Minister of Youth Development, Bolaji Abdullahi, speaks with Biola Azeez, on youth unemployment in the country, among other issues. Excerpts:AS Minister of Youth Development, who do you consider a youth'An official definition of youth is someone between the age of 15 and 35. My ministry has the responsibility for the development of the Nigerian youth. The ministry used to be a part of the Ministry of Sports, Special Duties and even Women Affairs. It became a separate ministry four years ago as a Ministry of Youth Development, in recognition of the significance of that demographic category called youth. Nigeria is estimated to have a youth population of 67 million and we have the responsibility of taking care of them.How has it been so far'I met a ministry that was relatively new. I was only the second minister as an independent ministry. The former minister, Senator Olasunkanmi Akinlabi, tried his best to give a direction, but I was not satisfied with the direction the ministry was going. What the ministry was doing was not the work of developing the youth. The ministry was doing some capital projects like building development centres, which I don't believe in. Another thing is that all the departments in the ministry, such as development, enterprise, etc, do not lead to what we want to achieve.So the question is, what do we want to achieve' The number one challenge in this country today is job creation. Is the ministry in a position to create jobs' The answer is no. The second one is giving access to active participants as regards the decisions that affect them. Do we have a platform to do this' The third one is the big issue of value re-orientation, which I think is the core essence of the development component of our work. People were doing things, but there was no strategic approach to the work.What is the situation of youth unemployment now'42.2 per cent of Nigeria's youth population are out of job and 80 per cent of them don't have more than the secondary school certificate. So, the graduate unemployment only represents a small part of the youth unemployment challenge. The youth unemployment rate in the Middle East is about 21 per cent; it is 16 per cent in the UK and 42.2 per cent in Nigeria. So, the most important thing now is: how do we create opportunities for young people to have employment'However, we talked about the lack of jobs for young people, but I think lack of jobs is not the problem. The big problem is the lack of skills. It's the lack of skills that leads to lack of jobs. It's the lack of access to credit that leads to lack of jobs. It's lack of experience that leads to lack of job, which is only the endpoint manifestation of these various lacks.Skills can be described as practical skills or university certificate, and under access to credit, you can say there is no credit facility for young people, because they don't have collateral and thus can't start a business. With lack of experience, they can't satisfy employers when they ask for the experience.What you need to do is not to say you are creating jobs. You can say how do you give skills, credit or create opportunities for job placement, internship, or volunteerism, so that they can have experience to bring to jobs. The strategy to achieve this is what we've spent the last four months developing.This is because it's clear to us that our ministry can only serve as a facilitating ministry and not create jobs. To do our work, we should be able to provide a linkage across different sectors and tiers of government; for instance, linkage with the Ministry of Agriculture, ICT, Environment. We need to find sectors with job creation potentials or opportunities.Agriculture is number one. There must be that relationship that will ensure that the Ministry of Agriculture has a strong youth platform, just like the others mentioned earlier. And we are making progress in that kind of strategic linkage, as they are opening up to us, seeing us as an advocacy ministry. We have the crowd, the population, and they have the platform.How do you intend providing jobs for the teeming youth' The government cannot provide jobs for all the youth. What the ministry will need to do is, first, to find out who the youth are. We need to know them to plan for them. What you'll need to do for youths in Damaturu may not be the same for youths in Abakaliki. For example, what percentage are women, men under 20 years of age, etc' Unless you know all this, you can't plan for them.When you say 80 per cent of the 42 per cent don't have more than secondary school certificate, where are they' So, I think the cumulative efforts of the state governments and Federal Government will go a long way to help the matter. Imagine every state government in this country putting youth employment at the front burner of its activities.Imagine every state being able to deliver one million jobs to young people in a four-year term. That's already 36 million jobs. The problem of youth unemployment can't be tackled unilaterally, it has to be across sectors and across tiers of government.Another thing is about graduates who can think and plan. So, if you are able to create opportunities for this category, there is that high possibility that in the process, they will be able to do something and then employ others. This is about the YouWin project. It's a business plan competition for young entrepreneurs to have access to credit so they can establish business on their own. Youth employment is not the same thing as youth development. My ministry is not youth employment, but development. This is where I think we have got it wrong. What we are doing is youth management in Africa; youth containment, so that they don't create problems. That's the template where we react to existing problems. But I think we should harness our youths as resources.We need to go outside the box. We should plan for the child today to be a resourceful youth in 10 years time. We should completely change the paradigm. That's the strategic thing to do. You may not be able to mould someone of about 25 years of age. I'm not saying that you should stop attending to those bewteen age 18 and 35. You continue with them, because that's the immediate problem you have, but not to add to their own problem.But look at our country today. The majority of our kids do not know much about citizenship. What value orientation do they have' In a recent report of a youth survey that I saw, only 25 per cent of Nigerian youths identified themselves first as Nigerians. In fact, more than 50 per cent of them identified themselves first with their religion. That's 38 years after the civil war. To me, this is the meaning of youth development. It is not too difficult to contain youths, but youth development is complex and requires strengthening your capacity to work with other people across diverse sectors. You can't do that without the Ministry of Education, Women Affairs, etc. And you need to carry every state government on board and work with them.What is your take on the involvement of youths in violence'Some of these are political reactions. Also, some border on criminality, like bombing. You can address youth unrest in the Niger Delta by looking into the roots. For Boko Haram, no one can say for certain what they want. Armed robbery is criminal and not really because of lack of jobs. Some issues are social challenges like rape and thus the need for my ministry to avoid other people joining in perpetrating the crime or falling victim of the crime. A conference will soon be organised to address that. Meanwhile, this has serious implication for parents. So, I say if it's the only thing you can do for Nigeria, you should be able to raise your child well and not be problem to the country.What are the changes you want to put in place in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme'The scheme has successfully carried out its national integration policy. But for now, national integration is no longer the issue. The army, police, federal civil service, NYSC would foster issues of national integration. There are other things only the NYSC can do. Those serving in the NYSC think we are wasting one year of their lives. Why spending the 90 per cent of the funds of the Youth Development ministry on those that think we are wasting their time'I think it should be restructured and repositioned to be a training scheme, so that they can do something for themselves after the service. There are areas we need to mobilise these people to do real service like rural development, rural education, rural health, civil works, agriculture, agric extension. We have 250,000 young people every year to do this work where they are needed and not in banks where they are used as cheap labourers and thus discouraging the banks from employing other people. We can't continue to do that if you want to really serve the country or else the essence is defeated. The pressure to influence posting would also reduce when people would know that wherever in Nigeria you are posted, it will be in rural areas anyway.
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