Sixty per cent of\u00a0 the Nigerian population is made up
\nof young people below the age of 35 and governments at all levels have not taken serious cognizance of this.\u00a0 About eighty per cent of these youths are either unemployed or under-employed and this has made many observers to predict that the youthful population has left a time bomb waiting to be detonated.\u00a0 Nigeria has the largest number of unemployed youths in Africa.\u00a0 One out of every three Nigerians is either unemployed or under-employed.
\nWith the exceptions of electricity and infrastructure, youth unemployment is the third biggest problem confronting our nation today. It is the root cause of poverty, youth restiveness, gangsterism, bank robbery, kidnapping, assassinations, lawlessness, and all sorts of deviant behaviours.\u00a0 Among these band of unemployed youths are over three million young boys and girls with NYSC discharge certificates roaming about the nooks and crannies of the country searching for jobs that do not exist.\u00a0 Our tertiary institutions dump over 200,000 graduates into the labour market every year thereby, exacerbating the situation.
\nYouth unemployment has maligned our families and debased our educational system.\u00a0 Parents are frustrated and traumatised at seeing their sons and daughters in crime and prostitution because of unemployment. The younger ones are discouraged from being serious with their studies because those who are already out of school ahead of them are jobless and frustrated.
\nForeign embassies are inundated with Nigerian youths seeking visas to get out of the country because of the scourge of unemployment on daily basis, prisons in Libya, Italy, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Indonesia etc are full of Nigerians for one crime or the other.\u00a0 Our friends have almost neglected us and foreign nations spite us because of the escapade of our youths in their countries.\u00a0 We can change all these if we have a people-centred government.
\nNigerian youthful population should be an advantage to the economy if well harnessed.\u00a0 In addition to constituting a dynamic workforce to produce goods and services for the nation, they should also make up the entrepreneurial class to drive the economy. We should enable them turn their imaginations into creation of new products and improvement of existing ones.
\nPeople like Mack Zuckerberg of the \u201cfacebook\u201d fame and \u201cGoogle\u201d founders-Sergey Brin and Larry Page are all billionaires and within the age of 26 and 36.\u00a0 Our youths can perform such feats if given the right encouragement and atmosphere to explore their talents through hard work and creativity.\u00a0 Youths are painful assets to waste.
\nA nation that toys with her youths is toying with her destiny because they are the super structures on which the nation is built.\u00a0 We should formulate strategies and build institutions that will create opportunities to engage our youths in meaningful enterprises and to discourage them from criminal activities and purposeless travelling.
\nThe nation must see youth unemployment as a monster that is debilitating our collective being. Instead of amassing military arsenal on kidnappers and bank robbers, we should fight their root-cause which is youth unemployment.
\nThe youths of a nation are the trustees of its posterity and the last line of defence in times of wars and emergencies.\u00a0 They are an indispensable human capital that should be nurtured and preserved for national well-being and development.
\nDifferent countries have tackled their unemployment problems with different strategies and methods. China has used the massive manufacturing and export approach while India is using the service industry to meaningfully engage her massive population.
\nNigeria should use agriculture to tackle her unemployment problems.\u00a0 We have 910,768km of arable land, 13,000km of water and 21 agricultural research institutions. We have large and healthy population of which about 60 per cent is made up of youth under 35 years of age.
\nThe land is fertile and has different ecological zones to grow different types of plants.\u00a0 Agriculture has always been our highest employers of labour and has contributed meaningfully.\u00a0 So we can engage our youths in the production of more food for our country and more raw materials for our industries.
\nMassive cultivation and processing of cassava tubers into food and raw materials will positively engage our unemployed youth and provide meaningful job opportunities for them.
\nYouth unemployment has become a national embarrassment and should be handled with urgency and the emergency it deserves.\u00a0 Youths are leaders of today, and tomorrow we should not allow them to dissolve into oblivion because of our lack of national priorities.\u00a0 We must solve it before it swallows us.
\nWe have formulated intervention funds for our banks, the aviation industry, the small scale industries etc.\u00a0 What about our youths?\u00a0 Development must be people-centred and must have a human face, kidnappers have now descended on school children, may be pregnant mothers will be next.\u00a0 Who knows whose turn it will be next?
\nPaul writes from Akwa Ibom State.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Joseph Paul<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sixty per cent of\u00a0 the Nigerian population is made up of young people below the age of 35 and governments at all levels have not taken serious cognizance of this.\u00a0 About eighty per cent of these youths are either unemployed or under-employed and this has made many observers to predict that the youthful population has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n