Daniel Ibrahim

Why Nigeria Growing Youth Bulge is a Growing Problem and the Fix it Needs

Introduction

Nigeria’s teeming youth are a source of serious concern to the nation. For one, their numbers are rising and this has some serious implications for the nation. Current estimates from Statista (2021) and the UNFPA (2021) puts the present figures for Nigeria’s youth population close to a 100 million. Of this number about 42 % are unemployed and 21 % are underemployed as a report from Ekine (2021) shows. These estimates collectively show that the largest segment of the Nigerian population (1—15) at the moment is its youngest, which is now 44 % of the entire population and this segment is rapidly growing by the day, Cohen (2021) writing in the Financial Times estimates that by the turn of the century, Nigeria will hit the 1 billion mark or come very close. This is quite a serious concern for a nation that has a 50% youth labour force, with up to half of them out of work and school. According to the UN’s World Population Prospects (2017) ‘Nigeria’s population is projected to become the third largest in the world in 2050 after China and India. Ekine (2021) and the World Bank (2021) and estimates from the CIA’s World Factbook, 2021, corroborates this projection. According to this projection, a tremendous surge in the nation’s youth numbers is closely upcoming and with the current state of affairs in the nation, it could spiral out of control in many negative directions such as crime, insurgency, terrorism and other forms of social malaise.

As the global ‘Fragile States Index’ (2021) currently shows, Nigeria is a fragile state that is grappling with many structural problems such as corruption, weak state institutions, governance challenges and economic mismanagement among others, which have been snowballing and bedeviling it for many years. The huge youth population bulge in a fragile state like Nigeria is a dangerous trend, which can explode and force the nation into a social or moral meltdown. As Aisen et al (2021) writing for the IMF assert, Nigeria has to create upwards of 5 million jobs year – on – year to enable these large number of youth live better and productive lives. As the old English saying goes “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop“, therefore the danger and risk with having a large number of unemployed and disillusioned youth in any fragile nation like Nigeria, lies in the fact that if these youth have low self development by way of gross defects and deficits in their education, character and careers they easily become handy tools for many social evils and mischief.

According to Hilker and McAslan (2009) the following structural factors put youths at risk of crime and violence in fragile states like Nigeria; these factors include unmitigated and growing unemployment and underemployment, unequal and inappropriate education and negative socialization – the sort which fuels competitive and combative identity politics, which as Plan International UK (2017) shows is an underlying cause to the problem of insecurity in Nigeria and other fragile states. As youths are recruited into violent attempts to dismantle social and political orders which do not provide requisite rewards and opportunities for them, as we can see from youth involvement in the ongoing terrorist-insurgency in the north east of Nigeria.

Evidence from multiple research including that by Plan International UK (2017), Hilker and McAslan (2009) shows that when youth are hopelessly idle in a fragile state due to defects and deficits in their education, character and careers , they easily turn to vice and crime. They are easily recruited as political thugs ; induced into violent gangs ; or may be pressed into militia and rebel forces in different kinds of protracted armed conflicts, like terrorism, insurgency and socially tinged militancy ; or they may get lured by the gains of illicit crime, such as armed robbery, romance scams and electronic fraud. The large and growing number of unemployed, underemployed, underskilled and vulnerable Nigerian youth must be given the right tools and enablement to live better lives. Lives that prevent them from becoming social drifters and misfits. Youth empowerment is therefore a compelling national cause that lies at the heart of the immediate and future progress of the Nigerian nation. Cohen 2021 posits that Nigeria is missing a great opportunity if it fails to make its rising population, especially its youth become highly productive. The challenge that lies before the nation of Nigeria at the moment is how best to empower the nation’s youth, which is the key focus of this article.

The Situation with Youth in Advanced and Emerging Nations

The great Greek philosopher of antiquity, Socrates, once famously said that “knowledge is power”. Indeed in this age of advanced information systems and cutting – edge science and technology, knowledge has truly proven to be power. And as Fish (2021) shows, in this modern age, the youth are the indispensable drivers of any modern nation’s knowledge system. This is an obvious fact that can be easily deduced from his findings of the 12 most educated countries in the world, which is corroborated by research from UNESCO (2017), OECD (2021), which are as follows: South Korea, Canada, Russia, Japan, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Britain, America and the Netherlands. Out of these 12 countries some of them such as the United States, Switzerland, Ireland and Luxembourg as shown by Ventura (2021) have the highest incomes in the world and the rest of them are making steady progress in the social and economic spheres as well. The emerging nations in this class of excelling nations as shown by Fish (2021), such as South Korea and Russia also have their youth excelling in different spheres of life because these countries empower them through various programs to become better informed, skilled and more proficient in a vast and composite range of excellence.

These countries have effective programs for youth empowerment such as America’s ‘Youth Build’, ‘Youth Connections’ , ‘Job Corps’, ‘Learn and Serve America’, ‘National Service Learning Clearing House’, 4H Youth Development‘, ‘Children, Youth and Families at Risk’ , Promise Neighborhoods’ , ‘Safe and Supportive Schools’ and the ‘Elementary and Secondary Schools Counseling’ Programs. The United Kingdom’s ‘Youth Accelerator Fund’, ‘Youth Voice’, ‘UK Work Experience Action Group’, and the Life Skills project by the UK’s Barclays Bank among others. These sort of programs in America and the UK and the rest of the 12 countries, help youth in these countries to excel in so many ways. One of the major achievements of these programs is the progress that youth in these countries make with their educational and intellectual development. These sort of programs also help them to deal with real world issues that are germane to their personal development in this age, such as nutrition, mental health and environmental challenges. It is no wonder that in these countries young people easily emerge as business, social and academic leaders who are already equipped from a young age to drive the prosperity of their nations into the future.

Research by the ILO (2020) proves that the more educated nations of the world such as America, China, Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore, China etc. dominate today’s global knowledge economy on the internet, scientific labs and hi-tech factories. Their dominance is driven by their better educated youth. These youth have been empowered for a wide range of success by proficient programs and policies that boost their capacities in the spheres of education and employment. These countries build and maintain a strong nexus between education and employment by building the skills of their youth through successful youth programs. According to ILO (2020) the countries that lead in governance, finance, business, education, technology and have been able to improve their economies through proactive youth empowerment programs and initiatives. These youth empowerment initiatives build the capacities of the youth in these nations to excel in governance, culture, STEM, technology, business, critical and creative thinking among others. This explains why these countries lead other nations in so many ways.

The Dreary Situation With Youth In Nigeria

Nigeria’s future according to Ekine (2021) lies with her youth, who have to be properly equipped to compete with the youth of other nations. Ekine (2021) asserts that ignoring the potential threat of underdeveloped youth at the moment will snowball into disaster in the future. Ekine (2021) posits that Nigeria cannot afford to waste the potentials of its growing youth population bulge, which is now becoming morally disoriented and restive and are rapidly falling prey to many evils and vices such as crime, terrorism and militancy. A recent report by Plan International UK (2017), which had an exclusive focus on vulnerable youth in Sierra Leone, Myanmar and Nigeria (three fragile states) gives ample and holistic insight into this disturbing trend. In Nigeria, the neglect of the country’s youth strongly lies at the heart of its current challenges with terrorism, militancy, and many forms of crime which are currently rocking the nation’s fragility. The social decay that is being created from extant challenges in Nigeria, including the current insecurity challenge and the high out – of – school rates as the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (2020) and Ekine (2021) posits are challenges that have adverse effects on the social and economic fabric of the nation.

One of these adverse effects as the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (2020) and Ekine (2021) shows is that many Nigerian youth are becoming disillusioned with staying in jobs or following through with school because the incentives to learning or working are being eroded by the day. As the ILO (2020) shows many Nigerian are rapidly falling into the NEET category, whereby they are Not in Employment, Education or Training. The current estimates by the National Bureau for Statistics (2021) which puts Youth unemployment and underemployment at 42 % and 21% respectively is alarming. It shows that a larger portion of Nigerian youth are not gainfully employed or are being frustrated with work and are gradually losing interest in honest work because much of it is neither decent nor gainful. They are gradually being left to their own idle devices such as drug addiction, alcoholism, violent gang activity and others. Ekine (2021) posits that the surge in romance scams and electronic fraud for instance is a strong sign that Nigeria’s youth are seeking illegitimate and illicit avenues to wealth because they are failing to find legitimate ones that are beneficial. This trend is a ticking time-bomb, which can explode with disastrous effect on the social, political and economic landscape of Nigeria.

According to Ekine (2021) the social, political, economic and moral fabric of a nation is threatened when the nation fails to properly harness the strength and potentials of its youth. This is one of the reasons why crime and restiveness among Nigeria’s youth is rising at the moment As Hilker and McAslan (2009) assert there is strong statistical evidence to show a correlation between a rising youth population and armed conflict in fragile states like Nigeria. Hilker and McAslan (2009) further assert that the two key factors which drive this correlation is that of structural exclusion and lack of opportunities. These two factors are common in fragile states such as those of the Sahel region in Africa, where non – state actors (such as Boko Haram, Al – Shabaab and AL Qaeda in the Maghreb) are actively trying to undermine the stability of many African countries, using young people as terrorist cannon-fodder for their sinister causes.

In this article, as we take a look at how the Nigerian nation can avoid the ill-effects and negative consequences of leaving its youth to their idle devices, we propose a set of feasible ideas that will help the Nigerian nation to build a robust national framework, which will develop the psyche and the skill-sets of Nigerian youth. This will help them to be fully progress – oriented and seek out the right paths to more meaningful lives. By harnessing the productivity of the youth, the country will rapidly catalyze and scale up its economic growth and social development. We strongly posit here that any attempt to lift the vast majority of Nigerian youth out of the current quagmire of unemployment, underemployment and other forms of social alienation must begin with a proactive reform of Nigeria’s educational system. A reform that adapts the educational system to the myriad of challenges in the country. A reform that makes the country’s youth more competitive and relevant in today’s rapidly changing world.

Nigeria’s Education Deficit and Its Impact on Nigerian Youth

In Nigeria there is a dearth of effective youth empowerment programs, especially those which can help Nigerian youth deal with one of their biggest obstacles to personal development, which is access to functional education. Education that can help them to explore local and global opportunities and efficiently create several forms of value such as globally-in-demand skills (like those for programming, data science, AI, robotics, digital marketing etc.); successfully set up online businesses such as Calendly , Interswitch ,Paystack, Flutterwave and Lydia (which are global and national business unicorns that were all created by young Nigerians); and help them to drive progressive social causes to fruition - causes such as the ‘Not Too Young To Run’ movement that powered a culturally-plural and multi-partisan campaign by young Nigerians, who want to change the trajectory of political leadership in the country .

This is an age where young people in other countries are making tremendous progress in many spheres of global excellence such as academics, business, health, leadership and others. It is an age which is dominated by computers, the internet, a lateral and digital knowledge-economics of scale, advanced science and technology; therefore youth as ILO (2020) posits must be properly equipped with better education, skills and other complementary intellectual and spiritual resources to thrive in this age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is gradually metamorphosing into the Fifth Industrial Revolution – of more advanced technology, science and globalization. On top of this global shift into the Fifth Industrial Revolution, there is the forthcoming AI revolution (at its core), which will unleash a vast spell of automation into the global economy. This upcoming AI revolution is not just close at hand it is already unfolding. AI, Robotics and Data Science which are the driving forces of 21^st century hi-tech is strongly shaping incomes and lives all over the world. Universities in advanced and emerging nations like Harvard, Stanford, the MIT, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge and online educational technologies like Coursera, EDX and Alison are creatively and progressively upskilling young people in those countries to lead the next decades of political, social, economic , technological and scientific change.

Nigeria with a 10.1 million out of school rate, according to its Ministry of Education is not prepared at the moment to make any gains from the global knowledge-economy that is driven by AI, Robotics and Data Science. It has to fix its education deficit to carve a niche for itself in a rapidly changing world. Nigeria's educational and intellectual landscape is currently unprepared and greatly detached from the enormous leaps other nations (especially the advanced and emerging ones) are making in the spheres of ICT, STEM and the Knowledge Economy. This is a serious problem for a country like Nigeria, which is well endowed with ample human and natural resources but consistently fails to provide a better quality of life for its people, especially its growing youth bulge. Some of the initiatives that the Nigerian government has used and is still using to try and turn the tide for Nigeria’s youth falls largely short of any sterling mark – on a global scale. Initiatives such as YOUWIN (Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria), GIS (Graduate Internship Scheme), N-POWER, YEP (Youth Empowering People), YISA (Youth Initiative for Sustainable Agriculture in Nigeria) and P-YES (the Presidential Entrepreneurship Support program. These initiatives have failed to hit any sterling mark because they do not adequately dig into the social realities of Nigerian youth. They only address the problem on the surface by trying to lift up a few lucky and mostly entitled youth. They do not have any autotelic capacity to expand or make a great impact on the fortunes of the nation. As long as these initiatives cannot help young Nigerian to build skills and create value that is globally competitive they will continue to miss the mark. A shift in the planning and implementation of these sort of initiatives is needed.

Nigeria cannot simply afford to be left behind in the global comity of nations because its youth are lacking in institutional support and structural props. For Nigeria to catch up and leapfrog the trajectory of her development it must borrow many leaves (as we say proverbially in Africa) from advanced and emerging nations. A good dose of best practices in youth empowerment learned and derived from these nations will surely be of great benefit to Nigeria. If the educational and intellectual deficit which Nigerian youth suffer continues, Nigeria will be left out of the circle of advanced and emerging nations, in the future. Nigeria needs to overhaul its education system to make it less credentialist, more futuristic and more agile. The stymied emphasis on merely possessing sterile educational certificates instead of possessing and nurturing useful skills and lateral knowledge has to be stopped. Futurism and agility for Nigeria’s educational system implies that there has to a revolutionary shift in learning from conservative models of education that are rooted in rote-based learning towards flexible and creative models that focus on skill-building , pragmatic real-world exploration and entrepreneurship. To get it right in this regards the Nigerian nation has to return to the planning table with a strong shift in thinking.

Fixing the Key Gap of Youth Empowerment in Nigeria - The Dearth of Proper National Planning

National planning is one of the best practices of modern governance, which helps nations to develop policies and programs that are immediately effective and positively futuristic. According to Iheanacho et.al (2014) there has not been a dearth of national plans in Nigeria but a dysfunction and failure of national planning. In fact in Nigeria there has always been the institutionalized culture of national planning but not its overwhelming success (Nigeria has been actively planning since 1962). Instead of steady progress, the nation has suffered from weak institutions, dilapidated infrastructure, massive unemployment, huge national debt, wide spread poverty and disease among other social and structural malaise. The causes for this abysmal state of failed planning in Nigeria are many. According to Iheanacho et.al (2014), they include the following: pervasive corruption, non – continuity (of planning aspects and schedules), non-commitment by political leaders and institutions, poor national data management (such as the failure of the National Population Commission to conduct a census for many years), inefficient public service and the lack of synergy between the public and private sector. The abysmal state of failed planning in Nigeria takes a very dreary toll on the nation’s youth. In addition to the general failure of national planning in Nigeria, there has been a great disconnect between the development of the youth and the scope of the national plans. Jega (2017) asserts that the youth in Nigeria have been structurally neglected since independence, even by a whole generation of leaders who became national figures as youth.

In 1964, the National Youth Council of Nigeria was founded as a non – partisan and non-profit organization under the aegis of the federal government. Its core national mandate has been to serve as a consultative and advisory body to government on youth policy. The council has endured ever since alongside its mandate but its success has been very marginal. Jega (2017), notes that during the era of military interventions in Nigeria, there was a weakening of this mandate due to the gross neglect of the youth by military controlled institutions (which by their basic nature were created and controlled by an amorphous set of different Junta and administrations with disparate policies). After decades of military rule , as Jega (2017) shows the country created a post – military era youth policy in 2009, which due to statistical and pragmatic reasons did not fulfill the aspirations nor meet the needs of Nigeria’s youth. Ten years after in 2019, another National Youth Policy was established by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, which also seeks to advance the cause of the Nigerian youth. The 2019 policy seeks to adjust the shortcomings of the 2009 policy. Two signs which show that the current youth policy also has a lot of gaps in performance is the fact that there are a lot of children of school age out of school in Nigeria (by the millions) and youth employment is high (by the millions as well). Cumulative data from the World Bank, IMF, the National Bureau of Statistics, the Brookings Institute and other authoritative sources shows that this trend of growing youth unemployment in Nigeria has been on the rise since the last decade. As Jega (2017) asserts such conditions can only exacerbate the fragility of a failing state like Nigeria which is currently grappling with a lot of structural problems.

According to Jega (2017) all the national plans from independence to date have failed to address the real problems and challenges that confront Nigeria’s youth, especially in today’s highly globalized and competitive world economy, which as the ILO (2020) is even on the cusp of transitioning to a highly automated phase of greater technological advancements such as AI, Driverless Electric Cars, the 5G and post 5G internet, ubiquitous Blockchain technologies among others. What process should the country adopt with youth empowerment within the frame of its national planning? This must surely be one that does not only resonate with global best practices for national planning and is steeped in it but also takes into the fullest consideration the local context of social reality for Nigeria’s youth. Youth empowerment works best when it is meticulously developed and implemented. As Ihenacho et.al (2014) shows national plans fail in Nigeria because they are not meticulously developed or implemented.

Resolving Nigeria’s Youth Problems Through Proactive and Futuristic National Planning

Nigeria desperately needs a national planning model that works for its youth. The nation of Nigeria has been generating national plans for social and economic development since 1962. As a matter of fact the country initiated its first coherent youth program in the year 1964, as we have shown earlier in this article. These development plans have failed to take into account the key concerns that are the bane of progress for Nigeria’s youth. A close look at the country’s national youth policy shows a great disconnect between policy and praxis in the public sphere. There are many gaps that have disconnected national youth plans from being adequately successful. These gaps include poor models for action, poor funding and the lean-focus of such plans.

This coming phase of higher technological advancement all over the world is one in which countries with workforces that are less skilled and less digitally – fluent will be left behind as the ILO (2020) shows. Nigeria cannot afford to be left behind. The country however, will suffer such a fate if it fails to empower its youth. In addition to suffering from being left behind in the scales of global scientific and technological advancement, the country will battle large armies of young social drifters, who are lost to the festering lure crime and other vices as Ekine (2021) asserts. Thus, the country has to take seriously and make timely the great task of empowering its youth in the most robust ways. To do that effectively, the nation has to review the mode and scope of national planning for its youth. How can optimum national planning truly improve the lot of Nigerian youth?

To shift course in the direction of progress the following things need to be done.

1. 1. Use evidence as a basis for planning for the youth, through adequate data collection which as Ihenacho et.al (2014) shows has been a hindrance to success with national planning.
2. 2. Measure both the feasibility and the success of national plans for youth.
3. 3. Bring the tools for incubating and accelerating skills for the youths to the streets, the ghettos and other social spaces like markets, conservative religious education centres and factories where alienated Nigerian youth can be found.
4. 4. Improve education outcomes for youth proactively by including creating frameworks for intensive school to work transitions, supported by vocational education alternatives.
5. 5. Improve cultural orientation for youth in line with global realities. Nigeria’s youth should be more fluent about global trends and the global zeitgeist especially the positive aspects that are powering the success of advanced and emerging nations.
6. 6. Build the ethics and ethos of youth around the virtues of discipline and diligence.
7. 7. Develop a comprehensive peace building program for youth that ties personal development to personal growth and self development. This particular one is needed against the backdrop of conflict and insecurity that besets Nigeria.

The next question is that how can the government kickstart the process successfully. We treat that adequately in the next section here.

Collect Stakeholders Input in an Open and Fair Manner (The Start of Successful Youth Empowerment in Nigeria)

Data is the new oil as the popular saying now goes everywhere in the world. This is true not just in the world of digital technology but also in the world of social engineering. Adequate data is needed to set the right course for youth empowerment. To adequately collect data about Nigeria’s Youth, the government has to strengthen the country’s national agency ‘the National Bureau of Statistics’ that is saddled with the task of collecting national data, to expand the scope of its data collection into more modular and granularly refined forms of data. To achieve this objective, a stronger technological model and framework for data collection has to be developed for the country.

The use of rigorous methods to collect facts and figures should be used, as we have shown earlier, data is indispensable to productive youth empowerment. Statistically gathered and empirically-verifiable data should form the basis of planning. As Ihenacho (2014) shows, the failure of Nigeria to use accurate data in planning is a great limitation in itself to the success of most of its national planning schemes. The data model Nigeria needs to plan for her youth must be driven by both local expertise and global best practices. Nigeria has a growing number of proficient digital technologists which can be recruited into working teams to build a national databank that has many uses, including planning effectively for Nigerian youth. The process of data collection should not also be partisan, biased or skewered by ill-favoring in any way, such as cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, prebendalism etc. As bias, partisanship and other forms of selective – favoring will surely defeat the process. After collecting this national data about the youth, there has to be a smart database, which possesses an agile structure that allows the data to be used efficiently and proactively. A database that has open access to public and private requests for usage. These requests for data can be made by Nigeria’s Central and subnational governments, as well as by international and local organizations, such as non-governmental organizations that want to empower Nigerian youth. Armed with better data, youth empowerment in Nigeria will have a more proactive focus and drive that will turn out to be more successful.

Proper oversight is needed to make the process work. As Iheanacho (2014) shows this oversight should be one that thrives on adequate technocratic competence. Technocratic competence that uses experts with a broad range of youth – focused skill sets, that is grounded in the knowledge of the peculiarities of youth. These peculiarities of youth as the National Youth policy, 2019 asserts includes education issues , employment issues , technology issues, health issues, psychology issues and broader social issues such as participation in political and public spaces. If proper oversight along the lines of adequate expertise is pursued then there would be room for remarkable progress. To make proper oversight successful the government of Nigeria should forge a seamless and functional synthesis between relevant public institutions and organizations, such as the country’s ministries of education, science and technology, youth, finance, budget and planning and others, such as youth focused Millennium Development Goals programs. These public organizations should coordinate all youth empowerment programs under a single office that is managed by the presidency but one which operates with adequate independence.

Going Beyond National Planning To Achieve Concrete Success with Youth Empowerment in Nigeria

Beyond national planning, the political and social will to plan successfully and sustainably for youth empowerment has to be in place. The resources to plan successfully and sustainably for youth empowerment also has to be in place. It will be to the detriment of the Nigerian nation if the country fails to plan successfully and sustainably for youth empowerment because of a dearth in national will or the proper use of public resources. Nigeria can easily erase its youth empowerment deficit by increasing the amount of money it allocates to education and the youth sector as an urgent starting point. Youth empowerment is an issue of great concern that must be addressed with more commitment. As the English dictum goes prevention is better than cure. Nigeria has a whole lot to prevent if it can act proactively now as it concerns its youth. The best way to go is to start building the framework for youth empowerment through enhanced national planning that is youth – focused without delay. A stitch in time saves nine. Nigeria needs to salvage the situation before a large army of disillusioned youth sends the country down the road to irreversible ruin.