Nigeria's economic future is very bleak and if nothing drastic is done to address the mass youth unemployment, this Country will collapse within the next decade.
Our population is exploding by the year, millions of young people leave colleges and universities every year and are emptied into a non existent job Market; yes indeed there is no job Market in Nigeria; none at all, yet we produce millions of Mid-level and High-level graduates every year.
Can we pause a while and imagine what this Country will look like in the next fifteen years when oil will become almost useless?. The picture is not just grim but terrifying.
Nigeria can no longer afford analog leadership when the world has long gone digital. In the last twenty years of this democratic Republic since 1999, we have remained on a roller coaster; under the same centripetal force that has kept us in circles without progress. There has never been a deliberate effort to recreate our economic base and move it from it's analog state to a digital economy driven by high tech.
Any promise of ending poverty and mass youth unemployment in Nigeria will remain a mirage for as long as we keep doing the same thing the same way.
A Digital leadership is what Nigeria needs in 2023 and young Nigerians must mobilize and use their Voting population to ensure that we get it right.
If we had elected digital and tech savvy Presidents and Governors since 1999, we would have sunk all the Billions of Dollars Nigeria earned over the last twenty years into Digital automation, Telecommunications and ICT which would have long turned around our economic base and drastically opened up a large employment Market. If less endowed Countries are fast building Smart Cities, what stops Nigeria from doing same?. Must we remain a cave people forever?.
In today's global economy, everything depends on high tech for better productivity, efficiency and quality. From Agriculture and Agro processing to Automobile Industry, from Foundry to Road side automobile repair shops, from Textile Industry to the now evolving Artificial Intelligence and Robotics; everything depends on technology.
We must move to the world of high tech if Nigeria will ever become a developed Country in the nearest future. Our only hope is to build a digital knowledge based economy that can speedily contain this astronomical rise in our unemployment figures.
This is the right time for every young Nigerian to take a critical look at everyone justling for the Presidency of this Country come 2023 and start early to separate the Analog from the Digital. Our lives and that of our Children including unborn generations depends on the choice we make in 2023.
India was able to pull hundreds of millions of her Citizens out of poverty through Telecommunications, ICT and digital automation which drastically transformed their Textile Industry.
That is the way to go.
It is not just for political exigency that the Young Nigerian Voices Initiative settled for Honourable Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba as the best material for President come 2023.* He fits so solidly to what a digital President should be.
Once you listen to him discuss how to use Technology to transform our economic base, you can't but jump into this train fast moving to Aso Rock with him as the engine driver.
Those of us that have listened to him have become captivated by his clear definitive understanding of how to transform Nigeria into a digital economy.
Our duty now as protagonists of the HCN Presidency 2023 is to ensure that other millions of young Nigerians are given the opportunity early enough to listen to this Digital, Charismatic, Young and Versatile political juggernaut so as to get convinced too.
YNV is putting together; strategic Conferences and Colloquia* across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria where millions of young Nigerians will have first hand opportunity to listen to this great Nigerian discuss technology, Telecommunications, ICT and Digital automation as the only panacea for Nigeria's economic woes.
The full schedule for the programme will be well advertised soon. It is our collective responsibility as young Nigerians to ensure that HCN becomes the next President of this Country come 2023.
Together; we will win. So help us God.
Prince Collins Aboego
South East Coordinator
Young Nigerian Voices.