what i'm trying to say—but this man actually spoke about the frustration and humour about how fast tech skills have evolved in Nigeria. He talked about how bootcamps, web development, design, and other courses were booming and the notion that “everybody could do it.” which was feasible and realistic at the time.

Then an actual shift came and tech schools multiplied— new buzzwords took over timelines: data analytics, cybersecurity, product roles. Everybody literally rushed in, enrolled and paid to secure their future.

And then… silence. Yes after all the noise and learning—it was silence that followed.

After all the busy body, dem sha rest oo, nor mind me sha. Let's continue our story.

He talked about how his friend who learned data analytics throughout 2023 struggled with gaining clients— that year ended and by 2024, he still had no job. Just dashboards and portfolios—posting dashboards again and again. Rejection emails here and there and his spirit broke slowly as the year passed because nothing actually did change.

The video ends almost like a joke, but it isn’t funny. He made a comment about cybersecurity graduates and experts to join the police or vigilante groups. At least their skills would be useful somewhere. It sounds ridiculous until you pause and realise what he’s really saying: there are trained people with complete skillset with no place to go.

That’s the part the tech aesthetic doesn’t show online. Behind the steeze and the prestige is a quiet burnout—graduates and experts of various skills sitting with certificates, subscriptions to learning platforms expired, portfolios nobody opened, and a growing sense that they were sold a future that didn’t quite exist.

From Blue Collar to White Collar to “Learn a Skill”: How We Got Here

To actually understand why we now have what feels like what I termed a jobless tech people pandemic, you have to look at how work itself has evolved.

There was a time when survival followed a clearer path. Blue-collar work was physical, manual, visible. White-collar work promised stability, offices, and long-term careers. Then came a long season of informal work and hustle culture, selling, trading, freelancing, surviving by any means necessary.

Technology literally disrupted everything and changed the narrative of work meant to us all.

Jobs that didn’t exist 20 years ago suddenly became the gold standard—data analysts, product designers, project managers, virtual assistants, cloud engineers and so on. Roles that sound futuristic and important, especially in a country where traditional systems kept failing. Naturally, young people ran toward what looked like an opportunity and that was how the tech space boomed.

People saw this shift and the opportunity in it and we saw the birth of Tech schools—Tech schools saw the demand and moved fast, too fast for even the students to notice.

Bootcamps became factories, marketing became louder than mentorship. “Learn this skill in six months and immediately start earning in dollars.” “No degree needed.” The barriers to entry were lowered, but so were the guardrails. Many people weren’t taught how brutal and competitive the market really was. They weren’t nurtured and guided on what to expect. They were just trained, certified, and released into the world.

And as we all know the world is unforgiving, unfair and brutal when it comes to competition.

Big tech companies want experience, not enthusiasm—startups want impact like yesterday—global markets don’t care that you paid heavily for a course or that your tutor promised employability. So you end up with thousands of people chasing the same junior roles, polishing the same portfolios and hearing the same silence.

Meanwhile, some tech tutors and school owners are doing just fine—fees are continuously paid, new cohorts keep coming and new buzzwords replace old ones. The cycle just continues.

This isn’t an argument against learning tech skills. Far be it—I will not be associated with such propaganda. Technology has created opportunities, but what happens when education becomes a business without responsibility?What happens when hope is sold without structure?

We don’t talk enough about how many people fall through the cracks.

The Cost of the Dream, and the Questions We Keep Avoiding

Here’s the uncomfortable truth that we all need to face, not everyone who learns tech will get a tech job and not because they’re lazy or unserious. Sometimes, it is because the system is simply overcrowded, underregulated, and indifferent.

We need to start asking harder questions—should tech schools be regulated? Should there be clearer career pathways instead of vague promises?Should mentorship and industry placement matter as much as curriculum?

Because right now, many people are left alone after finishing or graduating from a course, staring at job boards that don’t feel real anymore. Some quietly return to informal work, feeling like failures even though they did everything they were told to do.

The tech dream hasn’t died—but it needs honesty. It needs realism and conversations that admit that skills alone are not enough, that markets have limits—brutal—competitive, and that human beings are more than enrollment numbers.

Until then, the buzz will keep getting louder, and the unemployment will keep spreading quietly in the background and somewhere—just somewhere at a deskhub in ring road, Benin city, another graduate of a tech course will post another dashboard, hoping this one finally opens a door and i pray it does—until then! Bye Bye oo.