I am gravely worried about the future of a nation that toys with its youths. What happened last Saturday is one of the symptoms of sickness of this society. It's rather unfortunate that innocent youths would have to bear the pain and brunt of the excesses and reckless activities of our leaders.
It is heart-rending seeing those gory pictures of the dead and dehydrated jobless and helpless youths of my country, including three pregnant women. Indeed, Nigeria needs help.
If Abuja National Stadium for instance is to carry a sitting capacity of 64 thousand four hundred and sixty or thereabout and the stadium was filled to capacity with more people outside. Invariably we have close to a hundred thousand applicants there or more. Yet official figures has it that the agency recorded 560,000 applications from these job seekers. If over 2million people applied for the 3000 jobs and paid N1000 for application forms. By multiplying N1000 by 2 million applicants we arrive at N2billion. It is therefore disgracefully shocking to know that government has made over N2billion from these job seekers with no jobs available them!
In some civilized climes in this same world, government actually pays her citizens a job seeker allowance to be able to weather whatever hardship that comes with being jobless. In United Kingdom for instance, jobless citizens get access to free house, health and money. But rather than help my Nigerian jobless youths, government is actually taking everything away from them.
Imagine a country of about 160million people with about 100million people living below poverty line and over 60million jobless youths with no feasible future, yet its Presidency has 10 private jets with another new one more at a whopping price of $1.6billion. A country where elected leaders stole billion of dollars without being questioned; where a government official bought N300million bullet-proof car without being queried, where Phd holders applied for truck drivers' jobs, where you can have all the university degrees and still end up as a roadside newspapers vendor...
Who will blame the innocent jobless youths for attending the job screening test? They are agile yet jobless and suffering! We have an army of angry, jobless and desperate youths on our hands in this country and we are sitting on a keg of gunpowder but some selfish political apologists and sycophants would keep assuring Mr President that all is well.
A time is coming when some section of our jobless youths would occupy National Assembly to demand for what they really deserve while some would be going from house to house of former national leaders to pay them back for the pains they caused them!
Saint-Olawale Jimoh
(Observers' Reflections Int'l)
www.saint-olawalejimoh.
©2014
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