Multiple modes of livelihood and survival strategies of Nigerian youth

Nigeria is the sixth highest producer of petroleum in the world. Since petroleum was discovered in commercial quantity in the 1950s, Nigeria has earned over $400 billion from oil. Paradoxically, Nigeria’s monumental oil wealth is the basis of the poverty of the average Nigerian, particularly its youth. The promise of “life more abundant” that was used to mobilize Nigerians for the independence struggles as well as the hope which the independence of this most populous Black nation held for Africans has been betrayed by a succession of visionless, corrupt and inept leadership despite its monumental oil wealth.

Oil is the basis of the hegemonic power of the Nigerian domestic accumulating and predatory classes (Zalik, 2004). The oil political economy has been seriously mismanaged or “unmanaged” as a strategy of privileging the wealth of the unproductive Nigerian political and bureaucratic elite. Though Nigeria has four petroleum refineries giving forth “sweet oil” that is highly sought in the international energy market, the country has the unenviable reputation as the only petroleum producer importing the product for domestic consumption due to endemic corruption.

Rather than benefitting majority of Nigerians, oil revenue is increasingly cornered by an oil cabal and a predatory elite who are sadly consumeric rather than productive. According to Watts (2007:641), “...85 per cent of oil revenue accrue to 1 per cent of the population; perhaps $100 billion of the $400 billion in revenues since 1970 have simply gone missing”. Recent popular protest as a result of the IMF and World Bank inspired removal of fuel subsidy in the country exposed how the luxurious existence of Nigerian nouveau riche is being subsidized by the impoverished majority. The fuel subsidy probe on the heels of the protests revealed that most of those who were allocated licences for the importation of petroleum products shortcharged Nigerians with the active complicity of state officials. This has implications for the concretization of the development of underdevelopment as well as the continued structural distortion and control of the Nigerian economic by imperialistic forces.

The centralization of power and resource, the lack of state autonomy and the enthrenchment of a rentier economy promotes the illegal deployment of the state as an instrument of primitive capital accumulation in the context of the oil political economy. This results in infrastructural decay, high infant and maternal mortality rate, decreasing educational opportunities, illiteracy, population explosion, diseases, popular disempowerment and political maginalization, militarization of politics and society, gender inequality, resources misallocation and mismanagement, unemployment and underemployment, ethno-religious conflicts, crisis of state building and weak state capacity since the introduction of Structural Adjustment in the late 1980s. Expectedly, the youth which constitutes majority of Nigeria’s over 160 milllion population are the most affected.

The terrible state of the Nigerian economy, declining revenue from oil, state irresponsibility and authoritarianism in consequence of the ascendancy of the ideology of neo-liberal globalization, the dedication of the little available resources for debt servicing and yielding the management and control over the state to forces amennable to transnational and domestic primitive capital accumulation, rapacious looting of state resources have forced on Nigerian youth multiple modes of livelihold and the development of different survival strategies.

Whereas given their boundless energies, skills and creativity, the Nigerian youth were hitherto the leading agents of national development through their engagement and contributions, contemporary socio-political and economic conditions engendered by the crisis and contradictions of decadent capitalism at home have led the youth into unemployment, underemployment, idleness, unproductive and criminal existence. The result is that Nigerian youth now depend on their otherwise aged dependants who had retired or were forcefully retrenched from gainful employment in an economy lacking the minimum welfare, social safety-net and old aged provisioning. Under a system that has become increasingly corrupt, impunious, uncaring, unresponsive, inhuman, materialistic and coupled with the desperation for survival, the energies and creativity of the Nigerian youth have increasingly found expression through multiple survivalist strategies underscoring a generational crisis.

For instance, a major consequence of the adjustment regime was the frontal attack on education through the policy of commercialization and underfunding. As a response to the sweked educational opportunities in the country, a big examination racketeering industry has developed by and for the youth. Major examinations like the West African Examination Council (WAEC), National Examination Council (NECO) and Unified Terriary Matriculation Examination (UTME) are compromised. As a results many qualified students do not gain admission, while those who have no business in higher institution of learning flood the nation’s polytechnics and universities. After their admission, rather than engage in the pursuit of academic and intellectual development these youth continue on the same path through which they gained their admissions. Both boys and girls continue the ‘rat race’ with many boys becoming pimps and involved in cult-related activities, while the girls are involved in prostitution called locally “runs” and “aristo”. These activities are complimented by many with internet fraud, “yahoo-yahoo” for which the nation has acquired international noteriety.

Futhermore, with the commercialization of education, failure to increase opportunities for tertiary education coupled with massive graduate unemployment, majority of Nigerian youth now look outside the borders of the country to make a living. Since the late 1980s there has been a massive exodus aboard of Nigerian youths mostly as illegal immigrants. Unlike the first voluntary migrations by Nigerians during colonialism and the 1960s for educational attainments, this second voluntary migration abroad is to make a life as unskilled labour, fraudsters, criminals and prostitutes. This is considered as better than a life as “okada” riders, cab drivers, security operatives, professional job-seekers after graduation. Very recently, a PhD holder was said to have applied for the job of a truck driver with the Dangote Group! Most of the youth that did not go abroad also make a living through “area boy” gangs, visa rackeeting, drugs, “yahoo-yahoo”, criminality and child trafficking abroad. In order to have a firm footing abroad marriages are contracted particularly by the male with white women old enough to be their mothers. Similarly, many marriages contracted by young Nigerians at home have broken down with the partners migration abroad or ending in foreign prisons as a result of their running foul of the laws of their host nations.

Unlike their progenitors who were agents of socio-political change through the struggles for independence and against the continuation of imperialist domination after independence as represented by the Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact, contemporary Nigerian youth are champions of ethnic irredentist, religious and identity based movements, as against social justice. The struggles of the Oduaa Peoples Congress (OPC), Egbesu Boys, Niger Delta Militia Volunteer Froce, Movement for the Restoration of the Independent Sovereign State of Biafra amongst several others are in the context of redresssing the injustices, expolitation and political marginalization of sections of the Nigeria federation rather than a pan-Nigerian platform for social justice. Even the Boko Haram insuggency is said to be a response and fight against the economic crisis, youth unemployment and socio-economic injustices endemic in the Nigerian federation. The lack of ideological clarity, low level of class consciousness and focus, lack of political correctness, self-serving interests and materialism have mis-directed and robbed the energies and activism of Nigerian youth to narrow and particularistic pursuits. In this manner, the Nigerian youth have become a major part of the problems as well as a mechanism for the perpetuation of the contradictions which engenders their unsalutory condition.

With the return of the country to civil rule in 1999 under a democratization programme that enthroned a façade of democracy with superficial role for the Nigerian people in the choice of their leaders, unemployed youths became tools in the hands of rival political enterprenuers as instruments of political vendatta, thugs, hired assasins and election riggers. The role played by the youth in the massive rigging of the 2003 and 2007 general elections across the country was a negation of the historical and patrotic credentials of the Nigerian youth in the struggles for independence. The literature on the Niger Delta for instance has correctly document the transformation of youth that were armed as political thugs against political opponents during the 2003 general elections into militants. The struggle for resource control which was appropriated by these youth as a basis for the challenge of the injustices of Nigeria’s federalism have since been abandoned for crass criminality as exemplify in their new found love for kidnapping and oil theft. Several youth outside the Niger Delta, envious of the material successes of their counterpacts in the Delta have also found solace in the lucrative kidnapping venture.

The foregoing is not to say that Nigerian youth response to contemporary crisis of the state and the contradictions engendered by global capitalism is totally negative. The youth across the country have risen up as vigilantes providing security for life and property where state failure has made the life of Nigerians precariously endangered. Similarly, the Nigerian youth have made remarkable strides in the world of entertainment. Their creativity, resilence and energies created the Nollywood global brand as the second largest firm industry in the world in the midst of material poverty, priviation, lack of government supports and infrastructural decay.

Not withstanding the successs that has been achieved in this regard, for Nigerian youth to meaningfully contribute to development there is the urgent need to moved away from the periphery of their country’s economy and become a major player in the produtive sector. What Nigerian youths did with entertainment is a remarkable testimonial to their boundless capacity and potentials as change agents given the necessary ambience for generational empowerment and transformation. The promise of the Nigerian youth cannot be realized except its crisis of generational relevance is resolved once and for all.

As Obi (2006) succintly notes, “Youth crisis cannot be separated from the crisis and contradictions of the Nigerian social formation. And to that extend, it is a part of the crisis of global capitalism …”. It is thus a categorical imperative for a serious soul searching by the youth with the primary objective of a generational transformation rooted in ideological clarity, generational class consciousness and cohesiveness. It is only in this way that the youth of Nigeria would not continue to be simultaneously victims of the political economy of primitive capital accumulation as well as instrument for the perpetuation of the crisis of dependent and decadent capitalism which has underdeveloped and seeks to destroy them.

While the role of the Nigerian youth in the January 2012 subsidy protest is commendable, the failure to use that platform as a basis for social change and generational empowerment must be underscored and learnt. That is, capacity for change cannot be rooted in infantile radicalism, ill-digested ideas and spontaneity. On the contrary, change is a product of the development of critical mass of ideologically correct and dedicated cadres, intellectual rigour, clarity of agenda, popular mobilization and alliances based on social justice, consciously working to maximize strengths and minimize weakness, and above all, harvesting the unfailing benefits of programmatic organization with the primary objective of daring to struggle in order to win. Relevant in this context is the immortal exhortation of Frantz Fanon: “the future will have no pity for those men, who having possessed the exceptional privilege of being able to speak the words of truth, to their oppressors, but have taken refuge in an attitude of passivity, mute indifference, and sometimes of cold complicity”.

* Adelaja Odutola Odukoya, PhD, lectures at the Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, Nigeria, where he obtained his doctoral degree. He was on fellowship with the Department of Political Science and the International Secretariat of Human Development (ISHD), York University, Toronto, Canada from July, 2007 to July, 2008 for his doctoral research. His research interest includes political theory, political economy, democratization, Third world development, comparative politics, peace and conflict studies. He is presently editing a book Alternative Development Strategies for Africa: A Festschrift for Tunde Babawale @50.

REFERENCES

Obi, C. (2006), “Youth and Generational Dimensions to the Struggles for Resources Control in the Niger Delta Prospects for the Nation-State Project in Nigeria”, Monograph Series. Dakar: CODESRIA.

Watts, M., (2007), “Petro-Insurgency or Criminal Syndicate? Conflict and Violence in the Niger Delta”, Review of African Political Economy, 34: 114, 637-660.

Zalik, A. (2004), “Keeping Peace in the Niger Delta: From ‘Petrol Violence’ to Partnership Development”, Nigerian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 30, No. 1, 68-105.