Are the Youths in Distress?

The geometric increase in unemployment has been a subject of concern and deliberation all over the world and keeps growing in an unimaginable progression. It has been in vogue right before the economic recession that struck the world in 2007 and much more worsened by the recession.
Notwithstanding , the extent of the economic recession, rate of unemployment and degree of job loss that struck the world and its aftermath, the youths of Nigeria  remains the focal point  as the nation seems to be unproductive in many sectors. It is a country flowing with milk and honey they say but it appears as an arid land of drought, infertility and corruption.

Most African families hold this perception about life which tends to follow a meticulous routine over the years

emanating from parents or probably fore-parents. Such assumption of life goes thus; “be studious at school, graduate with a good grades so that you can get a good job”. It is barely heard of parents, mentors or guardians to say to their wards “be studious, acquire the right knowledge so as to be independent and to have your own investment(s) or to be a job provider”. Parental prayers and counsels have always followed a routine of graduate with good grades and/to gets a good job(s). To my objective understanding, the blame is not to be fully placed on our parents because life and governance seems to have treated them well. They were born to know what good and accountable government is and to have experienced a nation committed to the unity, peace and progress of its people, providing jobs for the citizenry. As a result of this status-quo-ante, parents developed this theory of life and have continually passed such impressious knowledge generation after generation presently making it a maxim.

The tide has turn, we are in the 21^st century where global recession and economic downturn is plaguing nations. The present global world has provided same and equal investment opportunities for everyone. It will be a stereotypical fallacy to say Nigerian youths lack initiative for entrepreneurship and are unemployable. Wrong tunes has been blown off our trumpets, we have to rise to blow the right notes. We have visions, prospects, fantastic ideas and an innovative spirit in us to inject into our society but unfortunately most of them either die in us or we nurture them for the wrong purpose or in the wrong direction coupled with the inflicting pain of Nigerian factors (power, finance, labour and technology) which we cannot be reticent about and thus reverts us to default settings of seeking employment out of failure or frustration in entrepreneurial attempts.

Our attitude to education has changed what human resources ought to be. There are increased clamour for university education, polytechnics are now forbidding institutions and our colleges of education are already in a shadow of themselves. Students are not to be blamed, it has all been a result of undignified labour and  corruption caused by nonchalance on part of the government. Wrong motive for schooling has forced most organizations and government parastatals into employing university graduates into positions for National and Higher National Diploma holders. Some workers are underemployed unknown to them, Masters degree is been posses for the purpose of higher pay leaving knowledge acquisition or research behind.

The distressing fact is that most youth have willed their lives to the government, placing their destinies and fate in the hands of the government with the default mentality our parents created in us that job creation is the duty of the government. If we still keep this mentality, we are still very far from the truth and this should rather break our hearts that it is not the duty of any tier of government to provide job for the masses. The government's duty is to provide an enabling environment for investors and investment although inverse lies the case in Nigeria and that is why the government cannot spread its tent of employment over everybody and having the understanding that most government employments come by virtue of public corporations which is not likely or expected of the government to place in care of the private sector for various economic and security reasons. The mindset of getting a good job has been our major reason for extravagant and unnecessary education in this country.

It is right time we take a deep thought and understand the requirement of the present global world. Putting our focus on employment independence and leashing our blame laying/stone throwing attitude on the government over our downturns, keeping in mind that the era of our parents who enjoyed all the goodies of the good governance is fast rolling into extinction though saddening that the same set of people that enjoyed the good of our dear country are the ones in the top of corruption affairs today.  It is right time we look beyond the present.
We need to overcome all hurdles that are affecting our productivity and increasing wasteful productive lives. Salary earners don't make the world's richest list, It is time we control the economy of this country and not rely on importation nor foreign investors. If foreign investors can make it big in our land and still remain even in the face of fierce insecurity, then we should do much better having understanding of the economic and cultural values of our country than they do. It is time to act, the ball is in our court.