Tag: Nigeria

By Abidex Femi

“When you empower the youth, you empower the future of a nation.” These words, often echoed in policy discussions, find real meaning in the work of Ayodele Olawande, Nigeria’s Minister of Youth Development. In a country where young people make up more than half of the population, leadership that speaks directly to their hopes and challenges is not just desirable, it is essential.

Since assuming office on October 16, 2023, and later elevated to the substantive Minister of Youth Development by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu a year later, Olawande has distinguished himself as a minister who translates promises into action. His approach to youth engagement, empowerment, and protection has not only redefined the mandate of his ministry but also rekindled a sense of belonging among millions of young Nigerians.

One of the most striking features of his leadership has been his consistent closeness to the youth themselves. Rather than governing from behind a desk, Olawande embarked on engagement tours across the country, meeting young Nigerians in their own spaces and listening to their stories, challenges, and dreams. His visits to Delta and Cross River states directly birthed digital job training programs tailored to the aspirations voiced by the young people he met. His presence in Borno, at Maimalari Barracks where he met with wounded young soldiers, and in internally displaced persons’ camps where he distributed learning materials, revealed a minister who embodies empathy and demonstrates action beyond the confines of officialdom. For him, no Nigerian youth is invisible, whether they are in bustling cities, rural villages, or areas scarred by conflict.

Economic empowerment has stood as a cornerstone of his work. Understanding that entrepreneurship remains the backbone of Nigeria’s youthful economy, he spearheaded the expansion of the Nigerian Youth Investment Fund from N75 billion to N110 billion, giving young entrepreneurs better access to finance and opportunities. Programs like the Corpreneur Support Scheme provide funding for NYSC members trained in the Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development program, ensuring that service year becomes a springboard into self-reliance. At the grassroots, the Grassroots Youth Entrepreneurship Support Scheme has supported small-scale businesses that sustain local communities, affirming his vision that youth empowerment must not be confined to urban centres alone but spread across every part of the country.

In a society where the youth often feel vulnerable to harassment and profiling by security agencies, Olawande took the bold step of creating the Young and Secure Initiative in collaboration with the Ministry of Police Affairs. This initiative, alongside the Nigerian Youth Helpdesk, offers young Nigerians a direct platform to report cases of harassment and ensures swift intervention, thereby protecting their dignity and rebuilding trust between youth and law enforcement. His emphasis on protection as a pillar of development reflects his belief that the potential of young people can only flourish in an environment where they feel safe and respected.

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At the heart of his vision is the future of work, and here his imprint has been equally profound. Through the Nigerian Youth Academy, popularly known as NIYA, he launched the “One Youth, Two Skills” campaign, which has already drawn over 80,000 sign-ups even before its official unveiling. This e-learning platform is equipping millions of young Nigerians with vocational and digital skills designed to meet the demands of both local and global markets. His partnership with the National Information Technology Development Agency birthed the DL4ALL program, a digital literacy initiative targeting 30 million Nigerians, making it one of the most ambitious youth digital empowerment programs in the country’s history. Complementing this is his collaboration with the National Data Protection Commission which is not only training but also creating five thousand jobs in the fast-growing field of data protection.

Olawande’s innovations stretch beyond the digital economy. By partnering with the Presidential Initiative on CNG, he facilitated the distribution of two thousand CNG-powered tricycles to young people in the transportation sector. This intervention addresses two needs at once: empowering youths with sustainable livelihoods and advancing the nation’s commitment to greener, cleaner transportation. Similarly, the soon-to-be-launched nationwide enrolment portal for young farmers demonstrates his recognition that agriculture must remain central to Nigeria’s growth and youth employment.

Infrastructure for youth development has also been elevated under his stewardship. The Youth House Initiative, already approved by President Tinubu, envisions Youth Houses in Abuja, Youth Centres in all states, and Green Houses in all 774 local government areas of the federation. These are not mere structures but hubs of opportunity, designed to provide resources, training, and support at the grassroots level. His drive to institutionalize youth involvement in governance also led to the creation of the National Youth Conference, a platform where young Nigerians can directly engage government, propose solutions, and shape the policies that affect their lives.

In education and career development, Olawande has reformed the NYSC posting process to ensure corps members are placed in organizations relevant to their fields of study, transforming the service year into a period of genuine skill acquisition and career readiness. Alongside this, the ministry is working to ease the financial burden on students through the implementation of loans and stipends, ensuring that education becomes more accessible and less stressful for young Nigerians.

All of these achievements are driven by a clear and simple philosophy which Olawande himself has often articulated: Support, Empower, and Protect the youth. This SEP approach runs through every initiative and reform, from financial inclusion and employment opportunities to protection from harassment and the creation of safe spaces where young people can thrive. It is a strategy that recognizes youth not as passive recipients of charity but as active partners in national development.

Ayodele Olawande’s first year in office has redefined what it means to be a Minister of Youth Development. He has shown through action that Nigerian youth deserve more than promises; they deserve structures that empower their dreams, systems that protect their dignity, and platforms that amplify their voices. In his story lies an example of governance that is responsive, innovative, and inclusive. For the millions of young Nigerians who now feel a sense of belonging, his leadership is not just a chapter in public service but the dawn of a new narrative in which the youth are truly at the centre of national development.

•Abidex lives in Abuja.

By Lekan Olayiwola

Since 2020 when the Biden administration took Nigeria off the Country of Particular Concern (CPC) list, Nigeria has once again become the subject of intense international scrutiny. Advocacy groups, global church networks, and foreign policy actors in Washington have amplified one message: that Christians in northern Nigeria are under systematic attack.

The horror of village raids, church burnings, abductions, and killings is cited as evidence, and some in the U.S. Congress now urge that Nigeria be returned to the CPC list— a designation that signals grave violations of religious freedom.

For many Nigerians, this framing is not entirely wrong, but it is incomplete. It reflects real pain but flattens a complex landscape into a single story. Yes, Christians have suffered disproportionately in certain areas. But Muslims too have been massacred, mosques destroyed, and whole communities displaced.

What links these tragedies is not faith alone but a wider crisis of governance: the inability of the state to secure its citizens, resolve local conflicts, or fairly manage the resources on which millions depend. Nigeria at 65 cannot afford to let its story be told only through the lens of persecution. It must reclaim its narrative with honesty, compassion, and resolve.

To walk through Borno or Yobe is to witness the scars of Boko Haram and ISWAP. Churches lie in ruins, pastors abducted, congregations scattered. Yet the same groups have razed mosques, slaughtered imams, and forced Muslim villagers into exile for rejecting extremist rule.

In Plateau and Benue, farming villages, often Christian-majority, have faced repeated militia raids linked to herder-farmer tensions. But in Zamfara and Katsina, Muslim communities are devastated by bandit attacks, their children kidnapped from schools, their livelihoods destroyed.

The numbers tell a bleak story: millions displaced, thousands dead. But behind the statistics are Nigerians of every creed, united in grief if not in narrative.

The insistence, therefore, that “Christians are being killed” is both true and insufficient. The fuller truth is that Nigerians are being failed by a state that cannot consistently secure them, and by political actors who exploit identity fractures rather than mend them.

Faith as battleground, governance as void

Why, then, does the international conversation spotlight only Christians? Partly because global advocacy networks mirror their constituencies. Christian organizations rightly amplify the suffering of Christians. Their reports are often accurate but partial. What they underplay is the governance void in which violence festers.

When local policing is weak, when borders are porous, when land conflicts are unmanaged, religion becomes a shorthand for deeper structural breakdowns. What looks like a holy war is often, at root, a crisis of governance. That does not erase the religious dimension.

Victims targeted at Sunday worship cannot be told it was “just politics.” But it shifts the conversation toward responsibility: who should have prevented it, who must now act, and how justice can be done.

The CPC dilemma: Symbolism without solutions

For Washington, the CPC designation is a powerful lever. It can isolate governments, trigger sanctions, and mobilize pressure. For Abuja, being labelled as failing to protect its Christian citizens would sting deeply, undermining diplomatic standing at a time when Nigeria seeks investment and credibility.

Yet there is a paradox. CPC status can raise alarm, but it cannot rebuild schools in Borno, resolve herder-farmer disputes in Plateau, or restore trust in Kaduna’s neighbourhoods. Worse, it risks fuelling defensive nationalism: officials dismissing reports as “Western bias,” communities retreating into victimhood, and the political class turning tragedy into talking points.

The danger is that Nigerians become spectators in a story told about them, while the root causes of violence remain unaddressed.

When resources mirror religion

It may seem far afield, but Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) offers a telling parallel. The PIA was designed to address long-standing grievances in the Niger Delta by ensuring host communities benefit directly from oil extraction. The principle is simple: resource justice reduces violence.

Northern Nigeria suffers from the absence of such frameworks. Land use, grazing routes, and local revenue distribution remain poorly managed, feeding resentment that extremists and militias exploit. When communities feel excluded from resources, from security, from dignity, religion becomes an easy rallying cry.

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In this sense, just as oil misgovernance once fuelled militancy in the South, land and livelihood mismanagement now fuel identity-driven violence in the North. The lesson is not that religion is irrelevant. It is that religious violence thrives where governance is absent.

Narratives that heal

How Nigerians choose to tell this story matters. If violence is narrated only as “Muslims attacking Christians,” cycles of retaliation deepen. If narrated only as “banditry,” the religious pain of communities is erased. What is needed is a narrative of shared vulnerability and shared responsibility.

Some attempts already exist. Interfaith councils like NIREC, grassroots peace committees in Jos and Kaduna, and civil society projects in conflict-prone areas have built fragile but real bridges. They are underfunded, but they embody a crucial truth: the solution lies not in denying differences but in managing them with fairness and dignity.

Toward a Nigerian response

What, then, should be done? First, Nigeria must own the crisis with honesty. Denials and defensive postures erode credibility both at home and abroad.

Second, it must strengthen local security and justice systems. Community policing, early-warning networks, conflict-resolution mechanisms, and transparent prosecutions. Security is not only about military firepower; it is about trust between citizens and the state.

Third, resource governance must be reimagined. The spirit of the PIA, embedding social obligations in economic activity should extend to land, grazing, and revenue allocation in the North. Communities must see that justice is not abstract, but delivered in schools built, clinics staffed, and farms protected.

Finally, Nigeria must reclaim the narrative. Not by silencing international advocates, but by telling its own story in a way that acknowledges Christian suffering without erasing Muslim loss; that frames the crisis as a national failure of governance, not as an inevitable war of religions.

Dignity as security

At stake is more than reputation or foreign policy. It is the civic dignity of Nigerians — the right of every villager to farm without fear, every child to walk to school, every worshipper to gather without terror. True national security is not only about missiles, budgets, or diplomacy. It is about whether citizens feel safe, seen, and valued.

The CPC debate may rage abroad. But Nigeria’s task is to prove to itself and to the world that it can protect its people regardless of creed, not because Washington demands it, but because its citizens deserve it.

•Olayiwola is a peace & conflict researcher/policy analyst. He can be reached via lekanolayiwola@gmail.com