THE NIGERIAN YOUTH IN ECONOMIC POLICY DEVELOPMENT

One of the cliches that have psychologically dampened many teachers enthusiasm for their profession is the insinuation that their rewards are reserved in the life after. Thus they are not actually remembered now. Similarly, Nigerian youths have been reminded repeatedly that they are the leaders of tomorrow and not today. By extension, they should wait till they are adults to take up leadership roles. In defiance to longstanding evolution in many countries where the youths have emerged to occupy strategic leadership - economic, political social etc - positions, the older generations in Nigeria are scarcely interested in giving the deserved chance to the young to play leadership roles. Ironically, many of the champions of anti youth-leadership roles attained the peaks of their achievements as youth.
In life there are seasons which subtly define what our activities and expectations from us should be at each phase in the human life cycle. The life cycle psychology makes this clearer by trying to relate the position of a person at each point in time in his life to

(a) The kind of challenges that the person faces,
(b) The resources available to the person to tackle those challenges and
(c) The consequences to the person of failing to either be he/she should be at the expected time and/or not having the requisite resources to deal with the challenges faced. Each phase therefore is expected to build upon the previous one and as such one is not expected to be a child forever. If that is the case then the youth cannot conceivably remain youth until the 'tomorrow' when he should be a leader.

In a general sense, there are about five phases in life. The first stage expectedly corresponds to the period of birth and childhood growth. Loosely, this stage can be found within the age range of zero and about sixteen years. Then there is the capacity development stage in which one is expected to make or open up for human capital investments into one's life either via formal advanced/tertiary or vocational education. This group belongs to around seventeen and twenty-five years age range. At this stage, the humans replete with optimism about the future deliberately go through the process of acquiring the skills relevant for conquering it. The third stage is the planting phase where these persons who have acquired the capacity to conquer their environment actually move on to plant and transform. Some get employed while others establish own enterprises and employ others. In most of the cases, the dominant objective is to become leaders in their various rights. The age bracket for this phase extends from about age 25 to about age 55. Some complete this phase much earlier while for some it extends much beyond age 65. The fourth phase is the reaping stage where one sits back to reap either his years of well invested labour or the penalty for laziness and un-strategic investment.

Based on 2005 global estimates, Nigeria is the eightieth country with the largest concentration of people belonging to the capacity development stage and the lower bands of the planting phase in the world. United States of America is the third after China and India. The implication is that Nigeria has a large deposit of the young who should be acquiring the requisite capacity with which to transform this country as leaders in various spheres of life. This should actually signal massive quantum of national optimism for the future. But that is where the tragedy lies. The older generation of leaders had deliberately mangled the machinery for high quality development of this teeming mass of the young. The educational system and the consequent output are pitiable and heighten the un-employability of young Nigerians with adverse implications for their chances of turning out as leaders within good age. The story goes on that way. Unfortunately this is a massively untapped area that should foster our growth as a nation as over 70% of Nigerians are less than 30 years of age.

That is why it has become even more imperative to inquire into the extent of deliberate involvement of the young in the design, implementation and monitoring/evaluation of government's economic policies. Rarely are the young deliberately involved in economic policy formulation; on the contrary policies that affect their current and future evolution into the next phases of life are designed for them assuming completely that they do not have what it takes to participate in policy formulation. Or that they cannot take decisions about their future.
The consequences are immense. Debts burdens, poorly trained manpower, corrupt system, decrepit institutions, etc are piled up to further damage the prospects of their enjoying their own future with their children. But the more of these young that are exposed to economic policy formulation, implementation and monitoring, the better it will be for this country for many reasons:

(a) It will help throw up an increasing generation of knowledgeable people with the energy to challenge the excesses of the older generation of leaders who have indeed plunged and has continued to plunge this country into the economic mess that it is experiencing,

(b) It will have adequately prepared today's leaders among the youth who will be well knowledgeable in growth and development targeted resource allocation,

(c) It will help in quickly consigning the older generation of leaders who have continued to deprive them of their opportunities to lead to the background where they ought to belong as statesmen and advisers,

(d) It will orchestrate better advancement in the knowledge economy - science, technology and innovations - which in most instances are not associated with the aging.

And so on. But the economics educations in Nigerian tertiary institutions are in a big mess!! Where then lies this hope?

Economic leadership should be the current/ next big idea for the Nigerian youth and by extension the entire country. The time for a new generation of the young who patriotically think about the growth and advancement of this country to begin to come together has really come. This new generation is expected to possess the requisite economic knowledge powerbase to unearth the sources and nature of the 'policy-coated' scams that have been used over the years to perennially subject this country to underdevelopment by a few. This new generation should have the voice that is strident enough to bring the evil perpetrators among us to order and justice. They shall represent the true spirit of the real Nigerian.