The supply of high level manpower, particularly the products of institutions of higher learning, has been concentrated in certain parts of Nigeria due partly to the highly uneven pace of educational development. Due to lack of data on the distribution of the products on Nigerian universities on a state by state basis, the distribution of university students can be used to indicate the disparity in the supply of university graduates. In 1970-71, the distribution of the 14,468 students enrolled in Nigerian universities by state of origin ranged from only 221 or 1.5 percent for the former North-Western State to a high of 5,218 or 36.1 percent for the former Western State. In 1973-74, only 2.7 percent of the 23,228 students enrolled came from the North-Western State, while 29.8 percent came from the Western State (National Universities Commission, 1970-71, 1973-74).

Where there is unfettered labor mobility such uneven supply of manpower would engender geographical mobility with people moving to wherever there are employment opportunities. This, however, has never been so in the Nigerian situation. In the 1950s, there were mass dismissals of workers on the ground that they were not indigenes of the regions where they were working (Yesufu, 1962: 145). All the former regional governments were guilty of extreme regionalism as strict regionalizaton of their respective civil services became a religion to be worshipped with all devotion. Unfortunately, this practice of regional consciousness also spread to the private sector where employers fell in line with government discriminatory employment policies. As Yesufu (1962: 145) aptly summarized, “private employers, particularly the large expatriate firms, have largely adopted this regionalist approach in labor recruitment, in deference to the susceptibilities of the Regional Government who might otherwise withhold important economic concessions.”