The only place you find success before work is in the dictionary. – Quincy Jones, legendary African-America music producer and philanthropist. Like their counterparts elsewhere around the world, many unemployed young Nigerians wish to work and be successful in life. And like their peers, they deserve an enabling environment to blossom out. Unfortunately, while youngsters in some of those other countries have continued to be buoyed by meaningful schemes floated by their governments, those from the self-styled Giant of Africa are daily being crowded out of any such available opportunities.
In those other places, scholarships, student loans, food stamps, unemployment allowances, job retraining and other social security programmes are always made available for their youth and other less privileged citizens.
Some of us may have heard our parents and other elders narrate how they trekked long distances to attend the nearest mission school in another community during the colonial and early post-colonial era in Nigeria. And because of distance, finance and their craving for discipline, many parents and guardians sent their wards to go live as house helps to some of the strictest teachers in the mission school system.
It was surely tasking for them, back then, than what we experienced in our early school years and whatever our children may be witnessing today in terms of easy access to education. But the real inverse of all this is that while a Standard Six certificate of then could readily secure its holder a job in any of the schools, civil service, police and other white-collar employments, such is hardly the case with a university degree of today.
In those times, and even up to the late 1970s, it was common for a university undergraduate to have three job offers awaiting him upon graduation. For instance, multinational commercial conglomerates like UAC, SCOA, CFAO, UTC and John Holt were always falling over each other to select the best from every graduating class. Banks, big manufacturing firms and the oil multinationals later joined the rush.
For the eventual picks, starting salaries were usually quite handsome with instant car loan, accommodation, domestic staff and other perks. Not even the introduction of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme in 1973 could hamper this for the extremely lucky as they were accorded full employee entitlements even while still on service. Of course, the universities naturally enjoyed the right of first choice as they moved to retain their most outstanding graduates (mostly first-class) for employment and further development.
Nigeria’s economy was said to be buoyant at the time and this was partly attested to by the lineup of export and import vessels on our quays. Here in Port Harcourt, for example, news of the arrival of a foreign ship often reverberated across town as able-bodied young men raced toward the NPA Wharf to engage in longshoreman duties. In fact, with such news, even serious football matches could be abandoned midway as players sprinted off to be recruited for ad hoc jobs at the wharf. In those days, only very few vessels came with containerised goods, the rest had to be offloaded manually; hence the ubiquity of stevedoring firms in town.
But look what the situation is today. Only an average of three ships docks at our harbour every week. The big oil and gas firms are seriously scaling down their onshore operations while focusing more on offshore activities. The industrial and commercial conglomerates in Nigeria may all have relocated elsewhere as we hardly hear of their activities any more. What’s more, the government is no longer interested in carrying the title of ‘largest employer of labour’ and had since advised the youth to begin to invent jobs. Again, payments of government scholarships and grants to indigenous students are now very few and far between.
Apparently having been left in the lurch, our young men and women are beginning to brace for the worst. Nigerian university graduates are increasingly turning desperate bus drivers, tricycle riders, bank cleaners, messengers and groundnut hawkers. The idle minds among them have since provided the devil a wider range of choice workshops; for which reason Yahoo Boys (Internet fraudsters), kidnappers, armed robbers, prostitutes and ritual murderers abound. The rest have turned to sports betting and numbers lottery from which the lucky ones raise cash for their daily survival.
But my concern is that as these young ones are grappling with life, largely unaided by the government, the latter rather appears to be creating more zigs and zags in their path. For example, some states had long banned commercial motorcycle and tricycle operations on expressways and other major routes primarily to ease traffic flow. In some other places, their operations were said to have been restricted to certain periods of the day. Having banned them from such obviously lucrative routes and periods, the concerned authorities simply ignored following up with a reduction of the daily tax paid by these operators.
Kano State appears to be the worst offender here. Its road traffic agency, KAROTA, was recently said to have increased the yearly tax on tricycles from N8,000 to a whopping N100,000 without considering that it would be an overkill as these fellows just returned from long Covid-19 curfews and lockdowns. And this is also outside the daily police extortions on their approved routes. Haba!
Additionally, the federal government has just announced its intention to repeal the National Lottery Act of 2005 and replace it with the National Gaming Act of 2021. For the avoidance of doubt, this is no mere change of name. Surely, the intention here cannot be far from identifying ways of increasing taxes of lottery operators which will invariably force them to reduce their winning payouts while encouraging monopoly. Too bad!
In fact, it is now obvious that this government is using our young ones as hunting dogs to sniff out game for the master’s gun.

By: Ibelema Jumbo