NIGERIAN YOUTHS IN A ZOMBIE ECONOMY

Can you imagine a soaring, steep precipice? Can you envisage a cavernous gorge beneath, packed of ruined cities? Now imagine, on the gorge’s other side, an unstinted terrain, rippling in the breeze, stretching into the sunset. Welcome to the economy of the twenty-first century Nigeria. For young Nigerian youths today, the economy basically feels something like the sketch above, and they’re the ones stuck at the bottom of the gulch.

Permit me to draw you a clearer picture. The global economy is broken, and the Nigerian situation is not very different. For many years now we’re living through what I would liken to a zombie economy – where the economy seems to sway forward in a lifelike manner, but it’s really just a reanimated corpse. An editorial in the Journal of Applied Econometrics attributed this mismatch to “Growthism” – the blind pursuit of growth, empty of real improvements in living standards. It went on to call it the “Great Stagnation.” The late Sam Aluko while not totally agreeing with the issue of stagnancy of the Nigerian economy, however said; “it’s safe to say the phenomenon is real.” Stagnation in plain English means, that living standards in many “prosperous” households are going to fall for their younger generation. That’s a sassy way of saying that life is going to get shorter, harder, nastier, dumber, and bleaker. Don’t get me wrong, just because you can buy a 50 inch HD plasma TV with a-year savings or a Bluetooth controlled home-theatre and a loaf of bread for one hundred and fifty naira doesn’t mean you will live longer, be healthier or happier, or be able to afford an education for yourself or your children.

Our national debts are climbing and have gradually become overwhelming, although our economic-team says it’s nothing to worry about, that it’s in fact healthy for the nation (I still can’t get my puny brain digest that yarn). But the question is; who would pay-off these accumulating debts? The answer is not far-fetched; today’s youths. And I doubt if there would be any debt write-off by our fellows in now richer economies, because as The Economist writes; “they would be shouldering an unprecedented economic burden.” There’s also the small matter of paying for the planet not to melt-down due to global-warming, which would force insolvency of many industrial nations. Today’s Nigerian youths would also brave the massive debts, so kindly passed on to us by bailed-out bankers. Or the massive debts racked up by the public sector. And that’s before we even talk about fixing our comatose healthcare, transport, energy, and education systems; that’s before we even get into investing into new stuff we need that we don’t have.

And when we speak of jobs, we can’t get jobs—much less careers. Opportunities for young Nigerians are somewhere between LWKMD and nonexistent. Currently, the unemployment rate stands at 23.9%, according to data from the National Population Commission (NPC) – but for workers under 24, it’s 31.5%. Crunch the numbers a different way and you get the same maddening result: 44% of the Nigeria’s unemployed are under the age of 28. That’s to say that more than 1 in 4 young people can’t find work. It’s roughly one in seven in our “celebratory volatile” states and it’s getting worse, not better.

Even when they do get the jobs, they are awful. What few opportunities there have are underwhelming—and unfair. Guess what the largest employer in Nigeria is? Dangote. Guess what the second largest private employer? Julius Berger. Guess what the average annual income at both firms is? Around 1.8 million Naira. Guess where the poverty line is? Around 5.4 million Naira, with 70% of the population below this line. And the funny part is that the majority of the employed of the both firms are drivers. Yes, graduate truck drivers. Think they would save up for that dream enterprise one day? I think not. They would probably still be driving an aging billionaire…who owns fifty of such.

If you’re thinking of seeking greener pastures in some of the much hyped BRICS economies where the “talent wars” still rage, is it really such a triumph that young people in China and India can finally aspire to…spend eighteen hours a day working in call-centers and factories? Because while those jobs are a step “up” the slippery stalk of material success, the brutal truth is that they don’t pay nearly what they should, and don’t get me started on the MINTS economies minus Nigeria, its total-crap.

Wages – “the ghost of capitalism”—haven’t kept track with productivity. Even if you want to concede the weak point that the best the government can do is creating pitiable-sickening-jobs for the poorest, then the problem is that even the lucky “victors” of this charade that our not-quite-leaders call an “economy” are getting the bad end of a worse deal. Forget Generation A, B, C. Welcome to Generation F. If you’re under the age of 35, you’re getting (pardon me French) screwed.  We are all put here to live lives that matter—but the life we should be living is gyrating down the sewer of history. We are all here, in every moment, to make the most of our limitless potential—but your human potential is being squandered, wasted, and thrown away.

It feels like purgatory to be a member of Generation F. Like you could send out a billion CVs and never land a job. Like you could work round the clock and never earn a living. If you earn a living, you might never quite reach the same level of stability your parents knew. Like if you can’t hope for stability…what shot is there at prosperity? At, security, solvency—much less fulfillment, happiness, purpose? A life of lasting prosperity becomes so far out of reach, we look at it with mockery and contempt rather than aspiration or hope. Generation F is getting a deal so raw that no one but a politician or a red-capped witchdoctor could offer it with a straight face. So let’s call it what it is. Not just unfair—but unconscionable. Our so-called leaders have more or less abandoned this generation. Think that’s unkind—maybe even unfair? Then here’s a more generous take. Nigeria’s leaders have coolly, calmly, rationally, senselessly decided that thieving-bankers, crook-CEOs, covetous-billionaires, cynical-public-servants formerly known as economists, corporate “people”, administrators, and ECAs are worth more to society than…the young. It’s safe to say that Nigeria rulers are letting the future crash and burn. That’s right, burn. Because the damage that’s being done is permanent and irreversible.

Basic math tells us this much. A lack of opportunity, especially when one is young, puts people on lower earnings and wealth trajectories for life. They’re not unlike prison sentences in that regard. So what should Generation-F do about all the above? Create the future. The one that we’re not being allowed to live. And to do that, we’re going to have to break a few rules—so that the rules don’t break us. We’re going to have take great strides. Not baby steps. We’re taking too many of the latter, and we’re barely learning to walk. We’re going to have to stop wasting our time on pleasant, meaningless trivialities like
Facebook, Twitter protests, EPL, La-Liga, and their likes, reality-TV, and asymmetrical haircuts (I admit, I like it). Great leaps over the rubble of failed processes and broken systems. Or else we will remain trapped in the ruins, emasculated by the grip; a generation going nowhere. Great leaps in every aspect of work, life, and play that you can think of—and then more.

We’re going to have to create, among other things: new ways to measure progress (like the Social Progress Index); new political parties (like a Youth Party); new methods of governance (like Transparentocracy); new kinds of financial institutions and financial instruments (like Bitcoin), so money can get to useful places, instead of lining the pockets of econocidal fanatics in Armani suits; ways to provide healthcare, food, education, and transport, that actually have a hope of working for everyone over the long haul, instead of breaking down all the time before they work for anyone—not to mention reinventing institutions like “schools,” “jobs,” “corporations,” “economies,” “governments,” and “banks,” and “pensions” so we can actually do all the above.

We are going to have to literally take the calabash of sweltering, bland gruel we’re being so benevolently, charitably offered, carefully extract the magic beans from it—and build a stalk right past the clouds and into the heavenly expanse. It’s not going not be easy. But every generation has a challenge. Generation A was Slave trade, B – Freedom, C – Independence, D – Democracy…….etc. And that challenge must be faced, with courage, with dignity, with grace. This is our fight, so that the “F” in Generation F doesn’t stand for probably what you think it does. It stands for fixing-the-country. It stands for going-further. And it stands for creating the future. 

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