By Ochereome Nnanna

HAVE you noticed it too? I am referring to the alarming number of idle youth in every neighbourhood. As you drive to work in the morning and back at night, you will see armies of young people who have decided to trade on the streets rather than remain idle. Their ages range from six to 30 years, and sometimes above.

Just a few years ago, the street traders could be counted on the fingers. But now, it seems as though a stampede has been set off. They meander through traffic, hawking everything from bread to plantain chips to all sorts of consumable items imported from South East Asia . Comedian, Gbenga Adeyinka, once had an episode of his Laff Mattazz, in which he was able to buy all the condiments for the preparation of egusi soup from his car in the traffic.

If you have lived in your neighbourhood for upward of 10 years, you would have noticed how many more teenagers have emerged from the little boys and girls that were being dragged to nursery schools just a few years ago. Some are waiting to gain admission to universities. Others have stopped schooling and become idle because there is nothing else programmed for them to get into. They have only joined their older brothers and sisters and other people in the neighbourhood who have not found some work to expend their time and energy on.

It is from among the mass of wasting, idle youth that the more enterprising ones have decided to “hustle” in the traffic, selling anything that commuters are willing to buy. Some of these youth soon become easy targets for those recruiting gangs of armed robbers, kidnappers, gun-wielding traffic rats, secret cultists, political thugs, and in places like the Niger Delta, militants.

A friend of mine who frequents the far eastern Asian countries once told a worrisome story of how our young people who have managed to slip out of this country have introduced their innocent Vietnamese girlfriends to the drug trade, illegally exporting cocaine and heroin to China, Malaysia and Indonesia, where many of them are caught and sent to the gallows.

The problem on our hands is not just that we are producing a mass of unemployable young Nigerians as the leaders of our tomorrow; we are not interested in creating any opportunities for them to apply themselves now that they are at their productive peak. There are two brothers in my neighbourhood who were teenagers about 20 years ago when I first made their acquaintance. They belong to a large, polygamous family. Their father is a baale (village head). They dropped out of secondary school. They are nearly 40 now, but they still live with their parents, without the foggiest idea as to when they are going to settle down. And it has nothing to do with their unwillingness to work because they take on menial jobs with unusual enthusiasm.

There is no plan for the future of the Nigerian youth. People in government only think of their children; how to accumulate as much as possible, train their children in the best schools in the world and secure their future with looted public funds. None of those who have declared their intention to run for office next year has unfolded his plans for the repair of this ravaged nation, especially engaging the youth. All they are interested in is zoning and political survival.

We are sitting on a keg of gunpowder. Unless we articulate a future for the Nigerian youth there will be no future for Nigeria.

  Retrieving Abia House from OUK

THE people of Abia State are already reaping the benefits of the collapse of Orji Uzor Kalu’s political empire following the decision of Governor Theodore Orji to leave the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA). I have it on good authority that the magnificent edifice in the Central Business District of Abuja built with the funds of the Abia State Government but allegedly appropriated by former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu (OUK) has been retrieved and renamed appropriately.

According to sources, the government of Orji Kalu, just as other state governments did, financed the creation of the building. The contract was awarded to Zerock, a construction company in which OUK has controlling interests. On completion, rather than the building being named Abia House as other states named their liaison offices after their states, the State House of Assembly, then under the thumb of Orji Kalu, and at his prompting, reached a resolution to name it Orji Uzor Kalu House.

Even though Governor T. A. Orji completed the building of the project, the lease agreements had been signed before he assumed office in such a way that he had no say about who occupied the building and how the rent was disbursed. The Liaison Officer appointed by T. A. to take over the building was told in clear terms by property managers appointed by OUK to stay away. The Abia Liaison Office operated from a rental building in Area II in Abuja until the recent parting of ways between the two Orjis and the retrieval of the building.

I also gathered that the Umuahia Township Stadium, which Kalu named after himself, has been given back its old name. Governor Orji should not stop here. He must proceed to recover all the alleged illegally privatised landed property and lands in Umuahia, Aba and Obuaku City from OUK and family, and wherever crime has been committed steps must be taken to bring perpetrators to book.

The restoration of Abia and the retrieval of her fraudulently acquired property during the years of Orji Kalu’s locust reign must be taken to logical conclusion, but there must be no political witch-hunting.