THE YOUTH AS NIGERIA’S ROUGH DIAMONDS

LETTERS

Youth should be a gift. The time of youth should be a time of giving to oneself and one’s country. Because youth is naturally associated with light years and the strength that comes from them, a country blessed with youth is a country bountifully blessed.

When such a country realizes its gifts and is able to profitably stir itself and use those gifts, it will be truly set on the path of development. Conversely, when a country that has been so blessed becomes careless with this gift it inadvertently seeds a disastrous future.

Nigeria is a country blessed with youth. At the tail-end of last year, Nigeria’s population surged to 217 million. Youths account for about 70% of this figure. Some 42% of this are under the age of 15, making Nigeria a country with one of the youngest population in the world. This should be a blessing.

However, poor planning and poverty have ensured that it is not. Many years of failed leadership and broken promises have cemented Nigeria’s difficult spot. A country that should be enjoying the fruits of having so many young people is instead left with a burden that is becoming weightier by the day. Almost the whole of 2022 was spent at home by Nigerian undergraduate students, many of them young people, as universities buckled under strikes.

The effects of that unfortunate interruption are yet to be fully felt. It is frightening what will happen when they will begin to be realized.

These days, in the face of niggling unemployment, many young people, devastated by poverty, resort to internet fraud.

For these young people, defrauding unwary locals and foreigners alike is both their way of keeping their heads above water and getting back at a country that has failed them.

Nigeria has stringent laws prohibiting cybercrimes and every now and then, the relevant prosecutorial agencies arraign suspects and make a mighty show out of it.

But the problems run much deeper than occasionally picking up one or two scapegoats and making examples out of them.

Nigeria is a country that has failed its young people, its rough diamonds which could have been polished to serve such great purposes for the country. The starkest effect of these failures is that those young people who are not desperately trying to leave the country are deep into cybercrimes and other crimes. These sordid acts dent Nigeria’s image abroad, and do not augur well for the future of a country that has such grand dreams.

The most comforting sign yet is that after eight insipid years of inertia, a president that famously branded youths lazy is finally packing his bag to take a bow. It is indeed a good thing that an administration under which young people were mauled down at Lekki Toll gate is about to recede into the shadows of history.

The next administration may yet choose to ride roughshod over Nigeria’s young people. But then, Nigeria may not survive the disastrous consequences.

Kene Obiezu, @kenobiezu