Nigeria risks losing a generation of young people to crime, irregular migration and other destructive activities unless governments urgently create more opportunities for them to participate meaningfully in governance, peacebuilding and the economy, International Alert Nigeria has warned.
The Country Director of International Alert Nigeria issued the warning in Abuja at the Young Change Makers Summit, themed “Youth Leadership for Peace, Climate Resilience and Democratic Participation.”
The summit brought together stakeholders who called for increased government investment in youth development, stronger civic participation and deliberate policies to position young Nigerians as drivers of peace, democratic progress and economic growth.
The Country Director said Nigeria’s large youth population represented a strategic national asset that could either be harnessed for development or become a source of instability if young people continued to lack opportunities, platforms and the freedom to exercise their potential.
He urged young Nigerians to take responsibility for transforming their communities, stressing that they should not wait for permission before taking positive action.
According to him, the energy and determination some youths deploy in drug-related activities, kidnapping and other criminal enterprises could be redirected towards peacebuilding, climate action, community development and other productive ventures.
“There are youths who have emerged in the area of getting people to consume drugs and substances. They are doing it with passion. Nobody is stopping them,” he said.
He cited the activities of young people who establish lounges and promote harmful lifestyles as evidence of the enormous capacity and creativity within Nigeria’s youth population.
The same determination, he said, could be channelled into cleaning communities, combating climate change, promoting peace and addressing social challenges.
“It is inside. That’s why it’s called youth,” he said, describing youth as a critical stage of life characterised by energy, passion and the capacity to achieve remarkable things.
However, he stressed that individual initiative must be supported by an enabling environment, warning that governments could not expect young people to emerge as leaders while denying them voice, agency and opportunities.
“If you don’t build systems and structures that will make these young people emerge, if you shut them down, you don’t give them voice and agency, how will they emerge?” he asked.
The International Alert official further warned that Nigeria could lose its brightest young talents to other countries if it failed to create conditions that enabled them to build meaningful careers and lives at home.
“They will export their skills to other places. They will change nationalities. They will take a second passport,” he said.
He therefore called on the Federal, state and local governments to intensify investments in youth development, stressing that the responsibility should not rest solely on the Federal Government.
While acknowledging existing interventions and collaborations with development partners, including World Bank-supported initiatives, he said the scale of intervention remained inadequate compared with Nigeria’s huge youth population.
“I want the government to do more. I know that there are platforms and collaborations with the World Bank and development partners targeting the youth. But it could be more because the number of youth in Nigeria is so high,” he said.
He maintained that government policies must go beyond programmes and initiatives to establish genuine platforms through which young Nigerians could exercise leadership, voice and agency.
He also raised concern over the consequences of youth exclusion, questioning the number of young Nigerians currently imprisoned abroad or caught up in Nigeria’s criminal justice system.
“How many Nigerians are in prisons abroad? How many young Nigerians are in prisons abroad? How many young Nigerians have lost their sense of identity?” he asked.
He nevertheless commended government and development partners for existing interventions, while stressing that their scale and reach needed to increase.
“What is being done is not enough. It’s good. We are happy. We are thankful that it’s being done. But it’s not enough,” he said.
Also speaking, the Senior Technical Adviser to the Minister for Humanitarian Affairs on Poverty Reduction, Augustine Ajijelek, urged young Nigerians to use their voices responsibly to challenge issues threatening the wellbeing of the country.
Ajijelek cautioned against breaking the law in the name of activism or civic participation, but encouraged young people to speak out against social and national problems within the limits of the law.
“It’s not so much about speaking, it’s about what they say. So, we have laws in this country that govern what is legal to say and what is not legal to say,” he said.
He added that while he would not encourage anyone to break the law, young Nigerians should raise their voices against developments that undermine the collective wellbeing of the country.
Ajijelek also highlighted Federal Government efforts to equip young people with practical skills capable of improving their economic independence.
He disclosed that youths across the country had recently received training in vocational and technical fields including fashion designing, welding and fabrication, electrical installation and agricultural technology.
According to him, beneficiaries were not only trained but also provided with start-up kits and stipends to enable them to put their newly acquired skills into practice.
“Not only were they trained, they were given start-up kits and a small stipend to go and start,” he said.
He said the intervention was designed to ensure that young Nigerians were empowered to participate actively in both social and political affairs and the economy.
“We want them to get to a stage where they can be able to stand on their own and be able to be participants in the economy, active participants for that matter,” he said.
Also, the Senior Special Assistant to the Minister of Youth Development on Policy, Development and Analysis, Dr Azeezat Yishawu, said the strategic importance of Nigerian youths could not be overstated, particularly in peacebuilding, climate action and democratic development.
Yishawu said Nigeria’s youthful population placed young people at the centre of the country’s future and made it imperative for them to have platforms not merely to participate or observe, but to lead.
“It’s important that young people have the platform for them to be able to not only just participate or observe, but to lead in the development that they want to see,” she said.
She said the summit was designed to examine barriers limiting young Nigerians’ access to opportunities and government platforms while encouraging them to take greater responsibility for shaping the future they want.
