Nigeria must urgently create more opportunities for its youthful population to participate meaningfully in governance, peacebuilding and the economy or risk losing their skills and energy to crime, migration and other destructive activities, the Country Director of International Alert Nigeria has warned.
The warning came at a youth-focused programme in Abuja, Young Change Makers Summit, themed: “Youth Leadership for Peace, Climate Resilience and Democratic Participation”, where stakeholders called for stronger government investment in youth development, greater civic participation and deliberate efforts to position young Nigerians as drivers of peace, democratic development and economic growth.
The Country Director of International Alert Nigeria said the country’s enormous youth population represented a strategic asset that could either be harnessed for national development or allowed to become a source of instability if young people continued to lack opportunities and platforms to exercise their potential.
He challenged young Nigerians to take responsibility for transforming their communities, arguing that youth should not wait for someone to give them permission before taking positive action.
According to him, the same energy with which some young people engage in drug-related activities, kidnapping and other criminal enterprises could be redirected towards peacebuilding, climate action, community development and other productive causes.
“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 noted that some young people were opening lounges and devising creative ways to promote activities that were destroying the lives of others, stressing that their determination demonstrated the enormous capacity within the youth population.
He said young Nigerians could equally rise to clean their communities, champion climate action, promote peace and address social problems around them.
“It is inside. That’s why it’s called youth,” he said, describing youth as a precious stage of life characterised by energy, passion and the capacity to achieve remarkable things.
However, he stressed that personal initiative must be matched by an enabling environment, warning that governments could not expect young people to emerge as leaders while simultaneously 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.
He warned that Nigeria could lose its young talents to other countries if it failed to create an environment where they could build meaningful lives and careers.
“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 governments and local councils to do more to create opportunities for young people, stressing that youth development must not be treated as the exclusive responsibility of 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 in relation to Nigeria’s 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 youths in Nigeria is so high,” he said.
He maintained that government efforts should extend beyond programmes and policies to creating genuine platforms where young people could exercise voice, leadership and agency.
He also raised concerns about the consequences of youth exclusion, asking how many young Nigerians were 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 the federal government and other stakeholders for interventions already being implemented, stressing that more needed to be done.
“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.
On his part, a Senior Technical Adviser to the Minister for Humanitarian Affairs on Poverty Reduction, Augustine Ajijelek, urged young Nigerians to use their voices responsibly to speak out against issues that threaten the wellbeing of the country.
Ajijelek cautioned young people against breaking the law in the name of activism or civic participation, but encouraged them to speak up 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: “I wouldn’t advise anybody to break the law, but I would advise the youth to raise their voice against anything they see in the society that is going against the entire well-being of the entire country.”
According to him, responsible civic engagement should be part of the process of ensuring that young Nigerians become active participants in national development.
He also highlighted ongoing Federal Government efforts to equip young Nigerians with practical skills that could make them economically independent.
He disclosed that youths across the country had recently undergone training in several vocational and technical fields, including fashion designing, welding and fabrication, electrical installation and agricultural technology.
He said the initiative went beyond training, as beneficiaries were also provided with start-up kits and stipends to enable them to begin applying the skills acquired.
“Not only were they trained, they were given start-up kits and a small stipend to go and start,” he said.
He explained that the objective was to ensure that young Nigerians were not only given a voice in social and political affairs but were also empowered to become active participants in the economy.
He said the government wanted young people to attain a level of economic independence where they could stand on their own and contribute meaningfully to national development.
The intervention, he said, was an example of measures being undertaken by the ministry to address youth economic vulnerability and create pathways to self-reliance.
“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 speaking, Senior Special Assistant to the Minister of Youth Development on Policy, Development and Analysis, Dr. Azeezat Yishawu, said the strategic importance of young Nigerians could not be overstated, particularly in the areas of peacebuilding, climate action and democratic development.
Yishawu said Nigeria’s youthful population placed young people at the centre of the country’s future and demanded that they be given platforms not only to participate 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 programme was designed to examine the challenges confronting young Nigerians in accessing opportunities and government platforms while encouraging them to take greater responsibility for their future.
“What is most critical is that for young people to also know that they have more roles to play, aside from just sitting and complaining, but then pulling themselves together to be able to engage with that purpose,” she said.
Yishawu said insecurity and conflicts across communities had severe consequences for young people, particularly by disrupting education, restricting access to opportunities and limiting participation in society.
She said youths could either become perpetrators and influencers of conflict or powerful agents of peace and development.
“For us, peace is at the core of the conversation today,” she said, adding that young people must be empowered to become champions and actors for peace while also addressing democratic participation and climate change.
The International Alert Country Director said the organisation’s strategic plan was deliberately centred on young people, with youth energy and passion underpinning its work on peacebuilding, climate change and social cohesion.
He explained that the Abuja programme was designed to ensure that young Nigerians identified with the organisation’s work and recognised their capacity to influence positive change.
The programme brought together young people to discuss their role in addressing some of Nigeria’s most pressing challenges and to encourage them to take ownership of solutions within their communities.
The stakeholders agreed that Nigeria’s youth population represented one of the country’s greatest assets, but warned that failure to invest adequately in their skills, voice, participation and economic independence could carry significant consequences.
For Nigeria, the message was clear: the choice is no longer whether young people should be involved in national development, but whether the country will create the conditions necessary for them to lead it.
Michael Olugbode
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