A university don, Dr Marie Salami, says that the nation is throwing away several people with requisite knowledge, skills and competencies through early retirement.
Mrs Salami is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Science and Technology Education, in the Faculty of Education, Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, Ile-Ife.
She said this during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Ile-Ife on Monday.
She commended President Muhammadu Buhari for sending an executive bill to the Senate seeking to extend the retirement age for teachers across the country from 60 years to 65 years.
According to her, the bill also seeks to extend the years of service from 35years to 40 years, saying this will curb teachers from reducing their ages.
The educationist said that those that had retired when they attained either 60 years of age or had put in 35 years in service respectively were being forced to do so.
She stated that the more years one puts into the job, the more one understands the job, and more experienced one becomes on the job.
The don said that this would afford the workers to put in their best into their jobs.
Mrs Salami urged the government to provide employment opportunities to her citizens and with commensurate salaries.
The senior lecturer explained that unemployment across the country had been encouraging brain drain among youths to seek greener pastures abroad.
“We are throwing competencies and skills away. Our youths that we suffer to train, we dash them out free of charge to the developed countries.’’
The senior lecturer appealed to the nation’s leaders to make use of institutional research findings to understudy the challenges facing society.
She said that if the leaders should understand the problems of the masses, they would surely find solutions to them.
NAN
