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Nigerian youths are becoming restive and eager to resort to crime following frustrations from their fruitless search for jobs

He graduated from the university nine years ago with high hopes of  securing a good job  that would enable him achieve his life dreams and enjoy a high standard of living. Members of his family and loved ones, were also hopeful as they looked up to him for a better future. Indeed, among members of the Ekundayo family, expectations were high that their son, Olushola, would soon begin to assume higher responsibilities in the family, once he secured a  good job.

The young graduate himself was no less sanguine. Having toiled to acquire a university education, which he was told, was the surest path to a good and happy life, Ekundayo had every reason to be hopeful. Armed with his degree in Chemistry, the young man began to do what many job seekers do: search the newspapers, build contacts and network of friends and generally ask questions about vacancies and employment opportunities.

 It has been nine years now since he has been at it, but  Ekundayo has not been able to secure his dream job. What he currently boasts of  is a teaching appointment in a school where he earns  N7,000 monthly. Clearly, the money is not enough to meet his basic needs, let alone cater for his family members.  Ekundayo told Newswatch that life had been hellish for him in the last nine years. “There are times I thought of committing suicide because my being a graduate has not made any difference to my family. Life has not been fair to me,” he said.

Aramide Arogundade, a graduate of Sociology from Ondo State University, has also not been lucky to find a job since she graduated from the university 10 years ago. Like Ekundayo, Arogundade has searched endlessly for a job without success. “I graduated from the university  with a second class upper in Sociology. To date, I do not  have a job despite numerous attempts to secure one.” She is still hoping to get one.

Victoria Scott, a business administration graduate of the University of Ado Ekiti, is another young  Nigerian who has not been able to secure a job since 2004 that she graduated from the university. Having searched without success, Scott, a mother of two, decided to rent a shop where she now sells provision. “I am tired of the situation. When you go for a job interview and see the crowd that turned up for the same interview, it puts you off, except that you know it’s a life struggle. I have resigned myself  to fate and have rented a shop where I sell provision. I am married and have children and this is one thing that doesn’t even count in my favour as employers appear to prefer single women because it is believed that a partner and children cause distraction and won’t allow you to perform  to your optimal level.”

 Since 2007, Noel Nwadialor, 26,  a graduate of Philosophy,  has spent  most of his time shuttling between three Nigerian cities: Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, in search of a white collar job. Anytime he travelled out of his Enugu-base to those cities, it was to  achieve his dream of finding a job, but every attempt so far, which has seen him attend countless interviews in the different cities, has failed to yield any positive result. The young man, disappointed as he is with the  Nigerian situation, has not given up on his ambition, though. But he admits that “it’s been terrible living without a source of income, as I am unable to meet my basic needs no matter how helpful my  family members and friends have been.”

These are just a few samples of the experiences of  millions of Nigerians who have had to subsist without any job or good source of livelihood. In both rural and urban areas, they are a common sight, young and energetic Nigerians in search of succour.

According to Emmanuel Onah, a lecturer in the department of Political Science of the University of Lagos, the unemploymeent situation in Nigeria really calls for concern. “It’s a terrible situation. So many people are out of job. If you move around the streets of major cities in Nigeria, you will see able bodied people moving around and doing nothing, because they have nowhere to go and work for a living.”

The inability of many Nigerian youths to secure gainful employment has left many of them bitter, with often unpleasant memories to go with it. Desperate to find jobs, many applicants have fallen victim to fraudsters who swindle them of their savings under the guise of  helping  to find  jobs for them. “You would see some adverts in the newspaper, advertising for positions to be filled. You go there and they ask you to pay a certain amount of money usually ranging from two thousand to five thousand Naira and after that,  you would not hear  from them again. You might later find that the address you went to for a supposed  interview  or employment offer would  be empty and cleared out. Thousands of people fall victim to this trick every day because of the unemployment situation,” said Arogundade.

This might not be untrue. According to a source, some agencies, posing as job recruiting centres, have devised a means of milking job seekers dry by publishing vacancies in Nigerian newspapers when there is no job placement anywhere. “Job seekers are encouraged to obtain their forms at the cost of four thousand Naira or thereabout, after which an interview would be arranged for the applicants who might be over a hundred. The agencies would promise to place successful candidates in oil and gas firms and such other companies in places like Lagos, Warri or Port Harcourt.” But,  “at the end of the exercise, none of the job seekers would be considered fit for employment. They will be disqualified for one reason or the other, ranging from age to certificate matter. The job seekers will then go home disappointed while the unscrupulous Nigerians, supposed officials of the job recruiting agencies, will smile to the bank.”

Such has been the frustration of many job seekers. When they are not falling victims to con men posing as genuine employment providers, they are themselves desperate to bribe anyone whom they think can offer them employment. At the last recruitment exercise held in 2009/2010 for cadet police officers, Ngozi Stephen (not real name) was one of those who turned up. Little did she know that there was more to the recruitment exercise than she knew. She only found out when she got there. What was supposed to be the beginning of a promising career in the police force, soon turned  awry. Stephen told Newswatch that she was first asked to pay N50,000 to the oga that would facilitate her recruitment. Afraid of the consequences of not doing so, she agreed to comply. She informed her parents about it and they promptly provided the money.  The Imo State born woman thought that she had scaled the major hurdle on her way to becoming a police officer. She was wrong.

There was yet another obstacle. She was expected to pay another N150,000 to settle those who would interview her. Stephen was outraged. But, after consulting with her family, her parents again decided to  heed the order. They coughed out another 150,000 for her to give to the officers. She did, but in the end, she still was not recruited.

 Stephen is lucky to have parents who were able to mobilise or provide the required sums,  and who still currently support her, in view of her inability to find a job. Arogundade, on her part,  told Newswatch that  her husband  supports her, owing to her inability to secure a job. But  many other Nigerians are not so lucky. They do not have anyone to assist them. So, faced with no job and no major source of income, many of them are left to fend for themselves by whatever means possible. Such situation, in the opinion of Austin Agugua, a  Sociology lecturer in the University of Lagos, leads  to “deviant behaviour or criminality,” with dire consequences for the society. “The need for economic survival is something that is germane in every person. If, at any time, the act of sustaining oneself on a daily basis is threatened, people can resort to crooked means to get what they cannot have legitimately. This gives rise to the thinking that abnormal behaviour in an abnormal situation sometimes amount to normal behaviour,” explained Agugua.

Closely related to “unemployment” is “underemployment,”  a situation where people, having failed to achieve their dream  aspiration or career, simply latch on to whatever convenient work, in order to keep body and soul together. But this hardly  compensates nor  assuages the feelings of  the victims. If anything, their situation and circumstances leading to it engenders bitterness, disaffection and  recrimination.

Agugua argues that unemployment is a far bigger issue than people think. “People are all prone to discussing unemployment with regards to those who do not have something doing,” but  what should “really be a matter of concern to the members of the society is that a lot of Nigerians are underemployed and engage in activities they do not have interest in, which can be psychologically dehumanising.” He argued further:  “ the ultimate tragedy of life is the realisation that at times, certain things die in us while we are still alive, and one can ascribe this to people who do certain things they are not interested in because they cannot find better alternative. Such deprived members of the society often resort to deviant inclinations because human beings are creative when faced with structural impediments in meeting their needs.” This explains why people “resort to the use of illegal drug and why religion could become the opium of the disadvantaged class as a way to forget their sorrows. But others may react to the structural impediments by saying that if I’ve failed to make it legally, I won’t fail to do so illegally. This is why we are having rising wave of crime,” he said.

 Abubakar Momoh, a lecturer in the department of political science, Lagos State University, told Newswatch that  high unemployment situation in a country like Nigeria could lead to many problems. These include youth anxiety, youth restiveness and crime. “All of these will increase because you now find educated graduates of tertiary institutions being involved in armed robbery and related crimes.” Momoh added that the high unemployment and accompaning hardship also affect marital status as “ a lot of youths, especially women that are of  marriageable age, cannot get married because people who are out there to marry them are not in employment.”

On the other hand a lot of young girls are having children out of wedlock; a lot of them are forced into prostitution, contracting HIV/AIDS and a lot of other diseases while the young men are being lured into other areas particularly politics where they are used as political hirelings and thugs and the like.” Momoh explained that while such political thugs see such tasks as their opportunity to earn a livelihood, some others, living under false identity, indulge in all sorts of crime with the intent to dupe and defraud people. “You can’t find an end to all of these. Even phone calls, people call you on phone with one tale or the other with the intention to dupe you. So, all of these affect the social equilibrum and social fabric of the society and it is creating all kinds of problems.”

Actual unemployment statistics is difficult to come by in a country like Nigeria with a poor data keeping record. Even among government officials, conflicting figures have often been bandied concerning the real number of people who are unemployed.

At a recent lecture, Sanusi Lamido Sanuusi, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, put the rate of unemployed Nigerians at  41.6 percent.  Last year, Olusegun Aganga, former minister of finance, was reported to have said  that 50 million  Nigerian youths were unemployed.

But Abdulwaheed Omar, the president of the Nigeria Labour Congress, thinks the figure is higher. “No. I think it’s much more,” he said. Although Omar admits that there’s no reliable statistics on the percentage of  jobless Nigerians, in relation to the employed ones, what is not in doubt is that “we are in a very terrible situation regarding the issue of unemployment.” If you look at the number of youths coming out of the Nigerian universities and other tertiary institutions, compared with the number being employed, you know that the situation is nothing to write home about.” And that, as far as he is concerned,  “is a clear indication that we are sitting on a time bomb as far as unemployment and lack of good living condition is concerned.”

Dickson Imasogie, an Edo State politician was asked his opinion of unemployment situation in Nigeria. His reply: “Presently, I have eight of my children that are graduates and are unemployed. This my son sitting here with me is a graduate, his wife is also a graduate and they are both unemployed.” He described unemployment as a “general disease” that affects all classes of people, irrespective of their background or social standing.

A  survey by the National Bureau of statistics in March 2009, provides an idea of the unemployment  situation in Nigeria at the time. The “labour force survey”covered “all the 36 states of the federation and the federal  capital territory. “  Its objective, according to the initiators, was to measure the magnitude and distribution of principled indicators on unemployment as well as provide  statistics of major indicators on unemployment for timely policy formulations and programme.It states, for example, that  “overall  unemployment  rate  amounted to 19.7% of total Labour Force in March 2009, indicating a sharp increase from 14.9% in March 2008;” that Bayelsa topped its list of states with high unemployment rates” and that  the percentage of persons who were secondary school leavers amounted to 38.7% while the figure for the unemployed persons who had more than first degree recorded the lowest of  0.5%.

In a paper titled: “Youth Empowerment as a tool for Sustainable Development: The Central Bank of Nigeria Interventions,” Sanusi, who was represented by Onoriode Olotewo, the Kwara State branch controller of the bank,  identified high rate of unemployment  in the country as the cause of the social problems being witnessed in Nigeria. The lecture held at the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, Orientation Camp, Yipata in Edu local government area of Kwara State. Sanusi stated that the unemployment figure, in gender specific terms, stands at 23.3 percent for men and 17 percent for women, within the age bracket of 15-24 years.

According to the apex bank’s boss, the country’s current economic revival will be meaningless  if the real economic agents — the youths — are not part of the transformation. He added that an inclusive and robust economic growth will only be achieved if the youths are adequately empowered, and it was based on this premise that the CBN, as part of its developmental role, initiated some youth empowerment programmes in order to complement  the efforts of government, the private sector and other development partners in the area of job creation.

This might sound all good and logical on paper, but how easy, in view of past experiences, will it be for majority of the targeted youth to access such loans? Before now, similar attempts by government agencies didn’t yield much, even where interventionist agencies, such as the National Poverty Eradication Programme, NAPEP, were created. NAPEP’s primary responsibility includes “co-ordinating and monitoring all poverty eradication activities in the country,” and intervening in “strategic demonstrative poverty eradication programmes” meant to “serve as models of poverty eradication programmes” for the benefit of the poor. One of them is the Keke NAPEP programme which was introduced in 2002. The main objective of the programme was to show the public how tricycles could be used as a special empowerment programme (very much like was done in India) to provide a means of self employment to the unemployed youths in the country. Although some young Nigerians are known to have benefited from the Keke NAPEP programme, the agency and its leadership, like some other government created establishments like it, past or present, had been trailed by allegations of  corruption,  at the expense  of the people they were set up to help.

Apart from NAPEP, there is also the National Directorate of Employment, NDE. Abubakar Mohammed, director-general of the NDE, acknowledged the high unemployment figure in the country but said that “the federal government recognises the gravity of the situation and was tackling the problem head long.” Shedding light on the activities of the agency, Mohammed said: “Some people will ask why the NDE has not wiped out unemployment in the country. You see, the NDE is an intervention agency. There are problems and challenges which the economy has been facing, as a result of which unemployment set in. What the government is doing is putting up appropriate reforms within the economy that will revamp the economy and once again make it viable, on its own, to absorb the national labour force.” He added that “interventions, like the NDE, are supposed to bring respite, to bring programmes and schemes that can offer succour to the Nigerian populace. What this means is that reforms do not take root and begin to show effect in one day.”

Unemployment is one of the major problems President Goodluck Jonathan promised to tackle. It is an issue he often reminded Nigerians of, during his pre-election campaign, and not a few Nigerians expect him to expedite action in that regard. The presidency had budgeted N50 billion to kick-start its job creation agenda, with the teeming jobless youths expected to benefit from them.

 Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, finance minister, believes that focusing on job and wealth creation is the right thing to do in tackling youth unemployment. Shortly after resuming as finance minister, Okonjo-Iweala said that her second coming as finance minister was meant to provide the basis for economic growth through job creation for the unemployed Nigerians as a key component of Jonathan’s transformation agenda.

But the responsibility of providing jobs or creating employment is not just the responsibility of the federal government alone. The states are also saddled with this responsibility. Many state governments across the federation have one programme or the other aimed at creating jobs for some of the indigenes. But the sheer number of applicants seeking employment have often tended to overwhelm the state governments and render efforts at providing succour for job seekers look like a mere drop of water in the ocean. Some state governments, have also seen their “pet projects” at job creation turn controversial. Many Nigerians have not forgotten the furore that was generated last year, following the then Imo State government’s plan to provide 10,000 jobs for indigenes of the state. It was no doubt a good plan, except that expected beneficiaries were each expected to pay three thousand Naira, as the cost of processing their applications. But not a few persons wondered at the morality of asking jobless people to pay money before being offered employment. Many rushed to pay anyway, hoping to get the job. But their hopes were initially dashed when the jobs failed to come early enough. Faced by mounting criticism, and as a means to shore up his credibility, Ikedi Ohakim, the then governor, was said to have hastily offered employment letters to the applicants in the final days of his administration. But having failed to secure re-election, the hopes of the workers were dashed when Rochas Okorocha, the new governor, suspended the process. His decision to put the recruitment on hold, he said, was based on his conviction that the job recruitment did not follow due process.

In Edo State, there were also concerns in some quarters that the Adams Oshiomhole government may have cancelled or jettisoned its earlier promise to provide 10,000 jobs for citizens of the state.

Hope Iyare, former vice-chairman, Uhunmwonde Local Government Council, Edo State, told Newswatch that, “we heard that the state governor had given jobs to about 10,000 youths but unfortunately, for the past one week, those jobs have been cancelled and the people have been paid N10,000 as a replacement for their job with a promise to call them back for screening. It is sad because I believe the first thing a man needs in life is to have a job. I believe that if these people have something doing, they will not indulge in crime.”

But Louis Odion, Edo State commissioner for information, denied that the process had been scuttled. While not contesting that the recruitment exercise was called off, Odion said that it was to enable the state government correct certain discrepancies that were noticed in the exercise which was already ongoing. These, he said, included multiple registration by some applicants which could have given room for ghost workers to thrive and become a drain on the state’s scarce resources. Following that discovery, Odion said that the state government  withdrew the appointment of some youths and thereafter paid them off. But he added that another screening has since taken place out of which 1,920 youths are to first benefit. According to him, Oshiomhole had,  as part of his commitment to create more jobs,  announced more job opportunities for the youths.

Rivers State government also cite as evidence of its  efforts at reducing unemployment through ongoing projects  in the state. Chibuike Amaechi, Rivers State governor, said that  even though his government has  directly employed people, it was also laying more emphasis on creating an enabling environment for companies that would in turn employ the unemployed in the state. Apart from that, there is the Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency, RSSDA, which also trains youths in the state and arranges for them to be self-employed through the provision of loans from micro finance banks.

Not long after he was declared winner of the 2007 gubernatorial elections following a legal battle, Rauf Aregbesola also came up with his own plan to create jobs for  people of Osun State through an agricultural scheme. At least 20,000 jobs were said to have been created through the initiative.

These are just some of the initiatives of state governments across the country, targeted at  reducing unemployment. But many Nigerians, feel that a lot more  still needed to be done. Gabriel Osu, a monsignor and Catholic spokesman of Lagos archdiocese, is one of them. “The responsibility of government is to cater for its citizens. It is their responsibility to create job opportunities and create an enabling environment  that will lead to employment generation through the provision of facilities and infrastructure,” he said, adding that the reason why things had turned so bad in Nigeria was because successive governments, since the 70s failed to diversify the nation’s economy, even as they indulged in profligate spending. “When I was young, we never even knew what our seniors or relatives studied in the university. Once you attended a university and passed out,  whatever was your course of study, we knew that you will live in a flat and own a Peogeot car. Even those who had HND or did HSC knew that once they finished, they would live in two rooms. These were automatic.”

It’s a different situation today. Poor maintenance culture and failure to adequately invest in critical sectors of the economy, due chiefly to corruption, had over the years, impacted heavily on the nation’s infrastructure and led to a decline in the  economy. The state of electricity supply in Nigeria – epileptic at best – is often cited as an example of the decay in the nation’s infrastructure. This has, over the years, further worsened an already bad situation, as many people who ordinarily would have wished to establish and run small scale businesses, cannot do so, owing to the high cost of providing an alternative source of electricity. Similarly, many people have since lost their jobs  because many manufacturing companies, unable to meet up with  the rising cost of production, caused in part by the high cost of diesel required to keep the machines running, have closed down. 

Noel Gambo, a Kaduna-based Civil Engineer,  shares this view. He told Newswatch that one of the reasons why there are few job opportunities in Nigeria was because most of the industries that are supposed to employ the youths have mostly folded up due to high production cost. Such factories, he said, have now been converted to churches. “For instance, in Kakuri industrial area of Kaduna State where there used to be many factories, many of them have folded up and their warehouses converted to worship centres.” According to Gambo, what the government needs to do is to show transparency in the way it manages public funds. “It must cut waste and stem the tide of corruption,” he said. 

Another means  the government can create jobs for the youths is by investing in agriculture. “It is the only way a large number of youths can get employed within a short period.   I wonder what our ministry of agriculture is doing in that regard. They ought to have created centres in the various local governments where unemployed youths could be mobilised and given  modern agricultural equipment and taught new farming techniques. These will reduce the large number of unemployed youths currently rummaging the streets,” he said.

But some people also advise that youths should  think beyond white collar jobs. In a highly competitive world where even some employers of labour are known to have complained about the quality of  graduates being churned out from the nation’s institutions of learning – a factor which some analysts insist contributed to the high unemployment rate, the shift towards self dependency might be ideal.

Oseni Afegbua, a Lagos resident, advises that “in view of the pathetic situation of  unemployment in our country, people should learn to be independent and have the zeal for entrepreneurship.”

Reported by Tobs Agbaegbu, Emmanuel Uffot, Dike Onwuamaeze, Annete Oghenerhaboke, Godfrey Azubike, Ishaya Ibrahim, Pita Ochai, Omoyeme Abumere, Joyce Marcus and Alexandra Akinyele