How important is the university or polytechnic education in developing needed IT skills in Nigeria? A recent survey on Nigerian tech ecosystem has shown that 84 of software developers in the country developed their skills through a self-taught process.The report also showed that 9 percent got their skills from a university, polytechnic or similar institution. This raised the question of how important is a tertiary education in the development of needed IT skills in Nigeria.State of Code 2017 is a survey conducted by Devcenter, an on-demand software development company, to provide more information about software development market.In recent time, Nigerian developers have been receiving global attention for landmark projects. Nigeria has also been identified as a country with a large pool of untapped tech talents. This will explain the moves by major tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Andela among others to get talents from the country.The survey also revealed that there is a wide gender gap in the industry. This is because 94 percent of the software developers in Nigeria are male.More so, the labour market of software developers in the country was found to be youthful. 55 percent of the population of software developers in Nigeria is between age 18 and 24. 41 percent falls within age bracket 25 – 34 years, 1 and 3 percents are less than age 17 and 35-44 years respectively.
