PERENNIAL SCOURGE OF UNEMPLOYMENT, YOUTHS RESTIVENESS AND DEVELOPMENTAL CHALLENGES: ANIOCHA/OSHIMILI IN PERSPECTIVE

PAPER PRESENTATION BY MR. ODITA SUNDAY UDEMAGWUNA; NATIONAL CO-ORDINATOR, ANIOMA YOUTHS NETWORK FOR DEVELOPMENT (AYND), AT THE END –OF-YEAR LECTURE OF NJIKO ANIOCHA/OSHIMILI IN ASABA ON 23RD DECEMBER, 2017

 

 

                                                    THEME

PERENNIAL SCOURGE OF UNEMPLOYMENT, YOUTHS RESTIVENESS AND DEVELOPMENTAL CHALLENGES:  ANIOCHA/OSHIMILI IN PERSPECTIVE

 

 

Preamble

May I begin this presentation with a confession that the theme of this discourse is by no means a pedestrian affair as an attempt to properly situate it within the context of the objectives of this gathering; would inevitably elicit more questions than answers on how best to tackle the prevailing challenges given the fact that Aniocha/Oshimili axis is only a part of the larger Nigerian society.  However; I have a compelling need to actively make a contribution on how to induce a paradigm shift in the lives of our youths in particular and development of our area in general. It suffices therefore to say that in order to do a relatively good job of it, one needs to clearly understand the conceptual meanings of the operating words associated with the theme.  

These words are PERENNIAL, SCOURGE, UNEMPLOYMENT, YOUTHS, RESTIVENESS, DEVELOPMENTAL and CHALLENGES.

 

a)  PERENNIAL (as an adjective) means lasting or existing for a long time or apparently infinite time, enduring or continuously recurring.

 

b)  SCOURGE  - a whip used as an instrument of punishment or person or thing that causes great trouble or suffering.

 

c)   UNEMPLOYMENT – As defined by the Bureau of Labour Statistics has to do with people who do not have a job and have actively looked for work in the past.

 

d)  YOUTH -  is the time of life when one is young and often means the time between childhood and adult-hood.  A youth therefore is one within that age bracket.  Though, some may argue that an adult still young at heart can be described as a youth, yet for the purpose of this lecture, a youth is one whose age falls in between childhood and adulthood.

 

e)  RESTIVENESS – means uneasily impatient or hard to control under restriction, opposition, criticism or delay.

f)  DEVELOPMENTAL  -  is the act or process of developing. It is a growth process.

g) CHALLENGE  -   the situation of being faced with something that needs great mental or physical effort in order to be done successfully and therefore tests a person’s ability.

With the benefits of some modest understanding of the afore-mentioned operating words in the theme of this lecture, permit me to begin by saying that the Aniocha/Oshimili axis in the present Delta State falls within the worst areas in terms of continuous hardship occasioned by unemployment among the youths. In different towns and villages namely Onicha-Ugbo, Issele-Uku, Idumuje-Ugboko, Idumuje-Unor, Onicha Olona, Illah Ebu, Akwukwu, Ibusa, Asaba, Ubulu-Uku, Ubulu-Okiti, Ubulu-Unor, Ogwashi-Uku, Ashama, Obior and so on that make up Aniocha/Oshimili, there are glaring evidences on ground that many of the youths in these areas are not gainfully employed and have remained a social threat.  Even those who find themselves engaged in one economic activity or the other could not be said to be gainfully employed but rather under-employed since their income from whatever activity they are engaged falls shot of their labour value.

I may not readily provide the actual statistics of those not actively engaged in any employment, yet evidence abound in nooks and cranny of the afore-mentioned towns and villages of the four local government areas that make up the Aniocha/Oshimili axis which is the focus of this lecture of how under-developed our area has been in terms of infrastructure and human resources.

The unemployment situation in the area is primarily induced by different factors which can be identified as:

a)  ABSENCE OF INDUSTRIES – Like most Nigeria rural and semi-urban areas, the Aniocha/Oshimili axis is still behind in terms of public and private sector investment outlets.  There are no industrial establishments that could offer mass employment in the area.  There are also no big time agricultural opportunities that can engage more of the jobless youths apart from the self subsistence farming and peasantry our people have been known for, over the years.  We are aware that in the past, at one time or the other some efforts were made by some indigenes of Aniocha/Oshimili to set up one big time company or the other like glass, cement, aluminum manufacturing companies, but the efforts failed along the line for different reasons after hopes were raised.  Also we used to have oil palm companies in Ubulu-Uku and Nsukwa.  These companies thrived for some years as government business that provided jobs for the citizens until they were privatized.  I cannot say with certainty what their level of existence is, in 

b)  LACK OF BASIC EDUCATION - The world in contemporary time is in an age when education holds the key to better life opportunities.  We live in an era when science with technology is the driving force for most human activities and anyone who must cope with it; should have some foundational knowledge from primary and post primary institutions preparatory to the tertiary level where a wider exposure that could lead to greater life opportunities is attained.  For emphasis, permit me to quote Pastor Enoch Adeboye of Redeemed Christian Church of God who in his Daily Devotional scripture of December 5, 2017 titled KNOWLEDGE DELIVERS said:

“To get wisdom, one has to first lay its foundation stone with knowledge.  What you know can determine your position in life.  It was what Joseph in the Bible knew, together with the ability to interpret dreams that God used to move him from prison to the throne.”(Gen. 41: 1-44)

Regrettably, a good number of youths in Aniocha/Oshimili lack basic education attainable at the primary and secondary level.  This could be attributed to poor parental background where inability to pay school fees and other requirement exists.  Another factor responsible for the lack of basic education could as well be inability of the youth in question to concentrate in school due to certain natural and man made distractions either in the form of death of parents, sickness, accident or indulgence in delinquent activities that keep such person out of school at a time he ought to be acquiring foundational knowledge.

c)  LACK OF TECHNICAL SKILL  - A good number of Aniocha/Oshimili youths are naturally endowed with some inborn skills which, if harnessed can create a life time opportunities for them.  Some are born with innate abilities in the area of carving, painting, drawing, drumming, wood work, mechanical and so on, but they lack the discerning spirit to easily understand where their talents lie.  Rather than acquire and enhance skills that are naturally made for them, some in spite of their poor performance at the school certificate examination with incomplete result would wait endlessly for university admission. There is no guidance and counseling for them and so, they wait endlessly.  It is not a bad idea to aspire to go to university and any other tertiary school for higher knowledge but such aspiration is not complete without the necessary requisite qualifications to get admission into any of the tertiary institutions. 

It is therefore advisable that those who could not easily attain the basic qualifications for higher school admission should identify their natural technical skill and pursue it.  Even if they are still inclined to seek higher knowledge, the good news is that there are educational opportunities for them to do so even on part time while keeping their self-employment.

 

d) DOCILITY AND LAZY DISPOSITION  - Poverty is a phenomenon that has characterized the life of the average family in the larger Nigerian society.  Families in Aniocha/Oshimili are not exempted.  Many of us were born into poverty and did not have easy start in life but through hard work and self denial of certain pleasures, many people have become great today in different spheres of life.  Regrettably, a good number of youths of Aniocha/Oshimili are unemployed today not because they lack basic education or technical skill that could bring positive change to their life.  Rather, they have deliberately chosen to pursue easy life by depending on the constant benevolence of others for survival or indulge in crime related activities like advanced fee fraud (a.k.a. 419) kidnapping and other get rich quick businesses that are not morally justified.  For instance in 2013, one of the kidnappers of Prof (Mrs) Kamene Okonjo, mother of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who are of Aniocha/Oshimili extraction told journalists while being paraded in Lagos by the police that he was inspired to embark on the illegal activity by the ostentatious life style of people who usually lodged in the hotel where he was working as an attendant on a monthly salary of N25,000.

Artisans are no longer interested in their jobs like welding, carpentry , cobbling, painting and so on, but have chosen to make quick money through gambling in the name of  “naira bet or other kinds like the popular Baba Ijebu” in Lagos.  Only a few of our youths are interested in agriculture for which Aniocha/Oshimili was known in those days.  Instead of engaging in large scale agricultural activities like tomato, cassava, pineapple, corn, yam, melon, pepper, etc cultivation that can guarantee them stable means of livelihood for their families and make income through sales of the products, some of the youths have taken to commercial motor-cycle business of transporting people from one place to the other.  Such means of livelihood may be engaging in the interim but there are enough evidences that the motor-cycle ridding business is not an enduring one and does not bring out any special and developmental skill needed in advancing the society.

 

e)  LACK OF GUIDANCE/SUPPORT  - In a gathering like this, which is more of an elite affair, it may be easy to wholesomely or partly blame our youths for the present day inadequacies on their part particularly with regards to joblessness, but the truth is that some of our elite whom God elevated to certain levels of life are acting far less than what God has made them to be.  I may not mention names, but we know that Aniocha/Oshimili has produced multi-millionaires and billionaires who out of their relative richness could not deem it necessary to spend part of what they have, to give meaning to the socio-economic lives of the less privileged in our area. 

Aniocha/Oshimili is largely blessed with intellectuals of repute but how many of us have taken time to regularly organize awareness programme for the less privileged youth in our towns and villages?  Have we ever bothered to gather the youths in town hall meetings or interactive sessions to understand their basic problems and how best to advise them even if we cannot readily provide for their financial needs.  We have our brothers and sisters as politicians serving either at the state or federal levels but how many times have they brought the youths of their constituencies together to interact on how best to improve their lives apart from how they would work for them to be re-elected.  The much our politicians do,  only come towards election years when they would gather their supporters in preparation for campaign.    It is only then, we begin to hear of one programme or the other which dies soon after election is over. 

In this circumstance, the available youths are used as cannon fodders.  For want of what to do to get some means of livelihood, some of them are used as political thugs with little or nothing to show for their thuggery at the end of election.    Some of such thugs may belong to different cult groups that rear their heads in Aniocha/Oshimili.

However, I must commend the efforts of one of our brothers; Dr. Clement Nwadozie, the President-General of Association of Anioma Professionals (AAP) who in 2016 led his team on a sensitization tour of the nine LGAs that make up Anioma ethnic nationalities with a view to finding solution to youths unemployment which largely accounts for occasional restiveness.

 

The APP had gone on what it called moral re-orientation of the youths, engagement in skill acquisition, financial assistance, organization of workshops and seminars on regular basis as well as hosting of sports festival among other socio-economic activities for the youths.  To achieve this, Nwadozie who is a Director in the Federal Ministry of External Affairs was quoted in the media as saying that the group was already compiling a data base of unemployed youths in the state.  This is a welcome development and it would be highly rewarding if AAP carries this mandate accordingly.

f)  PARENTAL ATTITUDE – It is no longer news that the larger Nigerian society has degenerated morally in contemporary times.  Our value system is fast being eroded and there is evidence of cultural overkill in every nook and cranny.  What happens in other Nigerian cultures with respect to this negative shift in value also finds its place in Aniocha/Oshimili. Part of it, is parental attitude which has become an abnormal way of life with respect to how deviant youths are accommodated within the family system.

From the sociological perspective, families are the basic elements or units that combine to make up the larger society.  It therefore presupposes that what goes on in the family has a way of affecting the larger society.  Poor parental upbringing of a child can transmit to the larger society through various means one of which is the peer group influence.  It is the responsibility of parents to ensure that their children are properly brought up through early exposure to the virtues of life.  The early preachment of what is good and condemnation of what is bad should be the hallmark of every parent.

Regrettably, some parents in Aniocha/Oshimili have failed in this regard.  Their children become social deviants even before they become teenagers.  When they were growing up with some recalcitrant and socially unapproved behaviours, their parents paid no attention to it.  They were blind to such behavior such as a child coming back home with a doll baby or teddy bears which does not belong to him.  Instead of asking the child to return it back to where-ever he or she collected it, he or she is treated with kid-glove all in the name of being a child.  Without correction, such a child grows with the belief that he has the right to take other people’s things without permission.  The attitude would gradually lead to further stealing, graduates to armed robbery and even kidnapping.

Some of our youths are today in this category of people and have remained a threat to the existence of others as they are not meaningfully employed but indulge in crime related activities.

 

 

Youth Restiveness

In the larger Nigerian society, youth restiveness is one phenomenon that has over the years assumed a higher dimension in the light of certain prevailing circumstances.  Largely, it is caused by high level of unemployment. So many of the youths are not meaningfully engaged, therefore there is the tendency  for them to be easily provoked and such situation of anger often degenerates so fast into violence that causes a breach of peace.  In Aniocha/Oshimili youths like their counterparts in other parts of the country have had occasion to threaten the peace of their communities ostensibly as a result of one issue that must have direct or remote connection with unemployment.  The truth is that if many of the youths are gainfully employed, there would be hardly anybody to mobilize to cause a breach of peace. 

CHANGING THE NARRATIVES

As many as the factors responsible for unemployment could be, our duty here is to find solution to the prevailing unhealthy state.  The followings could be a way out.

1)        Enlightenment Programme  -  Like what obtains in some other places where there is little or no knowledge of the dynamics of contemporary times, many youths of Aniocha/Oshimili still live in a state of ignorance.  There is no good idea of where the world is headed.  They lack focus and direction.  However, since they are our brothers and sisters whose burden we must carry, I wish to recommend that a periodic enlightenment programme on guidance and counseling be worked out by way of interactive town hall meetings where the elite would converge to educate the youths on available opportunities particularly with respect to self employment.  The interactive session would also be an avenue to educate the youths on the dangers of indulging in criminal activities like kidnapping, armed robbery, cultism and others.  They should be taught the lessons that come with hard work and how to improve their lives through genuine means.

 

2)        Government Intervention  - The number of youths in the labour market either as graduates of tertiary institutions, secondary schools or as artisans of one trade or the other is increasing  by the day.  We can recall that one of the campaign promises of the All Progressives Congress-led government just like its predecessor has been provision of employment opportunities for the jobless youths.  These unemployed ones are in all states of the federation and Aniocha/Oshimili has its own share of such youths.  Records show that in spite of its promise, the present administration has not done any significant thing by way of recruiting more jobless youths into the federal, state or local government services, or creating the enabling environment for small scale businesses to thrive. 

It is therefore recommended here that the Delta State government should fast-track  its rural development agenda by attracting investors from within and outside the state to site industries that can give employment to people either directly as employed staff of such companies or indirectly as contractors, service agents or consultants.

3)        Wooing of Investors   - Government should also encourage small scale entrepreneurs by way of giving interest free loans as take off capital to those  who have shown evidence of good business plan or proposal.  One of our illustrious brothers Mr. Tony Elumelu has begun something in that direction at the national level and one hopes that he can do similar thing for Aniocha/Oshimili youths.  If he has already started it, I plead with him to do more.  The Tony Elumelu Foundation, today is an organization one can reckon with, at the national level as a major contribution towards helping to alleviate youth unemployment.

4)        Involvement of Parents -  As change agents, the elites of Aniocha/Oshimili should fashion out a system of meeting with our fathers and mothers at the grass-root in town hall meetings with a view to enlightening them more on what ought to be their parental roles in contemporary times.  They should be taught how to contribute morally, socially, economically in the upbringing of their children since a good number of parents out of ignorance do not see it as compelling on their part to give all round development to their children so that they would be gainfully employed as they grow up.

5)        Encouragement of Religious/Moral Instructions – In those days, our schools both primary and secondary commenced their daily activities with religious/moral instructions on assembly grounds.  During such sessions, pupils/students were guided on the path of righteous living and how to promote the virtues of life.  School authorities in those days took time to properly advise their pupils and students on the path of life to take and clearly identified some notable personalities across the world as models to be emulated.  Authorities of public and private schools in Aniocha/Oshimili should improve on the quality of moral and religious instructions they give to their students and should not hesitate to give prizes to those adjudged to have displayed exemplary character within a particular academic session not only in academics but in social and moral behavior.  A good behavior is a pre-requisite to future employment as the necessary foundation must have been laid through the acquisition of relevant knowledge and skills that would facilitate gainful employment.

CONCLUSION

I must say that the afore-mentioned points towards seeking solution to the unemployment situation in Aniocha/Oshimili are not exhaustive.  There may be other ways, but for the purposes of this lecture, I seriously urge us to look into the various points with a view to charting the way forward.  Let it not be in theory alone but actual execution of the issues raised particularly the regular creation of awareness among our youths on the dangers of illiteracy, crime, laziness and other associated anti-social behaviours.

Thank you for listening.