Abdullahi: A New Day for Nigerian Youth?
By Alex Okumo     Newsdiaryonline Wed Sep 14,2011

The celebration of 100 days in office is one of the political vanities we have come to accept as part of the administrative rites a new administration must perform if it is not to be seen or dismissed as a failure. It has become a platform for elected and appointed government officials to showcase their achievements within so short a period of time. In a country like Nigeria that is in urgent need of development in every sphere, the celebration of 100 days in office has come to represent government’s way of getting the people to see that there is a sense of urgency in its actions and that it is really working round the clock to make life and living better and easier for the citizenry.

But a close look at what is usually showcased at these 100-day celebrations would reveal a clever attempt at window dressing: Projects hurriedly executed that may not last for the next 100 days, projects that were not well thought out and whose failings and weaknesses would begin to show shortly after commissioning and solutions purposely targeted at removing the symptoms rather than curing the disease altogether. The result is that at the end of the day the sickness remains and sometimes even gets worse shortly after the celebration. There are countless broken down road projects and decrepit schemes across the country that are monuments of 100-day celebrations of past administrations at local, state and federal levels.

Another downside of these celebrations is the likelihood of using it as a standard for measuring actual performance thereby dismissing those who used the 100 days to undertake a rigorous and in-depth study of the situation on ground in their ministries in order to bring about fundamental and lasting transformation in their sphere of governance. Thus a minister who showcases an access road that is shoddily done and is manifest to everyone that the road is only waiting for the next bout of rains to be washed off receives accolades as an ‘action minister’, while the one who takes the pain to find out why that road always gets washed off after each fixing and takes steps to ensure a good design and specification when it is eventually fixed is seen as a laggard.

But there are some officials who have managed to combine the rigour of intellectual spade work necessary to understand the problems and proffer lasting solutions with urgency in action to get outstanding results. One of them is Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the Minister of Youth Development. Though development is difficult to measure in a ministry like his, he has been able to take some strides that people generally acknowledge as steps in the right direction. For those who have children who were deployed in the last batch of the National Youth Service Corps scheme, the news of the increase of a corps member’s allowance from N9,000 to N19,200 per month came as a great relief. It rekindled hope that that segment of youth had not been abandoned in a ‘suffering continues’ state as many had come to believe. This has gone a long way in boosting the morale of youth deployed in the scheme.

Having taken care of the critical issue of morale, he quickly stepped up action in tackling the equally critical challenge of security of corps members. He held series of strategic meetings with critical stakeholders to ensure that corps members’ safety and security are accorded priority. This was part of the message he took to the NYSC Orientation Camps he visited within the first week of his assumption of duties as Minister of Youth Development.   

But Mallam Abdullahi’s achievements within this 100-day period, in my view is in the area of the intellectual spade work done to understand the enormity of the problem that the lack of adequate youth development policies pose to the country and the quality of solutions he has worked out to tackle the menace.

An in-depth study of the Ministry and the youth development need of the country commissioned by the minister revealed that almost half of Nigeria’s population (based on the 2006 National Population Commission figures) fall within the age bracket of 18 and 35. These are the people who are usually referred to as youth. Of this vast population of about 70 million youth, government’s youth development policy which revolves around the NYSC scheme and the Youth Leadership Training Centres takes care of only a couple of millions who constitute the elite group of university and polytechnic graduates that pass through the NYSC scheme every year.The study also revealed that as much as 90% of the annual budget for the ministry (N43 billion out of the total of N49 b budgeted for the ministry in 2011) goes to the NYSC alone. This means that apart from the elite group of youth taken care of by the NYSC and the 36,000 youth selected for the National Directorate of  Employment scheme annually, the over 68 million Nigerian youth are outside the range of government’s youth policy. For a country that has almost half of its population in this demographic group, this is definitely a time bomb. 

But this potential time bomb can be transformed into a force for economic growth and national transformation if well handled. Mallam Abdullahi recognizes this and has rolled up his sleeves to work, galvanize the huge youthful energy into a demographic dividend rather than the demographic disaster that it portends. The clinical study of the youth challenge has armed him with a thorough understanding of the problem. Knowing that he cannot do it alone, he led key staff of the ministry on a three-day retreat to get them to understand the challenges and be keyed up for the task reaching out and serving the Nigerian youth. 

He has also mapped out a number of pin-point strategies to redirect government policies to bring solutions to the myriads of problems that have hampered the youth from being key drivers of the economic growth and sustainable national development. One of the initiatives is the Youth Employment Project designed to be a short-term, quick-impact scheme to provide Nigerian youth with skills, entrepreneurial trainings, job placements, business development services and concessionary credit to enable them start up businesses. This project which aims at reaching 500,000 youth annually is expected to become part of the Youth Development Fund whose Bill is in the works so as to give its existence legal backing.

The reform and repositioning of key institutions in the ministry, especially the NYSC, is a top-priority initiative that the minister has commenced action on. His vision for the scheme is to serve as a boot-camp/finishing school for Nigerian graduates where they can acquire hands-on training and skills that could enable them provide real service to the nation in infrastructure, farming, teaching and other critical areas. A proposal for the setting up of a Presidential Committee on the Review of NYSC is in the works in this regard.

One of the factors undercutting the contributions of the Nigerian youth to national development as identified by the study group is low value orientation. To tackle this, the minister has proposed a “Drive the Future Nigeria” Campaign aimed at re-engaging the youth and increasing their self-belief and self-worth. The campaign which would be IT-driven would have Nigerian youth in the driver’s seat and would be used to mobilize as well as inculcate positive values of citizenship, entrepreneurship, work ethic and leadership in them.

Mallam Abdullahi’s scientific and clinical approach to his assignment in the Ministry of Youth Development is a refreshing departure from what we have had in most government ministries, departments and agencies where policies are formulated on as-the-spirit-leads basis. I am confident that this refreshing approach would be successful because this is a model he had tried before as a commissioner in Kwara State. He explained this when he appeared before the Senate to be cleared for ministerial appointment. According to him, on his appointment as Commissioner for Education, he commissioned an in-depth study of the sector to get to the root of the problems in the sector. The study led to the startling revelation that contrary to the general impression that the problem was dilapidated infrastructure, the quality of teachers was the major bane. Tackling that problem effectively yielded positive results that pulled the state out of the rank of educationally  disadvantaged states.  

There is a little difference between the minister’s tasks as an education commissioner and his new assignment. At the education ministry in the state, he did not need to interface with as many other ministries to get his work done as he has to do now. To achieve outstanding results in the youth development sector, he would need to interface or collaborate with other ministries like education, sports and technology which also have direct bearing on aspects of youth development. This means that the level of success he may achieve in some areas may depend largely on the level of cooperation he gets from some of the ministries he would have to interface with.

While hoping that he would be able to secure maximum cooperation from the ministers and ministries he would need to work collaborate with, I have no doubt in my mind that Nigerian youth are at the dawn of a bright new day that could cast a positive shadow on the many tomorrows to come.

Alex Okumo, a journalist and public affairs analyst, sent this piece from Abuja. 

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