By Kate Henshaw
Again, while travelling to another destination within Nigeria, a conversation with a fine gentleman sitted next to me started after we were given a copy of a daily to peruse for the duration of the flight. The headline that caught our attention on the front page of the newspaper went thus: “67 million youths unemployed— Minister”.

The Minister of Youth Development, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi was lamenting the unemployment rate in the country which led to this declaration. He further stated that 80% of that figure did not possess university degrees. No surprise there.

How could they when the universities were no more than holiday camps as hardly any qualitative learning goes on in there anymore due to the incessant strikes. Students spend more time out of universities than in it. A four-year course could very likely take up to eight years to complete and that is the reality.

The Minister attributed the unemployment rate to years of failure at different levels, explaining that “lack of job is the consequence of lack of skills”. Though the Minister admonished the youths who were clamoring for free tertiary education by saying that “Tertiary education cannot be free. Education is an investment. Unless we begin to realize that it cannot be free, quality will be diffused.”

The reality again here, is that unless you have parents who have money, the money you pay to be educated in the state-owned universities will not be worthwhile.

In my conversation with this gentleman, we also veered into the area of the current level of insecurity in the country and after a couple of oohs and ahhs!! we concluded that we were headed downhill as a people and a nation at war with itself.

It has become a daily occurrence to wake up to headliners telling us of the number of lives lost as result bomb blasts,or the ones detonated at  places of worship, at media houses and institutions;and the perpetrators are the dreaded sect that have decided to take root in our lives.

We as a people are tired of the continued assurances of our President who told us first: that it was a situation we had to get used to as each nation had its share of terrorism, to the recent statement that the perpetrators of this evil and dastardly act against our collective lives with the constant killing of innocent lives would not be spared. Which do we hold on to? Granted to be a leader is not easy— as it is often said that —uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, but at the same time we need decisive and urgent action to be taken against this insurgence.
We need to go back to the time when our morals took pride of place in our lives. Back to where life is once more sacred.
A recent statement by the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor makes a call to the Nigerian Government to use all resources available to it to clearly define and neutralize this spate of killings as other nations have done. When asked what CAN would do if government failed to heed the call, the CAN President said Christians would resort to prayer to ask God’s direction on the next step to take. Excuse me? Next step? Have Christians all across the country not been praying for years now? Prayers have become the excuse for no action. Faith without works is dead.

There is no disputing the power of prayer and with a church in virtually every street corner, none can accuse Nigerians of not being prayerful. Saints in the Bible despite prayers still stepped out to do something.

The church has a responsibility to put the word of God into action. There should be no more pussyfooting around this issue. We in the south might seem shielded from it all but with the recent bomb scare in Lagos, it does not seem so far away. Maybe then and only then will we practice what we preach. It is the Lord who teacheth our hands to war. Our destiny is in our hands and we need a David to slay this Goliath.