Presidential goof on the significance of youth in national development offered an opportunity we all missed to prevent today’s carnage. It was all about perception: are the youth assets or liabilities ? Of course the proverbial water had since passed under the presumed “official bridge of “idle youths”. In the last three weeks, the “Hashtag” generation has shown not just the resilience but resistance against police brutality and insistence on good governance in general.
Even at that, Nigeria needs a Developmental State, not a Police State if we must meet Sustainable Development Goals. Certainly for too long through youth mass open unemployment, prolonged closures of universities due to ASSU strikes, collapse of industries, income poverty and Police criminalization, weaponization of poverty, Nigerian youths have been unacceptably pushed on the margins of the Society.