The choice of career has remained one of the biggest nightmares facing students, especially those in secondary schools.
This age-long difficulty in making right career decisions often emanates from limited life experiences, peer influence, pressure from parents, the media and the overall human environment, which adversely affect human capital development and capacity shortfalls in the professional sectors.


Correspondent, Daniel Ezeigwe, in this special report, examines how wrong career choices have affected the society and what could be done to stem it
Secondary school is often assumed to be the onset of adolescence, when kids begin to attain certain kind of maturity or begin to understand life no matter how crude.
At this point, students have begun to gauge their talents as against what they want to become in life.


However, teens at this tender stage are often governable, resulting in decisions that are often marred by influence, immaturity and sentiments.


It is at this early age that their career choices often get trapped in-between what their parents want for them, what their friends desire, what the media portrays the most and the professions that the society appreciates the most which often lead to career mistakes.


The resultant effects of these career mistakes are job dissatisfaction, incompetence and a professional environment that lacks productivity.
Discussing the issue, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Anambra Broadcasting Service, Chief Uche Nworah, whose father persuaded to study medicine, but ended up in the media sector, noted that even though the media and parents have a role to play, the concentration must shift from what a person has studied to what solution they can offer to the society.
On what could be done to checkmate the trend, a retired Permanent Secretary in the Anambra State Ministry of Social Welfare, Children and Women Affairs, Dr Azuka Ofomata, spoke about promotion of a guidance counseling model and career development plan at all levels of education, that weigh a student’s performance in subjects in relation to the course that they wish to study.


On what the school is doing to ensure that students choose the right career designation and not influenced by friends and teachers, the Principal of Saint John of God Secondary School, Awka, Lady Anthonia Oriaku-Nwanekie, said that the introduction of Career Convention, a brainchild of the Post Primary Schools Service Commission, and other engagements with parents, have helped sharpen both the mindsets of the students and their parents.


A legal practitioner based in Awka, Mr. Jude Onyejegbu, spoke about the section one of the Child Rights Law which mandates parents to raise the children in their best interests, respecting the career path they have chosen, while a parent Mrs. Chinyere Onuigbo, advised parents to judge their children by their talents and not by what they wish their children to become.

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