by 
FORMER Governor of
Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi’s call for prayers for our unemployed youths is
not the answer to the dire situation the idle young people of our country are
facing. Obi had tweeted on Wednesday, February 26, 2020 at the onset of this
year’s 40-day Lenten period observed by most Christian groups towards the
Easter festival: “As we begin our Lenten observation today, I urge fellow
Catholics around Nigeria to remember and also pray for those killed across Nigeria
as a result… of insecurity.
“Let us also put in our prayers, the teeming unemployed
youths in Nigeria today, whose future is being jeopardised by the situation in
Nigeria”. Though we understand the religious atmosphere of this call in which
the reference to prayer is almost inevitable, we also want to emphasise that
all of us, irrespective of our religious beliefs and stations in life, must
deploy more of our mental and physical energies towards finding means of
gainful employment for our unemployed youths. Giving a snapshot picture of the
grim situation, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and
Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, last year put the population of our
unemployed youths at 40 million. But Al Jazeera television network, in its
February 16, 2019 edition of its “Counting The Cost” feature programme, put the
unemployment for young Nigerians aged between 15 and 35 at 55.4 per cent.
With more and more of the workforce being offloaded into the
job market and income shrinking among those at work due to the contracting
economy, the situation gets grimmer against the backdrop of a rising population
rate. With fewer jobs on offer, more idle young people pile up at the street
corners. The immediate upshots are predictable: rising crime rates – violence,
terrorism, kidnapping, cultism, killings, suicides, mental illness and a
general decline in social etiquette and family values. The danger in doing
nothing to change the jobless situation is that after a long period in the job
market, educated youth begin to lose the sense of value in their education and
the incentive to go to school is gradually lost. When young people are unable
to even start the journey to the top, with many unable to get married and start
their own families the frustration this creates is not conducive for a healthy
society. The older generations which are supposed to retire and give way to the
vibrant youth hang on to leadership positions and the society’s equilibrium and
future are fractured. Prayer without work is dead. We must launch an emergency
effort to create jobs. We must put our youth to work; gainful and satisfactory
employment. Otherwise, when the social bomb explodes, no one will be safe from
its devastation.
Source: Vanguard
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