The Plight Of The Nigerian Youth

I am a Nigerian youth and I have been unemployed for as long as I have been a graduate. I have tried to lay my hands on a few things as per curbing the unemployment scourge on my person but the needed push is not just there. The traditional means of raising capital is usually from families but considering the fact that most Nigerian families are living on the subsistence level with little or no savings, it is impossible to raise capital from the family.

The banks tha are supposed to help out in this area do not want anything to do with the small scale enterpreneur despite the constant emphasis that small scale private sector can push the economy to the "promise land." The banks prefer to identify with large scale industrialists with whom they can share the "spoils" of our sweat after we have laboured and managed to save a little even after working for them. The micro-finance banks that would have come to our rescue are under constant fear from the regulatory authorities and i wonder how I can convince them of the feasibility and profitability of my business if they do not have qualified hands to assess my proposal since they can not afford to pay the salaries of the required assessor. You need a godfather to access funds from soft-loan institutions.

I wrote the NDLEA recruitment test with over a million other jobless Nigerians and you could imagine that we paid one thousand five hundred naira. Extortion from the jobless and yet only an average of ninety-two per state were invited for an INTERVIEW. With the fund generated from the exercise, the agency did not deem it fit to to publish the results on the pages of Newspapers and to air them on National Television and Radio Stations. Why did they sell as much registration codes as they did when they knew they only needed only a hand few for recruitment? I wonder what will happen in the next ten years if we continue this way. I am scared for myself and my son. Sometimes I wonder if the Tunisian situation got this worse before the revolution. If not for my son.......

I expect to hear your own story as a Nigerian Youth.....

The Nigerian Scene

The Nigerian  scene is a very queer one where things are done the very opposite way it is supposed to be done. I know it will be out of place to describe any society as ideal but there exists a certain level of order and sanity that exists in other socities which are worthy of emulation. It is only in Nigeria that you find a government that extorts money from her unemployed youths in the name of recruitment while in other countries, such group of people are entitled to a benefit in monetary terms.

It is in my country that you find people treating issues from the side of the results instead of causes simply because of the praises that will be showered on them when it is public notice that they made an effort as it may not come to public glare when they prevent such situations and hence no praise.

My beloved country .......