Nigeria is one of the few countries where the young far outnumber the old. The average age in Nigeria is 18.6 years, and the youth, aged between 15 and 30, account for 70 percent of Nigeria’s population. Unfortunately, at about 54 percent, Nigeria has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world, with equally high rates of youth anxiety and depression. That will frustrate young people anywhere in the world. Yet, whenever young Nigerians ventilate their grievances through public protests, the state clamps down brutally on them. Put simply, Nigeria kills its youth for daring to protest bad governance. There’s no better definition of barbarism.
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When a country has a youth population of 70 percent, nearly 60 percent of whom are jobless, it takes no ingenuity to know that it is sitting on a ticking time bomb. That’s the extremely dire situation in Nigeria. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), only 8 percent of the working-age population is employed in the public sector and only 9 percent in the private sector. So, only 17 percent of Nigeria’s working-age population are “gainfully” employed; the rest are stuck in poverty jobs in the informal sector. The NBS also said that around 60 percent of those employed in the public sector in 2023 got their jobs through nepotism, bribery, or both. Thus, for most Nigerian youth, ability and education won’t get them a job; they must be well-connected and/or be willing to pay a bribe, neither of which is within their reach. The dice are loaded against the Nigerian youth; they face systemic and structural obstacles.
Last week, on August 12, the world marked International Youth Day. Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president, hailed “the creative zeal of Nigerian youths” and said his administration “is here to make their dreams come alive.” But he was mouthing mere platitudes. The Nigerian youth are not a priority group for his government. The reason is political: they are not his natural electoral constituency. In 2015, then President Buhari infamously said: “Constituencies that gave me 97 percent cannot, in all honesty, be treated equally with constituencies that gave me 5 percent.” Well, over 90 percent of Nigerian youth did not vote for Tinubu in 2023 and are unlikely to vote for him in 2027. Thus, like Buhari, he won’t treat constituencies that voted for him equally with those that didn’t vote for him and may not in the future.
Here’s one proof. Tinubu gave N90 billion of public funds to subsidise Hajj for Muslims, a political bribe to win their votes again in 2027. But he budgeted only N5.5 billion for student loans—no grants, all loans! Of course, most of those receiving the loans will be lumbered with unpayable debt because, as everyone knows, a degree is not a ticket to a good job in Nigeria, with most graduates doing menial work.
The problem is twofold. First, Nigeria has always cared only about the size of the education system, not the quality of it. As a result, the prioritisation of quantity over quality has led to a mismatch between graduate skills and those desired by private-sector employers. Second, due to the persistence of misguided and disjointed economic policies, the Nigerian state has utterly failed to generate the economic growth necessary to engender job opportunities for the youth. Despite his protestations, Tinubu is paying lip service to quality education and pursuing half-cooked policies that have little chance of turbocharging economic growth and fostering job creation for Nigerian youth.
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But if Tinubu’s lack of the intellectual and practical graft of policy and delivery to tackle youth unemployment and poverty is glaringly obvious, his lack of regard for the lives of Nigerian youth screams even louder. In his vacuous speech a week after the #EndBadGovernance protests started, Tinubu said: “As President of this country, I must ensure public order.” But mustn’t he also, as president, govern well to tackle youth unemployment and poverty? Isn’t it his duty as president to improve the lives of ordinary Nigerians?
There are two rules of survival for a government, particularly in developing countries: 1) keep the army on side and 2) feed the people. Tinubu ignores the latter. Instead of feeding the people, instead of alleviating their pains, he was threatening protesters with a military/police clampdown. Prominent members of his administration also disparaged the youth. Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President, who has a penchant for putting his foot in his mouth, mocked the protesters, saying, “Go ahead and protest, but we’ll be eating.” Indeed, he is eating when, according to Senator Sumaila Kawu, every senator, not to mention the senate president, takes home N21 million a month in a country where the new minimum wage is N70,000 per month. Nyesom Wike, the self-important FCT Minister, threatened the protesters in Abuja and, in fact, unleashed police brutality on them.
Of course, that’s the typical behaviour of arrogant, out-of-touch leaders.” In Lagos, Tinubu had a relationship with the people that was akin to that between master and servants, slave-owner and slaves, feudal lord and serfs. But as president, it’s been a culture shock. Suddenly, he realises that he can’t turn power into authority; he can’t command the blind loyalty and automatic obedience of Nigerians. Which is not surprising, given that he was rejected by a whopping 63 percent of the electorate. Elsewhere, a leader with such a shallow mandate and legitimacy will govern with humility, consult widely, and create credible channels for grievance ventilation and resolution. But Tinubu is ruling like an autocrat, hiding behind “I must ensure public order” to repress legitimate protests.
“Put simply, Nigeria kills its youth for daring to protest bad governance. There’s no better definition of barbarism.”
Even Professor Wole Soyinka, who had avoided criticising Tinubu’s government, couldn’t help but condemn “police brutality against the protesters” with the use of “live bullets as a state response to civic protests.” According to media reports, including on the BBC, about 20 people were killed during the protests. Tinubu followed in the footsteps of his immediate predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, who brutally repressed the RevolutionNow and EndSARS protests, the latter resulting in 56 deaths, according to Amnesty International.
Yet, public protests are an indispensable element of democracy. As the British human rights group “Article 19” puts it, “protests constitute a fundamental pillar of democracy and complement the holding of free and fair elections.” Furthermore, according to Oxford University professor Paul Collier, “democracy constrains the technical possibilities of government repression.” Sadly, not in Nigeria, which is steeped in state brutality.
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A few years ago, I wrote a piece titled “Economics of protests: Why Nigeria should be having more demonstrations” (BusinessDay August 26, 2019), drawing on a paper by Professors Paul Collier and Dominic Rohner, which shows that frequent demonstrations are inevitable in democracies where poverty and inequality are rife. I argued that, given the awful level of human suffering, protests should be common in Nigeria. But Nigerians are not what the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called “the square people,” that is, people who demonstrate in public squares “aspiring to a higher standard of living and liberty.” Why is there such little proneness to protests in Nigeria?
Well, one reason is ethnic and regional polarisations, which make building a critical mass for nationwide protests impossible. That was evident in the #EndBadGovernance protests, a point highlighted by this newspaper in an editorial titled “Beyond the protests: A nation fractured” (BusinessDay, August 8, 2024). But another critical reason is government repression. Nigeria’s democracy doesn’t generate a technical regression in repression; rather, it fosters repression. Yet, protests are a global phenomenon, and civilised nations handle them with total moderation. By repeatedly killing its protesting youth, Nigeria loses any claim to civilisation.
