Young People and The Time of Nigeria

As events to commemorate Nigeria’s centenary
(January 1, 1914 – January 1, 2014) continue, and
as I reflect on the condition of Nigerian youth today,
the perception of the precarious world that has been
shaped for us over the last 100 years became
stronger than ever.


Unarguably, the generations of young people who
have come on the scene, one after the other, in recent
decades, have found a country whose characteristics
and “climate” are changing. Today, the greatest
challenge is being young in a nation dominated by
fear and uncertainty.
Graphic, empirical or quantitative evidence strongly
support this assertion:
According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS)
“2012 Youth Baseline Survey Report”, the population
of Nigerians below the age of 35 years comprises
60% of the entire population of the country.


Assuming that the 2006 census and the 2012
estimate of 167 million for people resident in Nigeria
are correct, then the youth population in Nigeria
today may well be over 100 million.
Of this number an alarming 54% are unemployed, the
NBS report shows (I reckon that the
underdevelopment of agriculture through years of
neglect and poor policy administration, comatose
extractive/mining sector, de-industrialization and the
failure of manufacturing over time have contributed in
no small way to the poor employment figures).
Also, the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), in its 2013 Human Development Index (HDI)
Report, ranked Nigeria amongst countries with low
development index at 153 out of 186 countries that
were ranked. Adult illiteracy rate in Nigeria is 61.3%.
Life expectancy is placed at 52 years while other
health indicators reveal that only 1.9% of the nation’s
budget is expended on health. 68.0% of Nigerians are
stated to be living below a miserable $1.25 daily.
Additional worrisome data are that, while South
African and Egyptian universities make the list, no
single Nigerian university is ranked among the best
10 in Africa and top 400 in the world, as the “Times
Higher Education World University Rankings
2013-2014” show. “T.H.E. Ranking” is the only
global university performance table to judge world-
class universities across all of their core missions -
teaching, research, knowledge transfer and
international outlook.
Of course, social services today are exceedingly poor
and the decay in public infrastructure is glaring for
all to see. Or does one need any data to appreciate
the challenges that the problem of ethnicity,
diminishing national consciousness, religious
intolerance and unchecked activities of militias and
terrorist organizations pose to security at societal
and individual levels in Nigeria today? The gory
pictures from the recent massacre of over 30 students
in Yobe State by Boko Haram insurgents tell the tale
better.


As gloomy as they appear all the data given above do
not sufficiently portray the ‘real’ drama of today’s
youth. The critical issue is something denser;
something that goes beyond the unemployment
statistics and the tables confirming that the world
has changed and that the guarantees of a generation
ago are almost impossible in today’s times of
ferocious competition and obligatory flexibility.
At the heart of the matter is the question of ideology.


Today’s youth are immersed in epochal changes. We
were not born in historical circumstances in which
time-tested, traditional value systems are handed on
almost mechanically. We find ourselves before a
diversity that forces us to choose.
Sadly, the ideology that reads everything in terms of
“individual” success; where the value of a person is
measured by the possession of material wealth
(materialism), is what many young people, in recent
decades, have lived by (how much culture, movies,
and music bear this terrible news!).
Relationships, family, ideals have been pruned, cut
away. “Solipsism” - the belief in oneself as the only
reality - and, even worse, “Nihilism” (the belief in
nothingness), are gradually taking root in our youth.
The results? Various forms of impatience,
disappointment and, yes, fear. So much so that many
young people today have become violent against
themselves, others and the world.
While everything in a person tends to search for
something that satisfies fully his desire for beauty,
truth, and justice, what we meet and what is
proposed publicly and privately seems marked by
condemnation, precariousness, uncertainty, and
doubtfulness


The real drama, therefore, lies in truly finding
something that satisfies one’s life. And life as it is,
with its limitations and its precipices, not life as a
soap opera. This is the story, splendid and terrible,
that is on the stage in the Nigerian theater, and
pertains to all.


Traitor fathers
But where has the father, in his inexcusable absence,
gone? Italian author and playwright, Giovanni
Testori, wrote about those “traitor fathers” who had
coined a medal with no flip side, “the medal of
easiness, that did not envision its flip side: difficulty.”
They then passed it on to their children, betraying the
very ones they had generated.
Indeed, the Nigerian society today is full of such
“traitor fathers” who have failed to transmit to the
young the values of hard work, dignity in labour,
selflessness, social responsibility, accountability,
fairness and respect for others, reminding us that
fatherhood is not a “natural” given but is cultural
and educative.

The dearth of “adults” who are a presence bearing a
true identity, a positive hope, a constructive certainty
or meaning for their lives leaves many young people
in an immense solitude, which they fill with the easy
and sometimes terrible “games” that are readily
available.


Thanks to these traitor fathers who have
institutionalized corruption in every facet of our
public life through years of bad leadership (with a
score of 25 out of a possible 100 points, and ranked
144 out of 177 countries measured, Nigeria emerged
the 33rd most corrupt country in the world in the
Transparency International Corruption Perception
Index 2013), our youth have imbibed a lifestyle of
greed and a “get-rich-quick-at-all-cost” mentality.


But how can the youth see things any different in a
society where corruption is the norm and thieving
politicians and fraudulent businessmen are celebrated
as heroes? Where a poor, hungry man who steals
another’s ‘cube of sugar’ is imprisoned while a public
official who embezzles ‘billions of dollars’ of our
common wealth is allowed to go scot-free, or even
granted Presidential pardon?
The Need for Re-orientation
At individual and national levels, there is a
paramount need for reorientation; a changed set of
attitudes and beliefs. There is need for an education
(The fundamental idea in the education of the young
is that it is through the younger generations that
society successively rebuilds itself), and parents and
religious leaders have a role to play here, as much as
educational institutions do.


Let’s be clear: the concept of education I am referring
to is not “mere acquisition of academic
qualifications” (as, unfortunately, obtains in most
institutions of learning today). No! I mean education
as Luigi Giussani, Italian educator and founder of
International Communion & Liberation Movement,
describes it in his book “The Risk of Education” - “an
introduction to total reality.”
To educate means to introduce a person to reality by
clarifying and developing his primary or original view.

True education, therefore, has the inestimable value
of leading a person to the certainty that things, in
fact, do have a meaning, and “tradition” is an
important component of the educational process.


Unless young people are taught about the past
(tradition) from within a life experience that highlights
a correspondence with the heart’s deepest needs; in
other words, from the context of a life that speaks for
itself (a true father figure - who could be a parent,
teacher, or any responsible role model), they will grow
up either unbalanced or skeptical. If they have
nothing to guide them in choosing one theory (a
working hypothesis) over another, they will invent
skewed ones.


The youth must take this past and these reasons,
look at them critically, compare them with the
fundamental desires of their heart, and say, “this is
true”, or “this is not true”. As they grow older,
following this educational method, their passion for
life acquires an intensity and brilliance that even the
educator could not have fathomed, and discloses to
them the dignity of their personality and the affinity
with the divine that gives it its substance.
Of course, this “recollected awareness of the ultimate
sense of life’s mysteries” must become a spiritual
exercise, an ascetic path, and thus a suitable
perspective from which to live out a goal worthy of
their lives.”