Mr. Solomon Dalong, the Minister of Youth and Sports in the Federal Government of Nigeria has assured that All Progressive Congress, APC, would commence the payment of N5,000 promised to unemployed Nigerian youth during the electioneering campaign, from 2016.  While I hail the Minister of Youth for unravelling his plan, it is important to begin this discussion by asking what the value of N5000 is and what the N5000 will do for adult citizens for a period of one month rather than being emotional about fulfilling the APC campaign promise. Will paying N500 to Nigerian youth create jobs and solve the problems of poverty?  APC and the Minister of Youth are silent on telling Nigerians how an adult citizen will survive on N5000 monthly and live to vote their party in 2019.

The Minister of Youth and APC should interrogate our unemployment challenges, think of an appropriate approach to create jobs and stop making a mockery of Nigerian youth. We expect that the crop of elite assembled by Mr. Buhari, the Nigerian President, will think in terms of making Nigeria a developmental state that will act proactively to transform the economy and the state. The democratic space in which APC operates should not be confrontational. It should give consensus to development priorities that can transform our economy.  The ability of the APC to direct our affairs, build strong institutions, create space for civil society organizations and build the capacity of our citizens to engage governance will be determinant factors for measuring its readiness for the development it preaches and not the N5000 approach.

Jobs cannot be created and our economy transformed unless huge investments are made on education and health, promotion of inclusive growth, deliberate creation of employment by providing rural infrastructure to address rural-urban migration, massive investment in industrialization, skill manpower and availability of access to credit loan with very low interest rates of at least 3%.  The issue, therefore, is not paying N5000 to Nigeria youth monthly but what  are the policies and development models been put in place by the Minister and APC to create jobs, drive development and turn over 60  Nigerian youth into assets.

Do the Minister of Youth and the APC know that one way they can keep their N5000 and begin to redefine our path as a nation is to have industrialization as an integral part of our development planning process? Without industrialization, we are not going to build an economy that will create opportunities and end poverty. Apparently, all countries that have created jobs and reduced poverty did so because the economies grew out of practical strategies that created sustainable jobs and provided decent incomes based on industrial growth. The APC N5000 model is not sustainable for our growth and development. The recycled elites by the APC must start thinking like a new crop of an elite with a practical model of addressing our poverty and unemployment.

We had expected that APC will remodel our political process and create democratic structures within which we have debates on the problems facing us and about the choices that needed to be made. APC has shown it is not people driven; their ability to understand what is happening in our society is weak.  Membership of the party is all about patronage - not about the needs of the people. APC needs to take back its N5000 and have a comprehensive review of what has happened during the past and come up with new ways of creating jobs and crafting the development model we need to adopt and determine what future we need for our people.

On whether paying the N5000 is the way to go, APC fundamentalists defend it as a viable option. The arguments from the party fundamentalists enlarge their illusion of understanding what is at stake. Adopting the N5000 model with our lack of firm socioeconomic substructure, a functional industrial foundation, and a stable self-regulatory policy further exposes the illusion and lack of understanding of APC fundamentalist in their calculation of our situation. It is embarrassing that APC will gladly say it will pay N5000 monthly to unemployed Nigerians as a means of addressing unemployment. I am particularly disturbed that the Nigeria Minister of Youth does not see anything wrong in this but rather propagate it, if you see Solomon Dalong ask him what N5000 is used for.

I am particularly worried, judging from our poverty rate, youth bulge, unemployment and insecurity, that APC does not know Nigerian youth did not take to the streets because many believed, with Buhari, their  suffering would be addressed. If this change does not come, there will be no other platform to appeal to the conscience of the frustrated youth to be peaceful. What is likely to follow is a crisis of legitimacy that will further degenerate into insecurity. APC has no option but to act and do the right thing to return the citizens confidence on the state. The failure of APC is a threat to our democracy especially when many Nigerians held them in a high esteem.

Obviously, APC needs to rethink our past, re-examine our democracy, ask where we went wrong, and what to do in future to have a better Nigeria. Buhari and his party men must have an alternative crop of an elite with alternative perspectives. If the party fails to dream new dreams and see new visions for the future, Nigeria is getting nowhere and doom awaits us in future. For emphasis, to create jobs and engage the youth, APC must build an industrial base, a sound economic structure, a conscientized civil society, and stable political system. The hypocrisy of its party men in the corridors of power must be stopped.

Yes, it is not a taboo if unemployed Nigerians are given N5000 monthly, but the Minister of Youth and APC must understand that there is a lot of work to be done to address unemployment. The aspiration to create jobs is not enough, what matters most is how to create the jobs. What APC does not know is Rwanda and Mauritius worked hard for their people, and Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sankara and Amilcar Cabral have shown you can only improve the lives of the citizens via purposeful leadership which APC must work towards.

Does APC know the number of Nigerians that are unemployed, who a youth is within the Nigerian context and how to make the process credible? Creating jobs and addressing unemployment goes beyond the N5000 model. Yes, it is a campaign promise, but you can discard a crude model of this nature and engage a better model of job creation with citizens. It is morally wrong and unacceptable for a Minister of Youth who purportedly works for the welfare of Nigerian youth to promote N5000 monthly pay as a way of tackling youth unemployment. 

By Audu Liberty Oseni

Programmes Manager, Arm of Hope Foundation 
libertydgreat@gmail.com.