The Youth And Nigerian Development: The Giant We Cannot Ignore

Nigeria has always been described as a giant. But the real giant inside Nigeria is not oil, not music, not Nollywood. It is the youth. Loud, restless, endlessly creative, and too large to be ignored. If Nigeria will rise, it will rise on their shoulders. If it will stumble, it will be because we failed them.

The word “youth” is elastic. It stretches depending on who is defining it.The United Nations defines youth as 15-24 years for statistical purposes. The African Union, in its African Youth Charter of 2006, is more expansive, defining youth as 15-35 years.

Nigeria domesticated that continental definition. The Second National Youth Policy (2009) states clearly that youths are persons from the ages of 18 to 35 years, a definition that adopts the African Youth Charter. It is a definition of both energy and responsibility – old enough to vote, young enough to dream without permission. Legally, it was also a barrier until recently; before the Not Too Young To Run Act of 2018, a 28-year-old could vote but could not contest for a seat in the House of Representatives.

In sociological terms, youth in Nigeria is therefore not just an age bracket. It is a transition – from dependence to independence, from learning to leading.

Nigeria is one of the youngest countries on earth, and the numbers are staggering.The National Population Commission revealed that over 60 percent of Nigeria’s population is under the age of 30. Other assessments put it even higher – approximately 70% of Nigeria’s population is under 30, with a median age of 17.2 years. Gen Z and Millennials combined alone make up just over half of Nigeria’s population at 50.1%.

To break it down further, about 43% of the country’s 220 million people are under 15 years of age. The UNFPA puts young people aged 10-24 at 73.1 million, over 30 percent of the population. Nigeria has a youth bulge of 47% – that is, the share of 15-29 year-olds among adults

What does this mean? We are not a country with many youths. We are a youth country that happens to have elders. Every school that fails, every job not created, is multiplied by tens of millions.

You will not need to search hard to find them. They are everywhere, but unevenly placed.

Over 60% of Nigeria’s youth workforce are in the informal sector – traders in Alaba and Ariaria, okada riders, POS operators, fashion designers in Owerri, content creators shooting skits with a ring light. Their enterprise lives without support, without structure, but it lives.

Technology and Creative Economy is where Nigeria’s youth have turned disadvantage into global advantage. Fintech, edtech, gaming, and Afrobeats. Young people are building payment rails that move billions while the formal banking system sleeps.

Paradoxically, they are under-represented in the area of Agriculture. Less than 20% of youths see agriculture as desirable, despite it being the largest employer. The few who stay are reinventing it through drone farming, agri-logistics and organic exports.

In Politics and Governance, they are statistically invisible. Ahead of the 2027 elections, those aged 18-34 make up just 28.79 percent of the 103 million registered voters, despite being 60% of the population. They are loud online, but missing from the voters’ register.

In Education, primary enrollment exceeds 90%, but secondary falls below 50%. Nigerian universities graduate close to 600,000 annually into a labour market that cannot absorb them.

The youth have excelled when given space. Nigerian youth do not just participate; they dominate.

In Technology and Entrepreneurship, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji (Andela, Flutterwave) co-built two unicorns before attaining 30 years; Odunayo Eweniyi (PiggyVest) brought savings culture to a generation that had lost trust in banks. In gaming, young developers are turning play into tech startups.

In Entertainment, Davido, Burna Boy, Wizkid, Tems, Ayra Starr – all broke globally before 35, making Afrobeats Nigeria’s biggest export after oil. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published Purple Hibiscus at 26. Comedian Sabinus, filmmaker Jade Osiberu, skit makers like Mr Macaroni turned Instagram into an industry.

In Sports, Tobi Amusan broke the 100m hurdles world record at 25. Victor Osimhen became Africa’s most expensive footballer at 24. Asisat Oshoala, six-time African best female footballer.

In Civic Power, The #NotTooYoungToRun campaign led by Samson Itodo of Yiaga Africa forced a constitutional amendment. The #EndSARS movement of 2020 was almost entirely youth-led, showing organizational power without formal structures.

These are not exceptions. They are previews.

History reminds us that youth in governance is not new to Nigeria. It is actually our tradition.

General Yakubu Gowon led Nigeria from the throes of the civil war as a 31-year-old officer. Alfred Diete-Spiff ruled the old Rivers State at 26, the age at which Mathew T. Mbu became our Minister of Foreign Affairs.

In the return to democracy, the class of 1999 governors – Ibrahim Turaki (36), Donald Duke (38), and Orji Uzor Kalu (39) showed what youthful governance could look like. Donald Duke turned Calabar into a tourism and cleanliness model that is still referenced today.

Here in Imo State, Charles Onyeagbako, Emmanuel Ibediro and Jachimike Adiele were all elected as Executive Chairmen of local government councils while under 49 years of age as were Nyesom Wike and the late Nnamdi Wokekoro in Rivers State.

More recently, Yahaya Bello became governor of Kogi at 40, and today Kogi’s Ahmed Usman Ododo, born 7 February 1982, elected at 42, is among the five youngest serving governors.

The lesson is not that young is always better – some youthful administrations failed badly. The lesson is that age has never been Nigeria’s problem; capacity and character have.

The life experiences of our youth are replete with problems and expectations. Ask any young Nigerian what they want, and you will hear the same five things, in different accents:

First is jobs that mean something. Unemployment and underemployment affect over 40% of youth. Graduates become okada riders, not by choice.

Second is education that leads somewhere. Outdated curricula, strikes, lack of power and internet. A degree that does not translate to skill.

Third is inclusion, not tokenism. They are invited to youth wings, not to decision tables. The expectation is simple: let us contest, let us win, let us fail and learn like everyone else.

Fourth is security and mental health. Insecurity has turned farms into danger zones, roads into gambles.

Fifth is a country they don’t have to leave. The Japa wave is not about hatred for Nigeria; it is about a quiet conclusion that Nigeria does not have a plan for them.

Any honest conversation about the Nigerian youth must also confront the shadows that have grown in the same soil of frustration and boundless ambition.

These three – Yahoo fraud, drugs, and commercialized sex – are not separate vices. They are symptoms of the same wound: a generation told to be successful at all costs, in a country that has not provided legitimate costs.

Internet fraud, popularly called Yahoo Yahoo, and its more violent offshoot Yahoo Plus, has become for many young men what apprenticeship used to be. Its effect is corrosive in layers. First, it erodes the work ethic. It teaches that wealth does not come from value creation but from deception, and that a laptop can do what four years in Nekede or Nsukka could not.

Second, it destroys trust. It damages Nigeria’s international reputation, making it harder for legitimate freelancers, exporters and tech founders to be trusted with a simple PayPal account or visa.

Third, it hollows out communities. The EFCC cells are full of 22-year-olds, but the real cost is at home – parents who cannot question sudden wealth, landlords who prefer Yahoo tenants, and a value system where a teenager with a Benz is celebrated over a teacher with 30 years of service. When fraud becomes aspirational, development becomes impossible.

Drugs produce escape snd entrapment. From codeine-laced cough syrups to tramadol capsules, to marijuana and the devastating crystal meth known as mkpuru mmiri or ice, substance abuse is no longer a fringe urban story. It is in secondary schools, in motor parks, in the quiet bedrooms of depressed graduates.

Its effects are immediate and long-term. It takes the same restless energy that could build a startup and turns it inward, into anxiety, psychosis, and lethargy. It fuels the very insecurity young people complain about – much of the petty crime, cult clashes and gender-based violence on our streets is drug-linked. It breaks families quietly, with mothers spending retirement savings on rehabilitation that does not exist in their local government. And it kills productivity. A generation fighting drug dependency cannot fight for a demographic dividend.

The third shadow is less discussed but just as visible, amplified by social media and economic pressure. For many young women, and increasingly young men, sex has been monetized not out of liberation but out of survival and pressure to meet impossible lifestyle standards set by Instagram.

Its developmental cost is severe. It exposes youths to exploitation, trafficking, sexually transmitted infections, and unwanted pregnancies that end education. It normalizes transactional relationships where a girl’s worth is tied to what she can extract from a man, and a man’s worth to what he can pay. Psychologically, it leaves a residue of cynicism – a belief that nothing is genuine, everything has a price. For a nation that needs strong families to raise the next generation, that cynicism is expensive.

Together, these three shadows do one thing: they offer shortcuts that become dead ends. They promise quick escape from the five expectations above, but they ultimately ensure those expectations will never be met. The Yahoo boy, the drug-dependent youth, and the young woman trapped in transactional sex are not different from the POS operator or the coder. They are often the same person, faced with different choices in the absence of a clear path.

The way forward is not empowerment seminars with banners and bottled water. It is structural.

We must fund technical and vocational education as prestige education. The Nigerian Youth Academy (NiYA) target of 7 million young people in digital literacy is a start, but execution must be local, in places like Nekede, Nsukka, and Yaba, not just Abuja.

Give youth credit, not just counsel. One million naira in seed funding for 200 ventures is good, but 73 million young people need a real credit system – low-interest, collateral-free, data-driven. We need a Bank of Youth Enterprise, not another essay competition.

We should make politics cheaper. As long as a House of Assembly form costs 2 million and a governorship form costs 50 million, Not Too Young To Run will remain Not Too Rich To Run. Enforce the Electoral Act’s spending limits and open party structures.

With nearly 60% under 30, Nigeria can either reap a demographic dividend or face a demographic disaster. The difference is investment in health, family planning, and girls’ education.

We cannot preach against Yahoo, drugs and transactional sex without providing viable alternatives. That means functional rehabilitation centres in every state, digital literacy that includes cyber-ethics, and social protection programmes that make dignity possible without desperation. EFCC raids alone will not solve Yahoo; jobs will.

Finally, if youth are 50.1% of the nation, they must be 50% of the conversation. Not as “youth leaders” invited to clap, but as commissioners, CEOs, principal officers, and board members.

In our cities, towns and even the countryside, you see this every day: young men repairing phones with microscopes, young women running thrift businesses on WhatsApp, students coding after lectures. They are not waiting for development. They are development, already happening.

The question for Nigeria is no longer “What do we do with our youth?” The question is, “Will we finally join what our youth are already doing?”

We have spent decades looking for the giant outside. The giant has been here all along, in our homes, in our streets, scrolling, hustling, coding, singing, and sometimes, tragically, losing its way. It is loud. It is restless. It will not wait forever.

It is time we stopped trying to empower it from a podium, and started building a country worthy of its energy.