For the Nigerian masses, a repair of the nation’s faulty foundation will lead to a holistic solution that would, thus, spare us the tragic stress of endlessly managing the same teething but century-old issues. Certainly, social security has become an aspect of our national character, rather than our prolonged mistaken emphasis on physical security, which is actually a product of the mutual distrust that has always characterised our inter-ethnic as well as ruler/ruled relationship. We have always known that beneath the national security façade and pretensions of every post-1966 government lies the discrete urge to either guard against a dreaded forceful exit similar to its own entry or keep power out of the reach of non-kinsmen from other tribes.
It seems we have failed to plan and thus planned to fail as reflected in the total absence of provisions for our ever-multiplying number of social drop-outs, criminally regarded as social misfits, touts or miscreants by some. We have failed to acknowledge the fact that no society or nation, however perfectly planned and run, can achieve a 100 per cent output, at any point in time, in its socialisation processes, hence the need to provide for social drop-outs in advance.
However, once a child drops out of school in Nigeria, not necessarily due to academic deficiency but as a result of other factors like financial difficulties, he immediately becomes an orphan without governmental parents. In the good old days, most of such victims would automatically turn apprentices in tailoring, carpentry, electrical, electronic, shoe cobbler, or auto technician shops in their neighbourhood. But, these days, since most of those shops that would ordinarily absorb them, for informal vocational or technical training, have been permanently closed by general facility failure, particularly electricity and capital, most dropouts hesitate not, but hurry to join multitude of graduates and technicians merely roaming the streets or burning time with the commercial motorcycle (okada) business.
Why not? A dropout is entirely on his own, due to a complete stoppage of governmental investment in his future, while his ‘more fortunate’ peers in schools continue to enjoy governmental provisions, however little.
Still, his fate is usually compounded by worsening financial support even from his parents, at a critical stage of adolescence. A generally negative mentality, therefore, launches him into adulthood – feeling inferior and dejected amongst his peers, he becomes embittered and desperate not only to survive, but to also measure up to the living standard of his ‘luckier’ age-mates.
Extending my reflective gaze beyond school dropouts, I behold a multitude of what, in my opinion, is the endangered species amongst our future leaders. I find these amidst the class of the educated. Indeed, a multitude of them are (graduates) with parentheses. The possibility of employments for such can only be on the basis of any factor but merit. Of course, merit has never been part of their formation from the outset, when their high and mighty, ‘caring’ parents have always been there for them, aiding them to take the leaps and cut the corners.
Sincerely speaking, the fact that many of the graduates out there on the streets are a product of the settlement culture that has eaten deep into the fabrics of our educational system is an open secret. To find that countless number of present-day job-seekers actually ‘sat’ and ‘passed’ the ‘mandatory’ Senior School Certificate Examinations as well as the Universities Matriculation Examinations by proxy, through mercenaries heavily paid by their parents and aided by unscrupulous education officials, is really depressing. This is just one of the secrets beneath the prevalence of the culture of force as a seemingly intractable plague in our citadels of degrees and diplomas. Or, what justification can a lecturer ever adduce for the failure of an undergraduate who had never, previously, been subjected to the ‘avoidable’ and ‘needless’ rigours of examinations?
An early morning visit to a typical Nigerian metropolis is a face-to-face encounter with legions of agile but jobless and homeless youths loitering our garages and bus stops; having public bath, stark-naked, along railway tracks in broad daylight; smoking marijuana while excreting in public places; or shouting themselves hoarse at newsstands over the previous night’s matches in the European Football. From mid-morning till evening, it’s time to get busy with the lotto game, popularly called Baba Ijebu, which now serves as a sole means of living for millions of Nigerians who would go to any extent to, at least, secure the daily capital to ‘invest’ in a ‘business’ that pays daily ‘dividends’.
We have always seen them everywhere, but have always feigned ignorance of them. Our rulers have always scattered multitudes of highway traders with their convoy’s deafening siren, only to eventually come up with policies that would demolish their ghetto shelters; deprive them of their jobs; or push education beyond the reach of their children.
Rather than caution our leaders, the majority of privileged Nigerians, at least, more fortunate than the scavenging masses, would do just anything to keep our own children in private schools whose exorbitant fees are now a major corruption-inducing factor which we all seem agreed to pretend about. For God’s sake, how does an average Nigerian family, with a less than N200,000 annual income, sustain an annual school-fee bill of, at least, N150,000 on three children in schools that are even ‘cheap’? What our civil and public servants do to pay their bills, of which the school fees are only a part, is, therefore, a matter for our individual and collective conscience.
That was a digression. Back to the issue of Nigerian youths, it’s high time we stopped deceiving ourselves, as a people, it’s time to move close to what really are our problems – the millions of children, adolescents, men and women including aged destitutes roaming our streets in search of what to eat and where to pass the night. What would be discovered, I am sure, would never contradict my shocking discoveries during a recent journalistic adventure meant to package some materials for an audio-visual documentary on street urchins in Nigeria. Parents are no longer what they used to be, as jobless fathers and mothers now depend on what their little kids make daily from the streets; that widespread open sales and smoking of marijuana, a ‘sin’ usually committed secretly in those days of yore, is actually an expression of street boys and girls’ frustration and rebellion against a system perceived as antagonistic to their original life ambitions being shattered; that millions of available human tools of armed robbery, kidnapping, assassination and even suicide bombing are out there waiting for the ‘right’ pay even in the Southern Nigeria; that the only happy moment they ever anticipate is the period of hullabaloo, crisis and bloodletting that would facilitate looting spree.
However, we would also find that all hope is not lost, as we realize that the average street boy or girl is, after all, not mad. He himself is not pleased with what he is; he still desires a miracle that would take him off the streets or away from the demeaning highway hawking or okada riding into the security of a decent home and a stable and respectable job. The impeccable English of a first-class graduate of Economics whom I encountered within the Iwo Road Motor-Park in Ibadan where he operates a Baba Ijebu Lotto venture says it all.
And, since the government and society at large cannot facilitate this miracle overnight, I feel the immediate consideration and establishment of a corruption-proof national unemployment benefit scheme would help as a holistic means of managing the army of frustrated youths we have all unwittingly helped to create in our Nation. If anything, the prospect of new terror groups emerging daily just like the JAMBS which recently claimed responsibility for the Okene attack on the Nigerian troops to Mali would, at least, be minimised, courtesy of hope for the hungry cum angry which monthly stipends for the jobless would definitely herald.
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