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The philosopher
Aristotle once opined that youth is a form of ‘permanent intoxication’.
Youth knows everything and is capable of everything.

In the early
seventies I sauntered into Mada Hills, a missionary boarding school in
the pleasant meadows of the ancient savannah that makes up the
heartland of our country. The civil war had ended. Learning came very
easily to us. We took on the best of our rivals in sports and
inter-schools debates. Love letters were sometimes dipped in talcum
powder – most of it silly and innocent. The white missionary teachers
gave us the best education any child could ever ask.

University was
another three years of fun. Bongos Ikwue, Christie Essien and Kris
Okotie were the reigning musical idols. When the annual milk round
arrived in our final year, a friend and I went off to play tennis. The
civil service, we believed, was for those who did not have what it took
to become scholars. Banking was for the lower orders. Ayodele Awojobi
in engineering, Ojetunji Aboyade in economics, Jibril Aminu in
medicine, Iya Abubakar in mathematics, Wole Soyinka in literature and
B. J. Dudley in political science were, for us, the ideals of the New
Man. We had unwavering faith in our own abilities and in Nigeria’s
manifest destiny as a great nation.

We were the
generation that came after what Soyinka has termed the Penkelemes Years
— the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Every graduate worth his or her salt
was literally guaranteed a job. Outside our country, nobody ever
questioned the quality of a Nigerian degree certificate.

And then the
barbarians arrived at the gates. It started with Shehu Shagari. By
August 1985, Nigeria’s death knell had been sealed.

A nation’s hope
lies in its youths. The current seismic tremor blazing through the
Middle East has its origins and indeed its inspiration, in the youth.
Yesterday it was Tunisia; today it is Egypt. Tahrir Square in the heart
of Cairo has become the symbol and battleground of youth resistance
against the Last Pharaoh. We also hear of rumblings in Yemen, Algeria
and Jordan.

Statistics released
by the ILO in January paint a bleak picture for the Middle East and
North Africa (the MENA countries), where the youths make up 60 percent
of the population. Over 40 percent of working adults live on less than
US$2 per day, with 24 percent of youths without gainful employment. In
Jordan and Algeria the figures stand at 30 and 40 percent respectively.

The story of
Muhammad Bouazizi (March 29, 1984 – January 4, 2011), who has become
the symbol of the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, is not untypical.

Born in Sidi
Bouzid, a suburb of Tunis, he grew up in a humble home and was bright
enough to study computer science at university. His father died and
left him with the responsibility of looking after his ailing mother and
five siblings.

Jobs were nowhere
to come by. He decided to set up a stall to sell fruits and vegetables.
A police woman accosted him for failing to produce a permit. He
mentioned his dead father and poor family. The police woman replied
with slaps across his face and insults to his dead father. The poor
young man could not take it. His complaint having fallen on deaf ears,
he set himself ablaze. The rest, as they say, is history.

Sooner or later,
what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton describes as ‘the perfect
storm’ will come to our shores unless we do something drastic about the
abysmal situation of our youths. We have succeeded in creating in the
last two decades a truly monstrous anti-civilisation where the youths
have had no option but to turn to cultism, prostitution, drugs and
violent crime. With youth unemployment hovering at nearly 60 percent,
we are living on a time bomb.

These problems are
no doubt the results of decades of misguided policies purveyed by
cruel, backward tyrants. I have no illusions that they can be resolved
with a magic wand. But we have to start today.

We must overhaul
agencies such as NDE, NAPEP and SMEDAN so that they give real value for
money and address the needs of the youth for gainful and productive
employment.

The Greek
philosopher Diogenes wisely noted that “the foundation of every state
is the education of its youth”. We have to re-examine our education
system and the tragic semi-literates that the system is producing these
days. A situation where the humanities are the most popular courses can
only lead to disaster.

A recent global
survey put Nigeria at number 77 out of 80 countries in the ratio of
scientists/engineers to population. India today has more scientists and
engineers than the whole of the EU put together. The Chinese churn out
some 700,000 scientists and engineers per annum. We cannot offer our
youth a future unless we turn resolutely in the direction of science,
technology, skills and vocational training.

Linked to this is
the need for a concerted national industrialisation strategy that will
boost jobs and spur growth while ensuring long-term sustainable
development. It requires nothing less than the reinvention of Nigeria.