Towards Empowering The Youth

The efforts of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration on youth empowerment through initiatives such as Business Innovation and Growth (Big) and Bank of Industry Youth Empowerment Scheme must be commended, even though more stringent control approaches are needed for effective performance.
We can never underestimate the role of youths (employed and unemployed) and their enormous contributions to the development of a nation such as ours with a teeming population and position in Africa.
The National Bureau of Statistics puts the total population of Nigeria at approximately 174 million with her youths under the age bracket of 15 to 35 years constituting over 116 millions of her total population.
With this significant growth in population, it will simply be unforgivable waste of human resources if we do not harness the strength of over 116 million talented Nigerians in boosting our economy effectively. It is a well known fact that Nigeria is one of the few African countries where young people work hard to secure a future, and the activities of this 116 million population will certainly go a long way to promote the country’s all round development.
All the same, the fact still remains that a greater percentage of these youths is still not meaningfully engaged for the good of Nigeria’s economy. The implication of this is that if they are not contributing to the nation’s building directly or indirectly, they might end up constituting a setback for the nation.
The entire youth population may not be literate but a good percentage of them can read and write and can be meaningfully engaged in skilled labour, while the rest takes care of unskilled market. With this, every area of the economy can be taken care of.
In recent time, the Federal Government’s efforts to empower this teeming unemployed youths has really yielded positive impacts with the formation of youth’s empowerment platforms such as the National Investment Programmes (N.S.P), N-Power and the rest.
The National Investment Programme, for instance, has empowered over 1.6 million Nigerians through its four components, N-Power, National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, conditional cash transfer and Government Enterprise Programme. The N-Power scheme alone targets 500,000 beneficiaries in 2017.
There is also an ample opportunity in the GEEP for the youths to get finance to start a business. It is no longer news that the Bank of Industry is also empowering the youths with loans to start up a business.
There is no gainsaying the fact that the efforts of the Federal Government in the area of youths empowerment is gradually yielding positive results especially as over 36000 jobs are expected to be created annually with an average of eight million graduates entering the labour market. If this trend continues, then, the Federal Government’s intention of creating over 3.5 million jobs in a three year interval would have been achieved with co-ordinated efforts in place and not only on media.
However, while the government’s efforts are being appreciated, there is need for a follow-up action to checkmate acts of corruption by some top government officials who may want to exploit the scheme for selfish gains and thereby frustrate the whole programme.
With these empowerment programmes in place, Nigerians should stop seeing their population as a problem but as a prospect to build on our development like China and India. The mentality of “let us share the national cake” may continue to limit our progress until the youths begin to harness their potentials to bake their own personal cake themselves.
It is instructive to know that the world’s economy has moved from the United States to Asia and it’s coming to Africa. But, it may take many Africans unaware since science and technology as well as entrepreneurship which helped to boost the economy of Asia might not be appealing to an average African now.

Udofia is a student of the Western Delta University, Ogharo, Delta State.