I watched a documentary on Cable News Network (CNN) about three years ago where one of their correspondents posed as an undercover economic migrant seeking to enter Europe from Africa. The migrants he hobnobbed with were unaware he wasn’t one of them. Whenever he runs into a hitch, he will let the viewer’s know his journey would have ended there assuming he was a genuine economic migrant. He chronicled their lives in the bush struggling to make it to Europe. He took a keen interest on a Nigerian graduate from Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma. He wanted to know why, with his degree, he chose this dangerous and treacherous route to Europe.
What actually caught my attention in the documentary was one of the immigrants who finally made it to Britain hanging under a trailer! When the surprised undercover correspondent saw him on the street on London, he asked him one simple question; “Now that you’re in London, what next?” The befuddled immigrant looked at him forlornly and said: “I don’t know”. That sums up the dilemma of youths bent on going to Europe or the United States at all cost.
Recollect that only a few days ago, more than 300 African migrants from Eritrea drowned when the boat they were travelling in sank off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy. Close to 20 also died a few days after that incident. Since the identity of many of them could not be ascertained, they were buried and referred to by unique numbers! The irony of the whole situation is that Africa has been seen as the rising continent where there has been steady economic growth for the last three years at a time Europe and most part of the west is struggling. But unfortunately, this growth has not translated to a better life for its citizens.
I met a former university course mate last week and after exchanging pleasantries and catching up with old times I inquired how things were with him. “You cannot believe that I’ve not worked in a structured place since we graduated” was his reply. It turned out he had taught in a couple of private secondary schools and worked in what he termed “unorganized private sector”. The sad part of his story was when he finally got a break and was about to be offered a job, but was told “you’re too old for the job”. Then he was just 32 years old. Another sad part of his story was that it also affected his two other brothers who graduated six and eight years after he did.
I’ve heard such tales from the generation before mine and the present generation. Prof Wole Soyinka at a point referred to his generation as “the wasted generation”; Prof Pat Utomi referred to his as “the generation that left town” and I want to refer to mine as the lost and jobless generation.
The term “lost generation” is not a recent coinage; it originated with Gertrude Stein, a noted American art collector of seminal modernist paintings and an experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays who, after being unimpressed by the skills of a young car mechanic, asked the garage owner where the young man had been trained. The garage owner told her that while young men were easy to train, it was those in their mid-20s to 30s, the men who had been through World War I, whom he considered a “lost generation”. In essence, the years that could have been used to train and properly equip them were wasted during the war years.
The 1926 publication of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises further popularised the term, as Hemingway used it as an epigraph. The novel serves to epitomise the post-war expatriate generation. However, Hemingway himself later wrote to his editor Max Perkins that the “point of the book” was not so much about a generation being lost, but that “the earth abideth forever”; he believed the characters in The Sun Also Rises may have been “battered” but were not lost.
Former late British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher was right on point when she made a profound statement in 1984, saying: “Young people ought not to be idle. It is very bad for them.” Though referring to the period when she was in power in Britain, anyone living in present day Nigeria cannot fault her submission; there are few worse things that society can do to its young than to leave them in limbo. Even “well-connected” individuals in Nigeria complain that they cannot find jobs for their wards.
An instructive feature narrative on CNN about a month ago titled: ‘Europe’s lost generation’ depicts grippingly the plight of young European graduates between the ages of 19 and 26 with no jobs. As is well known, Europe is currently going through its worst youth unemployment crisis in its history resulting in 26 million youths without jobs. In worst hit countries such as Greece and Spain, youth unemployment rate is close to 60 per cent triggering a wave of migration to better off countries such as Germany. One report informs that most European graduates would have made 60 or more applications for a job before they finally get one and what they get maybe frustratingly below expectation as the majority of those employed do not have decent jobs.
How about the United States, the land of ‘romantic dreams’ that most would give anything to settle in? It is a country in the throes of mass youth unemployment and underemployment as more than 10 million Americans under 25 are out of work. There is over 16 per cent unemployment rate affecting youths between 16 and 24; among Blacks and Latinos the rate moves up to 36 per cent and 28 per cent while in some cities such as Chicago, the youth unemployment rate among Blacks is 90 per cent.
Described as an economic emergency, the desultory job market in the United States features many college (University) graduates in low skilled and low wage jobs such as serving tea or coffee while many have their careers frozen in internships with no remunerations. In other words, many youths in what is increasingly called the ‘generation jobless’ are not building up human capital assets either through experience at work or time spent in profitable study.
What’s my point here? It’s simple; while these countries are passing through difficult times economically, they’re fully aware of their predicament and are doing everything possible to seek out solutions. But from what we have on ground and can visibly see, ours may not be on the front burner. In August, the Chairman, Subsidy Reinvestment Programme (SURE-P), Dr. Christopher Kolade, said about 40 million Nigerians, translating to 23.9 per cent of the population, are unemployed.
Quoting the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), he added that one of the challenges of graduate unemployment is the “inability of the system to absorb the about 300,000 graduates churned out of our tertiary institutions.” He added that the Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS) of SURE-P aims to employ about 50,000 unemployed graduates in 36 states and FCT in one year. The scheme is targeted at improving the skills unemployed graduates through work placement in registered firms.
Kolade lamented that only 35 per cent of 2,000 registered firms had met minimum requirement for participation, saying over 96,000 unemployed graduates have registered on the GIS portal. The big challenge with this scheme remains our weak and mono cultural economy. We simply do not have the industrial base to employ the army of unemployed that we have. Most firms that have signed into the programme also complain that its website is difficult to access with some looking at it as a scam to siphon public funds by corrupt officials.
What is more, the programme is only a palliative as graduates who sign on are only expected to remain in a partner firm for only one year, and then they have to move on and give others the opportunity to be ‘employed’. In essence, they would be unemployed again after their one year stint.
A deeper worry is that the business environment is going through a particularly dramatic period of ‘creative destruction’. New technology is unleashing a storm of “disruptive innovation” which is forcing firms to rethink their operations from the ground up. Companies are constantly redesigning work – for example they are separating routine tasks (which can be automated or contracted out) from skilled jobs. They are also constantly redesigning themselves by “upsizing”, “downsizing” and “contracting out”. The life expectancy of companies is,therefore, declining. Policymakers elsewhere are finding it more difficult to adapt to this new phase and are seeking out lee ways. Are ours thinking in this direction?
