Realistically speaking, If we gather a hundred Nigerian youths together and we ask what they plan to do immediately after graduation from higher institutions 70% of them would say I wish to Japa!
Now Japa, means to leave a place or better put escape a location
However the location now being referred to is now our very own Nigeria,what a pity. The slang was popularized by Nigerian artiste Naira Marley in a hit song of his with a similar name.
The youth planning to japa, however, can not be totally blamed for the trend, as a young person, I would love to start my life in a friendly environment which would allow me to grow, mature and develop. A system, not totally utopian - cause nothing is truly perfect but one where I can save out of my income, marry on time , live a comfortable life, own my dream cars, have multiple income options, enjoy life and have a trust fund for my kids.
Realistically speaking, the only way you can do this as a Nigerian citizen is if you're a Nepo baby, you are well connected, you have grace or you're criminally rich.
What do the youth do? Instead of waiting to suffer, they prefer to run abroad, "Fight another day" and they run abroad. What does this do the African Continent? We get brain drain and we lose the beautiful pieces to complete our development puzzle. Lets look at it from an introspective view, if we calculate the amount of youth that leave every year in thousands in half a century, we'll discover we've thrown away key to the future of Africa. Now we lose Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, Inventors, Most essentially Medical Personnel, Entrepreneurs, Musical artistes and the likes.
This is further increasing our Underdevelopment problem and if it is not curbed it would set us long start from the rest of the world, making us the architect of our problems.
The Government should make the country comfortable for the youth, make life easy, create more employment opportunities, curb inflation, alleviate poverty save the future, its going to be a long road, but trust me, it's worth it.
Then the youth as well should create value in the country, because we cannot expect everything from a dysfunct government that is struggling to even give youth the barest minimum, we can start businesses, build brands, systems and platforms as young people shoutout to Oluwaferanmi Adebayo, the CEO of this great platform is a living example of what I'm talking about, what a guy !! And if do the right things and build sustainable systems we will be valuable every where we go look at Slawn for instance or the likes of Virgil Abloah, Santan Dave and many others thelist is endless, how did they do it? They were optimistic and they all did this not by running away from the system but building around it.
To make impact as a young person you should learn to be a creator and have the builders mindset and not that of a consumer because eventually if you go abroad, you will be stuck in debts and mortgage so in essence why be a a slave abroad than being a king at home, I plan to travel abroad too, but only for vacation purposes. Tourism is better than modern slavery in a foreign land.
This is amazing, Mayowa. You have touched a very critical point on the subject of our country’s underdevelopment. Thank you also for the shoutout, but I’m not the only visionary, I have my brother Olanibi Gratitude, and my amazing partners network which your distinguished self is part of. Without you all, I’ll only be a visionary, and nothing more. So thank you too.
Love this ❤