Holders of doctorate degrees (Ph.D) and Masters of Business Administration (MBA) are among those who have applied to work as truck drivers at Dangote Group, News Express can reveal this morning.

Owned by Africa’s richest man, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the Group recently moved to recruit university graduates to be trained as truck drivers in a strategic move to phase out the current crop of less educated drivers whose reckless driving results in routine, often ghastly, accidents.

As exclusively reported by News Express on August 31, a deluge of applications followed the advertisement by Dangote Group for university graduates to work as truck drivers at the group’s cement manufacturing subsidiary.

While Dangote is looking for 2,000 graduate truck drivers, it has become deluged with13,000 applications, a development which a top-level management staff at the Lagos head office of the Group says paints a graphic picture of “how bad the unemployment situation in the country is.”

Further investigations by News Express revealed that Ph.D and MBA holders are among the applicants.

“It is true,” a top management official told News Express, adding: “We didn’t expect to have Ph.D and MBA holders among the applicants and this has forced us to go back to the drawing board. How can you use a Ph.D or MBA holder as a truck driver? This has made us to start working on developing a new curriculum for the training programme. We are now creating structures we initially didn’t have in mind, such as Supply Chain Management and Customer Care. We also have to make the salary competitive in view of the caliber of the applicants.”

News Express recalls that the advertisement by Dangote Group for university graduates to be trained to work as truck drivers had elicited negative reactions in several quarters, with many respondents wondering if graduates would be willing to condescend to enter a sector dominated by those who didn’t even go to secondary school.

Nigeria’s unemployment rate is estimated at over 20 per cent, meaning that no less than 30 million of the country’s over 150 million populace are without jobs.

*Photo: Alhaji Aliko Dangote, CEO, Dangote Group.