Are You Nigeria’s Lost Generation And What’s That Office of The Citizen?
I lived in a little town called Winchester in between my second and final year. One thing which happened often was festivals. Music festivals, hat festivals, Halloween festivals, borne fire festivals; they all happened. After one such festival a piano was left outside the Winchester train station with a please play me sign. And I remember, when shivering in the cold night saying silent prayers for a taxi to show up, a random man walked over to this piano. There was nothing outwardly special about him, nothing to set him apart from the average individual. Until his fingers met the piano’s keys, and my cold disappeared to the entrapping piece he masterfully played. It moved me to sadness.
Because standing on the winter dark pavement I was reminded of a very interesting number described by the United Nations Development Programme as the ultimate measure of a country’s development. The human development index. You can think of it as representing the maximum potential each person has for development, but I tend to think of it as what you can expect citizens to be capable of attaining in their home country. That night I represented Nigeria, with a HDI of about 0.527, and the man on the piano, UK, with a HDI of about 0.909. For a bit more measure even North Korea had a HDI of about 0.733 in 2008 , while a country like Iraq has one of about 0.649.
As far as I know music is on Nigeria’s national curriculum. A strong believer in owning the responsibility to develop oneself, I hate to say Nigeria failed me (at least with regard to music) but that night it felt that way. Like most of my classmates in secondary school I studied it, studied how to play the piano, passed the exams, but somehow missed the part about actually playing the piano. Just as I missed the part about actually speaking French or Igbo, or developing actual business ideas in Business Studies.
I believe most Nigerian adults, the ones who attended relatively good schools, were at a point in time very good at passing exams. The best of them would have known their textbooks inside out, and competed favorably at exam based international competitions. Unfortunately the world, especially developing countries, have little use for such people on such a large scale. Which brings me to the question, are we Nigeria’s lost generation?
There have been lost generations throughout history bearing different characteristics. Europe’s generation 1914, Australia’s stolen children, Apartheid’s uneducated freedom fighters, the generation of China’s send down movement. They share the common experience of being young when they missed out on the opportunities to realize their full potential. This experience could very well apply to Nigeria’s vast youthful population, even ranging up to Nigerians in their early fifties. But most especially the leaders of tomorrow generation. Who go through an education system that does not develop them as fully as their international peers, nor value innovation. In a country of 191m people with a median age of 18, I estimate this refers to 40–50m Nigerians, or a majority of its 74m strong workforce.
After pursuing the nationally held conviction that higher education guarantees the best chance for success, this generation graduates, spends a year in military service then hurls itself at the job market. At this point the lucky pursue careers abroad, while the unlucky didn’t even attend higher education. Most find a job, something to generate an income. Many hurl themselves into entrepreneurship because it’s the only option. However, the unemployment rate remains worrisome, and the underemployment rate hard to estimate.
With each new class of graduates from this generation, Nigeria incurs fresh losses. The fatal loss: elite graduates who pursue careers abroad but never return. The threatening loss: unemployed graduates whose contribution to national development is delayed. The venial loss: under-employed graduates over skilled for the jobs they settle for. The mortal loss: growing businesses unable to find skilled labor. The unforgivable loss: entrepreneurs and businesses alike held back by inefficient governments run by members of the lost generation. The dooming loss: underdeveloped leaders from this generation unable to match the wit of their international peers in political participation, activism or nation building.
The topic of how to plug these losses is an ongoing Nigerian discussion. It usually proceeds from a variant of the question: what is the problem with Nigeria? The answer to which splits Nigerians into several schools. I think most belong to the corruption school of thought, followed by poor leadership, tribalism, then there’s the colonized mentality school, while some believe its a black race problem, and so on. There’s even an agidi school of thought explained in this video.
There’s another pertinent question: what can we do to fix Nigeria, that is far more interesting because it holds the promise of actionable solutions. Through platforms like the Tony Elumelu Foundation, BudgIT, EiE Nigeria, JEI, and Trash Haters, Nigerians are trying out different solutions aimed at fixing the Nigerian state. From these efforts a collective Nigerian ideology seems to be emerging, one that unifies disparate efforts into a strong front. It isn’t some fickle slogan like #DoTheRightThing, dreamed up in the disconnected world of Aso Rock and full of empty nothings.
It is the concept of the Office of The Citizen. Where each Nigerian is seen as an embodiment of the Nigerian state, called to take on the duty and responsibility of governing ourselves as we would the Nigerian state, and becoming unto the Nigerian government the superior censor and cradle of sovereign power. Through the Office of The Citizen, citizens govern themselves uprightly, from which proceeds their legitimacy as the superior censor to the Nigerian government. Well governed citizens like well governed states will seek to be strong in order to stand their ground, develop themselves in order to be self-sufficient, and follow the rule of law in order to maintain a peaceful society.
