By Rose Moses
Nigerian youths are angry, very angry. And understandably so! It is with mixed feelings–isn’t it a sense of pride?–that in the past one week plus many have watched these people hitherto labelled as “lazy”, albeit mischievously, rise in the most organized, united, and peaceful manner to say, “Enough is enough”.
They have been on the streets across Nigeria and resolute too, demanding an end to police brutality. They simply don’t care about anything else at the moment other than to see sanity in the police law enforcement style.
You can only call them lazy or docile at the moment to your detriment, for they are proving to be among the most resilient, educated, articulate, detribalised, collaborative, digitally savvy, patriotic, artistically talented, and most law-abiding generation of Nigerians. They are proving that what a highly compromised labour union cannot do, they can do so easily and peacefully without selling out. That is why they have insisted that they have no leader.
And so, what started as a call for the abolition of a notorious unit of the Nigeria Police Force, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), with the hashtag EndSARS, has symbolically turned to a call for an end to bad leadership that has remained the bane to Nigeria’s development. Bad leadership has stagnated the growth and progress of the nation’s youth, especially those with no buddies in the corridors of power.
For more than a week, youths across the country have demonstrated against police brutality and extrajudicial killings by the now-disbanded SARS. Even as the protest-marches progress, there have been cases of assault on them by officers, and policemen firing live rounds. A few of them have been killed in the process despite a ban by the police Inspector-General of the use of force against the marchers. The youths are not deterred, nonetheless.
A statement on October 15, 2020, by the police spokesman Frank Mba said the police IG Mohammed Adamu noted that citizens have the right to demonstrate peacefully.
He appealed to activists not to allow criminal elements to hijack the protest. Ironically, he also stressed that the Force leadership had heard the voice of the people and was irrevocably committed to doing everything within its powers to address the observed ills, punish any offending officers, and promote a people-friendly police force.
It thus would make sense that despite the de-establishment of SARS and introduction of SWAT, an apology to the youths by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo for not acting fast on challenges facing the youths, a promise to undertake comprehensive measures that will revamp the police by addressing issues of welfare, service conditions, and training, the young population is still not convinced about the sincerity of government.
At the time of writing, the marchers were still on the streets insisting that the police must be reformed, even if for the good of its men and women.
So, youths who, over the years, have been described as too laid back in the face of oppression and bad leadership, are sounding it very loud and clear that they have had enough. Within the short period, they have sent the message, in clear terms, that they could be highly united against oppression from hearts of anger and frustration. So much for years of torture and suffering!
No doubt, the challenges facing the average Nigerian youth are myriad. They range from unemployment, limited access to education, and lack of economic opportunities, high HIV prevalence rate to high poverty rate.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reveal that 13.9 million youths are unemployed. The unemployment rate as of the second quarter of 2020 is 27.1 per cent, indicating that about 21.7 million Nigerians remain unemployed.
Worst-hit is the youth with over 13.9 million currently unemployed. In the third quarter of 2018, the last time the report was released, there were about 13.1 million Nigerian youths unemployed, according to the NBS. Youth between the ages 15 and 24 constitute about 6.8 million Nigerians out of jobs and another 7.1 million also unemployed.
READ ALSO: https://www.thexpressng.com/2020/10/19/breaking-endsars-protesters-shut-lagos-govt-secretariat/
Key highlights of the 2020 NBS report indicate that the highest unemployment rate recorded for youths between 15 and 24 years was 40.8 per cent. This is followed by ages 25 – 34 years at 30.7 per cent, among others.
What this means is that out of about 40 million Nigeria’s youth population eligible to work, only about 14.7 million of them are fully employed while another 11.2 million are unemployed.
To put things into context, Nigeria’s unemployed youth of 13.1 million is more than the population of Rwanda and several other African countries, according to reports. The youth population is also about 64 per cent of the total unemployed Nigerians, suggesting that the most agile working-class population in the country remains unemployed.
The Covid-19 pandemic has also worsened the economic condition in the country, making it even harder for employers to create more jobs. Instead, the private sector has relied on cutting jobs in the guise of downsizing and rightsizing to reduce overheads and stay afloat.
The high rate of Nigerians seeking greener pastures abroad was also buttressed in the recent data, with most of them highly skilled and looking for jobs of the future. In 2019, for instance, about 12,600 Nigerians reportedly gained permanent residency in Canada, thus helping the country to become the fourth-leading source country of new immigrants to Canada – behind India, China, and the Philippines.
Nigeria also ranks third in the rating of countries with the highest number of Express Entry invitations to Canada in 2018, according to a report released by the Canadian government. The report indicates that 6,025 Nigerians received invitations to apply (ITAs) for Canadian Express Entry in 2018, just behind China, which recorded 6,248.
The major reason these young Nigerians are taking to this route is simply that there are no jobs for them back home. Worse still, those who have are paid peanuts, except for politicians and their cronies.
To add salt to injury, many who don’t get the legal opportunity to migrate to these greener pastures are drowning in the Mediterranean, or captured and tortured in some concentration camps in places like Libya.
Sadly, the ones that remain behind in the country, toiling night and day in the face of the harshest conditions you can ever imagine to make a living, are needlessly brutalized by these disgraceful agents of the government.
It is not rocket science that a high youth unemployment rate, especially in a country like Nigeria whose youth population is predominantly high, is synonymous with increased insecurity and poverty. It is also a ticking time bomb if the challenges facing them are not addressed.
Youth empowerment via proper harnessing of the youth bulge is, therefore, key to the attainment of a demographic dividend. As demographers or population experts would have us believe, if the increase in the number of working-age individuals can be fully employed in productive activities, the level of average income per capita would naturally increase as a result. That way, the youth bulge will become a demographic dividend.
On the other hand, if a large cohort of the young cannot find employment and earn satisfactory income, we would only be looking at a time bomb waiting to detonate, because a large mass of frustrated youth is likely to become a potential source of social and political instability.
It, therefore, makes a simple sense that the one basic measure of a country’s success in turning the youth bulge into a demographic dividend is the youth employment rate.
To achieve this, a responsible government must create employment and economic opportunities, provide educational and health facilities, and combat poverty to ensure that the bulging youth population translates into economic growth and development. You can only neglect this segment to your peril, and a good example remains the ‘Arab spring.’
A country like Nigeria with about 65 per cent of her population falling in this category cannot for too long be immune to the explosive repercussion. When you add the needless harassment by the agents of government on this segment of the population, the result might be quite ugly.
So, if you are still wondering why all of a sudden the country has been locked down, this time not by the COVID-19 pandemic but by the pains and frustrations of a segment of the population, who had constantly remained calm in the face of many harassments and oppression by government officials and bureaucracy, then you need to think again.
These young people are often picked up in the streets by the notorious SARS, who can hardly battle the bandits and insurgents terrorizing some parts of the country, with flimsy excuses. Lifestyles icons such as tattoos or dreadlocks are cited as the reason for mistreatment in the hands of the erstwhile SARS.
People are often arrested, extorted, and or detained by the police with the most stupid reasons regarding their outward appearances. Some young girls have been reportedly arrested for the choice of their boyfriends, others for looking good and driving fancy cars–even for wearing coloured wigs and hairpieces!
A girl was once reportedly picked up from her boyfriend’s place, detained, and never seen alive again. Just name any stupid reason; some Nigerian youths are being harassed by these men paid to protect them, sometimes for even carrying their ATM cards on them. They are tortured, detained in the most filthy and horrible camps, extorted, taken to ATMs and forced to make huge withdrawals from their accounts, and handed over to officials before they would be released. In some instances, they are wasted, to borrow a popular jingo of SARS.
Yet, Nigerian youths with the right opportunity are acclaimed to excel in different areas of endeavour -from sports to academia, and other realms. Many have done so with practically no encouragement from the Nigerian government. To constantly terrorize them on the streets by men of this unit of the Nigerian police, who sometimes are not even in a police uniform is, to say the least, the craziest thing ever.
Therefore, the protest marches by the Nigerian youth against oppression and torture, no matter what anyone may say, is a welcome development and a wake-up call to the government on the need to get its priorities right.
A police force that depends on such a crude manner to combat crime is either being deadly mischievous or grossly incompetent. Period!
