‘Nigeria’s political terrain discouraging youth participation in governance’

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Nigeria’s political terrain has been described as discouraging to youth’s participation in governance processes  hence the low participation of Nigerian youth in political governance, even though thy constitute almost half of the country’s over 180 million population, says Murtala Adogi Mohammed, a youth development specialist.

Mohammed who was one of the speakers at TEDxKanoCity, an independently organized TED event held Sunday in Kano, northwestern Nigeria said although Nigeria boasts of “huge number of capable youth” unfortunately they have been kept out of governance processes by the country’s political terrain, which is anti-youth.

“A lot of Nigerian youth are capable but the political terrain doesn’t encourage youth participation in governance, huge numbers of capable youth are in various organisations making huge impacts. We have a lot of youth in this country that can deliver,” argues Mohammed.

Speaking on the challenge of youth unemployment in Nigeria, Mohammed says youth unemployed was a “challenge the government need to understand, the government need to come up with a strategy for addressing the challenge, a clear implementation strategy as well as a monitoring and evaluation framework for the strategy.”

Mohammed who says the youth needed to be involved in the planning, implementation and review of the strategy decries the fact that the current Nigerian education system doesn’t provide youth with problem solving skills hence Nigerian youth also needed to be empowered through capacity building and mentorship programmes.