By Bishop C. Johnson
Nigeria’s population is young and fast-growing. Nigeria according to United Nations projections is expected to be the world’s third most populous country by 2050 with 400 million inhabitants.
With nearly 70% of Nigeria’s population below the age of 35, it is therefore crucial that young people are represented in the country’s political systems to become part of policy making decisions that will guide Nigeria into the future.
2. There was a welcome step on this front when in May 2018, Nigeria passed a law which lowered the age limits for political office from 35 to 30 years in the Senate, and 30 to 25 years in the House of Representatives and State Houses of Assembly.
Known as the “Not Too Young to Run” act, the move was intended to reflect the changing demographics of Africa’s most populous nation and help usher in younger leaders. This was a remarkable achievement for young people in the country, as it means that they had opportunities for representation which were not previously possible.
3. While this was a great step towards youth inclusion in politics, it immediately became clear that more still needed to be done to put young people at the very heart of politics, governance and decision-making process in Nigeria.
Two immediate major challenges to achieving the objective of youths inclusion in mainstream political system are – the high cost of political parties nomination and expression of interest forms, a vehicle and machinery to elective political positions in the country which has remained sky high and out of reach of young people and the even higher cost of contesting for elective positions in Nigeria’s political space which is self-funded and hence out of the reach of most young Nigerians.
4. However, and good news at some levels is that the same trend of Not Too Young to Run phenomenon is being seen across the world, as young people are becoming increasingly involved in politics and youth inclusion in governance is being perceived as a catalyst for change.
In many countries, we have seen the age of those in positions of leadership come down over the years – Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, for example, was 43 years old when he assumed the office and David Cameron became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at 43 years old.
It seems though, that this trend has not extended to African countries just yet, where comparably Rwanda is leading the way with Paul Kagame’s cabinet reaching an average age of 47.5 years old.
5. It is however disappointing to see that despite the Not Too Young to Run bill being passed into law in Nigeria paving the way for more young people to be inducted into the leadership framework of the country, none of Muhammadu Buhari’s, the Nigerian President who signed the Not Too Young to Run bill into law ministerial appointees fell within the country’s new policy definition of a young person.
Indeed, while the National Youth Policy defines young people as being between the ages of 15 and 29, the youngest member among President Buhari’s Ministerial appointees was Sadiya Umar Farouq who was 43 at the time she was appointed a Minister.
However, there were a few glimmers of hope with examples of young people who emerged as leaders of the State Houses of Assembly in Nigeria right immediately after the Not Too Young to Run bill was passed into law including Rt. Hon. Abok Nuhu Ayuba from Plateau State, Rt. Hon. Adebo Ogundoyin (Oyo), Rt. Hon. Nasiru Magarya (Zamfara), and Rt. Hon. Yakubu Danladi Salihu (Kwara).
This was a move in the right direction but unfortunately those glimmers of hope were quickly extinguished as that trend was woefully unstained in subsequent election cycles.
6. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration made some improvements in its ministerial appointments with the appointments of Beta Edu, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, Bosum Tijani, yet his youngest ministerial appointee, Beta Edu at 36 was still outside the age bracket of Nigeria’s National Youth Policy of 15 – 29 years.
If Nigeria is to make progress, it must recognize more broadly the importance of young people in nation building and provide them with the tools, knowledge and skills to lead by including them in political decision-making.
7. A cursory examination of the world’s population by country indicates that majority of countries in the world with the largest young populations according to 2023 United nations estimates are predominantly in developing countries in Africa and Asia (India: 420 million, China: 310 million and Nigeria at an estimated 151 million, accounting for 70% of Nigeria’s total population of 217 million as at August 25th, 2022 according to worldometer).
The critical question for these countries particularly Nigeria, is what does this large youth population portend? Does this large youth demography portend demographic dividend or a demographic timed-bomb waiting to explode?
8. The #EndSARS protests that brought hundreds of young people into the streets across the country to demand for improved governance and better society, to me should have been a watershed period for the leadership of this country.
Although, the movement seemed to have been momentarily suppressed, the issues raised during the protests had remained, boiled over into the current Tinubu led administration and resurfaced as #DaysOfRage and #EndBadGovernanceinNigeria, and if not urgently and properly addressed in a genuine and serious manner, this demography I fear could become a demographic timed-bomb which will explode sooner than later.
9. If the #EndSARS, #DaysOfRage and #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria protests in the country taught the country and its leadership any lesson, it is that the preponderance of this young demography is not going to continue to tolerate bad leadership as manifested on ground in various negative governance indices in the last two decades.
Most Nigerians not just young people agree that something serious must and should be done now to change the country’s trajectory and course, and the onus is on the country’s current leadership to avert this demographic timed-bomb waiting to explode by transforming the preponderance youth population of the country into a demographic dividend for the common good of all.
10. Historically, and in many parts of the world, youths have always made significant contributions in the transformation of their various societies.
Alexander the Great, also known as Alexander III or Alexander of Macedonia, born 365 BCE in Pella, Macedonia, Northwest of Thessaloniki, Greece, described as one of the world’s greatest Military Generals succeeded his father at the age of 20; Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew who led the country from 1959 – 1990 is recognized as the country’s founding father and credited with rapidly transforming his country, Singapore from a developing third-world country to a developed first-world country within a single generation under his leadership, was 36 years old when he became his country’s prime minister; One of Britian’s greatest prime ministers, the country’s wartime prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill became in 1900, a member of parliament at the age of 26.
11. Here at home, almost all the founding fathers of the country began the struggle for independence as youths. In post-independence era, some of our post-independence leaders who made the greatest impacts in our country did so as youths. King Alfred Papapreye Diete Spiff at 25 became the first military governor of Rivers State from 1967 – 1975; the late Muhammadu Abubakar Rimi in 1979 at a young age of 39 became the governor of old Kano State; late Bishop Benson Andrew Idahosa who started the Nigerian Pentecostal movement in 1960 was 30 years old.
Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu (1909-1966) arguably one of Nigeria’s first renowned business tycoon and entrepreneur par excellence started out in his twenties and made huge success of his life endeavor. And the list can go and on!
12. So, why all the history of these great Nigerians and world leaders? The simple answer is that history does matter and always will. History gives us the perspectives to sieve through leaders and the roles they played in moving society forward. X-raying history of leaders, particularly transformational leaders has become more important in post-colonial Nigeria as true leadership in this time and period has largely remained more illusionary than reality.
13. The question then is why has that become the case with the country’s leadership? To answer that question, leadership for me, must provide the fulcrum with mission and vision on one hand, and environment and circumstance on the other hand must be combined adroitly to produce sustainable results.
It therefore behooves the personality in this case the leader especially, for nations particularly those still searching in most cases for a national identity or definition of national purpose to transform the people’s aspirations for a better life predicated on the leader’s quest for greatness. This requires selflessness, discipline, intelligence and ingenuity from both leadership and followership that defines the roles and places of all citizens.
14. As for the youths and their contributions to societal development and transformation, we must first situate the myriad of challenges or factors militating against the optimal productivity of youths in a society such as ours.
A key factor or limitation to Nigerian youths in contributing to developments in society is lack of employable skills and competences. Whilst Nigeria has millions of educated youths across the length and breadth of the country, can we as a nation boldly say that in the circumstances and context of the 21st century highly technologically interconnected and highly competitive global workplace, that our youths are equipped for this new workplace and business environment?
15. To rescue our youths from this malaise and remedy the situation, our educational polices ought to see a paradigm shift in the country’s educational curriculum to reflect the requirements of the new workplace based on a multi-sectoral approach; away from white collar jobs mentality that is based on credentialism. Credentialism has thus far brought us to a “certificate and diploma buying nation”. Our educational institutions (with sincere apologies) are fast becoming “diploma mills”.
16. Next step is to build an entrepreneurial youth class that can make meaning and sense out of the nation’s abundant resources. An entrepreneurial and technical oriented youth culture, in my view, has the potential to launch the country into a wave of socio-economic transformational cycle that can lift majority of the youths out of poverty, crime and disease. It also has the potential to not only transform the environment, but also rebuild the economy.
17. Another area for youth transformation is the agricultural value chain. Creating the awareness amongst the youths because of their large numbers, to see agriculture as a business that will not only feed the nation but will transform their lives, their economy and standard of living is vital and critical to turning around the economy.
To achieve this however, would require a multi-strategy of growing young and dynamic entrepreneurs with the necessary incentives and supports, including soft bank loans, small business grants, tax holidays/breaks and establishment of technical advisory and business advisory/support institutions. Afterall, youth energy is limitless!
18. Another area that is critical to harvesting and unleashing the seemingly boundless energy of this country’s youth for innovation and giving them a sense of accomplishment and inclusion is inclusive politics. All over the world, serious nations have a strategy of preparing their youths for leadership.
If not so, how can Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy etc of the United States emerge in their time and become presidents? How come the current French president, Emmanuel Macron not only emerged but became president and appointed 34 year old Gabriel Attal as the country’s Prime Minister? Is it a coincidence that in almost all the major and advanced democracies, the median age for presidents and prime ministers is about 40 years….. NEVER TOO YOUNG TO RUN!!!
19. In all of these challenges, limitations and bottlenecks, who is to be blamed? The true and honest answer is that everyone has some blames. The youths of these days have not lived up to the expectations of the founding fathers of this nation. Just like the current crop of Nigerian leadership, this generation of youths have credibility and integrity deficit.
A former minister of Power in Nigeria, Prof Chinedu Nebo during his time in office created a program in which 500 unemployed Nigerian youths with various Engineering degrees would be hired and trained to work and service the country’s power sector, this program was unable to achieve its objectives of creating employments for 500 Nigerian youths and saving the country billions of naira because it was discovered that these youths were not only unemployable, they were also not trainable. In a similar revelation, the former Director General of the National Youth Service Corps, Brig. Gen. Johnson Bamidele Olawumi told Nigerians that most NYSC members can’t write ordinary application for employment. Heaven they say helps only those who help themselves.
20. How did we get here in the first place? Well, the answer is simple. Most Nigerian youths like the current leadership of the country want easy and quick wealth, so they resorted to various dubious shortcuts and criminal means to achieving wealth.
It is therefore not uncommon to see youths instead of studying and passing their examinations while in the university indulge in cultism, pay bribes to lecturers to get good and passing grades in courses they know nothing about, some get involved in armed robbery and the females resort to prostitution, in all these, the main objective for which they were in the university, the acquisition of knowledge was then relegated to the background. By indulging in these vices these youths proved that they are no different integrity-wise from their leaders. For any nation to grow, both leaders and followers must show integrity in all they do.
In the words of late Prof. Chinua Achebe, “one of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised”. Until our youths imbibe this principle, the country will remain stagnated in all fronts.
21. X-raying the magnitude of the challenges even further, about 90 million people – roughly half Nigeria’s population – live in extreme poverty, according to estimates from the World Data Lab’s Poverty Clock. Around June 2018, Nigeria overtook India, a country with seven times its population, to achieve the disgraceful title of the poverty capital of the world. Put in another context, if poor Nigerians were a country, it would be more populous than Germany.
Almost six people in Nigeria fall into this trap every minute and who is to be blamed for this? The simple answer is corrupt system and leaders are culpable.
22. Extreme poverty statistics have always been controversial. A number of countries and experts disagree with the way it is measured in monetary terms – the World Bank’s $1.90 earnings-per-day benchmark. But no matter what the arguments might be, at the root of poverty lies the deprivation of people’s access to basic necessities of life such as food, healthcare and sanitation, education and assets.
And the evidence, including from India, shows that solving these issues generally lifts populations out of extreme poverty. As global attention turns towards our country, Nigeria, here are ways that concerned stakeholders and policymakers can assist in the efforts to achieve sustainable development, unleash the innovative powers of its youth and end poverty in the country.
23. Firstly, Nigeria must invest in girls’ education. Nigeria is home to over 20 million out-of-school children, according to UNICEF as at 2022, one out of five every out of school children is in Nigeria, and around half that number are girls – and it is hardly coincidental that the country with the world’s highest number of out-of-school children is home to the highest number of people living in extreme poverty.
Two-thirds of this population are concentrated in Nigeria’s highly populated north west and north-eastern regions, both of which have been ravaged by the terror group, Boko Haram and recently by bandits who have continued to make targeting and abduction of school pupils and students their priority to extort money from the government, resulting in an educational emergency affecting about 2.8 million children. The 2022 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative best presents this picture.
The poorest parts of Nigeria had the worst education indicators (school attendance and years of schooling) and these constitute the biggest percentage contribution to the MPI, followed by nutrition and child mortality – all issues that affect women the most and who is to be blamed? The answer, corrupt system and corrupt leadership are culpable.
Educating girls is proven to have both economic returns and intergenerational impact. For Nigeria to improve on this front, it must increase its investment in education.
24. Secondly, Nigeria must invest in the health and general wellbeing of its citizens. Increased investment in healthcare is linked to economic growth, and consequently to reducing poverty.
Nigeria is battling with a number of crushing health indicators including malaria, tuberculosis and infant and maternal mortality, and more recently Corona Virus Pandemic that challenged and brought to breaking points the richest and most advanced economies, some countries including Nigeria are yet to fully recover from the sweeping devastating impacts of COVID-19 on productivity and who is to be blamed? The answer, corrupt system and corrupt leadership are culpable.
In order to end poverty, we must harness our demographic dividends through investment in health, education and livelihoods – especially for our young people.
26. In remarks he made on October 2017, International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the late Professor Babatunde Osotimehin – former executive secretary of the United Nations Population Fund – argued that “when countries’ age structures change favorably, meaning that they have more people of working age than dependents, they can see a boost to development, known as a demographic dividend, provided that they empower, educate and employ their young people.”
Africa’s youth population is booming according to Gates Foundation Goalkeepers report. Sub-Saharan African countries – the last frontiers of poverty in the world – are witnessing explosive population growth, and the region is projected to grow by about 51% over the next three decades.
The UN projects that Nigeria will have an estimated 400 million people by 2050, making it the third-largest country in the world. Lower population growth is not an automatic panacea for poverty.
Rather, an educated, healthy and resilient youth population, as has been the case in China, is the best catalyst for growth. However, an absence of planning or an allocation of insufficient resources towards harnessing this bulging population could spell doom.
25. Thirdly, Nigeria must expand economic opportunities and embrace technology if it is ever going to end poverty and avert a catastrophe. Ending poverty in Nigeria will entail improving the country’s economic productivity and opportunities for its citizens.
This will mean investing in human capital potential and creating jobs for women and young people, increasing financial access and opportunities for these groups in rural communities, and advancing technological innovation.
As at 2020, Nigeria’s human capital index stood at 0.36 and ranked 168th out of 174 countries (World Bank, 2021). Weak human capital development in Nigeria has contributed to poor socio-economic outcomes and widened disparity, and who is to be blamed? The answer, corrupt system and corrupt leadership are culpable.
One of the low-hanging fruits for Nigeria in the above context would be to embrace educational reforms that focus on developing new skills through robust and well-funded technical and vocational education and training programs for those millions of Nigerians outside the formal school system, or who possess only a primary education.
Unlocking private-sector partnerships through incentives and social impact bonds as well as boosting entrepreneurial ecosystems (with strong emphasis on apprenticeships) are key ways the government can help to spur growth, as has been proven in other countries.
26. Also – and notwithstanding its limitations – access to microfinance has been proven to reduce poverty around the world. While there are valid arguments for the use of grants and other social safety payouts to people living in poverty, it is important to bring people into the financial system as this could help governments better plan and integrate services for the poorest of the poor. Poverty data never tells the whole story.
According to World Bank estimates, Nigeria is one of seven countries that are home to nearly half the world’s population. Financial inclusion is on the rise in Nigeria but penetration in its poverty-stricken rural areas is still very limited and stubbornly so.
The government’s regulatory support for digital and mobile-based financial products and adoption of blockchain technologies can help to supercharge financial inclusion. Beyond this, blockchain ledgers have also been used in countries like India to create and link digital identities with payments.
This has ensured transparency, and has helped to plug corruption-related leakages in government disbursements to people living in poverty. Nigeria should emulate this and take things further.
27. Finally, a national policy on youth development and transformation for socio-economic growth and political inclusion must be developed by government with stakeholders and other groups participation (the youths, private and public sectors), so as to integrate the Nigerian youth into different facets of the country’s socio-economic, political and cultural milieu with specific and measurable policy instruments as pursued in other climes.
Nigeria as a matter of priority and urgency should sign into law the bill for the establishment of Nigerian Peace Corps which is still pending in the National Assembly.
When established, Nigerian Peace Corps will be a holding place for National Youth Corps Service members who rather than being discharged into the wild were some will get involved in criminal activities, leave the shores of Nigeria for other countries or even unfortunately die, they will acquire additional useful skills including farming and other agricultural related skills and contribute to national development while continuing their national service to their fatherland until they are gainfully employed either in the public or private sector or self-employed as chief executive officers of their own thriving business establishments.
This is the way to go, if Nigeria must transform her impending demographic timed-bomb to a demographic dividend.
Always remember, Jesus Christ CHANGED THE WORLD as a YOUTH!!!
Bishop C. Johnson, is a retired United States Army Captain, a social commentator, an activist and a public speaker, and a national defense and military strategist. He writes from his rural and agrarian community of Egbema in Imo State where he is currently hunkered down and has sheltered himself for safety, even as he prayed to God, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from my country, Nigeria: nevertheless, not our will, but thine, be done. And he can be contacted at b.chuck.johnson@gmail.com
