That Our Youths Be Employed

After watching the interview by the chairman of Ejigbo Local Government Council Development Authority, Lagos State, Kehinde Bamigbetan on the television a forth night ago, one could not but wonder what danger awaits this country if the problem of youth unemployment is not tackled squarely.

The council boss who was recently kidnapped but later released revealed that his abductors were graduates who took to that line of business due to lack of  employment. Hear him, “they said they were graduates and this country had not provided jobs for them and the same country that had rendered them unemployable spent billions of naira every day on wasteful projects.”

Different people may view this statement in different ways, but I see it as a warning that if we continue to neglect the millions of jobless youths in this country, if a few continue to embezzle the public funds and live expensive lifestyle while the masses, youths especially, continue to be impoverished, time shall come when the nation will be so hot for them to enjoy their loot.

Some may argue that unemployment is not a justification for anybody to commit crime. But let’s not forget that idleness can make even a godly man a willing workshop of the devil.

The future of any country depends on the youths. No meaningful development  can take place without their active participation.

They are the young people, endowed with raw energy. They have high hopes, dreams, aspirations and ideas of what their tomorrow would be. They are anxious and dynamic, always bubbling in spirit. Their surplus energy when exploited is useful for the welfare of the country. Rendering millions of this class of people jobless portends danger for any country like Nigeria.

The growing insecurity in many parts of the country, especially that perpetrated by Boko Haram Islamic sect, had been associated with poverty and joblessness.

Government may claim that it had introduced several programmes aimed at empowering the youths and reducing the number of unemployed youths, but how many youths has actually been empowered through those processes. There is therefore, need for proper review of these  programmes to ascertain who actually have been benefitting from them. What happened to the huge amount of money voted for them?

Of course, we all know that government alone cannot provide jobs for the unemployed in the country. As a matter of fact, greater percentage  of workers in many other countries are engaged by private institutions. But government has to provide the enabling environment for business to thrive. If there was constant power supply and other infrastructure in Nigeria, many industries that relocated from Nigeria to other West African countries where regular electricity could be guaranteed would not have done so.

If government can take drastic measures to check the growing insecurity in different parts of the country instead of Boko Haram members to accept amnesty, the country will be better off. No right thinking business man will like to invest in a country where the security of lives and property cannot be assured.

In the aforementioned interview with Mr Bamigbetan, he said that his abductors  were rendered unemployable while government  spent billions of naira every day on wasteful projects. I believe this is a statement of fact which needs action. Instead of wishing it away, as those in authority may do, they should take time to re-evaluate the projects they embark on and know those that are really beneficial to the people, President Goodluck Jonathan has been on the issue of reducing cost of governance. It is high time this was done in all tiers of government and the excesses used in developing the agricultural sectors and other sectors that absorb the teeming unemployed youths.

It’s really high time we harnessed the potentials of these young ones, their energy, vigour, creativeness to develop  this nation. In doing that we also need to look into the undue emphasis on paper qualification in Nigeria which many analysts say is affecting all sectors of the economy in various ways.

They posit that it is high time attention was paid to technical and vocational education as that will make the young ones self-reliant instead of waiting for white collar jobs from government.

That is why one will not fail to commend the efforts of the Rivers State Government towards grooming the youths in skilled labour. Recently, the State Government signed an agreement with a German Company, Zentralstelle fur die Weiterbildung im Handwerk (ZWH) to train youths in the areas of fashion design, hair dressing and cosmetics, construction (brick laying, plumbing, electrical, tiling, stucco plastering) work, welding and many more.

Other state governments and tertiary institutions should key into this. It is important that tertiary institutions in the country abide by the federal government’s order which mandates them to include entrepreneurial skills in their curricula as a method of reducing the number of job seekers after graduation.

However, it is one thing to acquire the skill and another to be able to secure the initial capital to start the business. That is why government should come up with policies that would make it easy for small and medium sized entrepreneurs to access credits  from commercial banks. The delay in accessing such credits is said to have contributed to the killing of initiatives by some young graduates.

To reduce the number of unemployed youths, there is also need for value re-orientation. Youths should be made to imbibe the spirit of hard work, honesty and self determination, instead of believing in “quick money” which leads them to commit all kinds of crime. Governments, politicians, parents, institutions have roles to play in achieving this.

It is high time the country moved from the current cosmetic approach to youth empowerment across frontiers to a more realistic one which will invariably bring about stability, security and rapid national development.

Calista Ezeaku