By Ochereome Nnanna
NIgeria sowed the wind and is reaping the whirlwind. It is a country that has no plans for the people who will control its future. Every former military ruler alive wants to be elected to rule again.

The second generation of our leadership after the founding fathers; people who were brought up in the best care and provision possible with public resources emerged and simply stayed put.

Now in their seventies and eighties, they still strut from one end of the polity to the other, basically causing commotion and refusing to give the next generation a chance to prove themselves. They are all over the place – Olusegun Obasanjo, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Lawal Kaita, EK Clark, Ango Abdullahi, Atiku Abubakar, just name them.

Meanwhile, the bottom, for decades, has been piling up with young men and women who can’t find employment because the oldies are not yet tired and won’t let go. Young men and women are turning into old men and women without tasting the opportunity to serve the nation. Eventually the polity exploded. In the Niger Delta, youth rebelled against elders and chiefs and started fighting oil companies and the Nigerian state. In the South, violent criminality sweeps the grounds, while in the Muslim North it is Jihadist insurgency.

Kidnapping for ransom, in particular, was born in the Port Harcourt axis of the Niger Delta but soon (as typical of evil) spread to all parts of the South East and South-South. Right now, no part of the country is immune to it. Misguided youth, marginalised in decades of systematic impoverishment, went berserk and are now helping themselves to desperate violent crimes.

In the Aba axis of Abia State a couple of years ago, kidnappers formed mafia rings and whole villages were forcibly sucked into criminality. Aba, a bustling commercial and industrial zone, came under siege. Every individual who seemed able to provide his family three square meals and send his children to decent private schools became a target of kidnapping, robbery and extortion. It got to a point where inhabitants of the city started deserting in droves. Banks, factories and telecom companies closed shop. Aba looked, once again, like a Biafran city overrun by the rampaging vandals.

Abia State became the first (and so far the only) state where the armed forces of the Federal Republic had to be drafted to smash the kidnap networks. Before Governor Theodore Orji agreed to reach for the big stick, he had offered amnesty to kidnappers, hoping the balm the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua applied to calm the storms in the Niger Delta would work. Rather than produce positive result, the “supreme commander” of the kidnappers, Obioma Nwankwo, alias Osisikankwu, started making political demands. He styled himself as the defender of the political interests of a section of the state. But when the Army arrived he was smoked out and annihilated. The army successfully pacified the state and normalcy returned to Aba, appreciably.

Having used the stick, Governor Orji knew he had only scratched the problem of ending violent criminality on the surface. A lasting solution had to be found. While he launched the Abia Youth Empowerment Scheme, A-YES, on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 in Umuahia, he narrated how one of the young criminals who accepted his amnesty offer made bold to tell him he must urgently address the problem of youth unemployment and poverty or else most of the repentant kidnappers would go back to a crime many of them took up most reluctantly.

The state has come up with a comprehensive package of youth re-engagement in productive economic activities. It spans from capacity building in the various trades and vocations to modern commercial farming. Young farmers are being trained at the Abia Liberation Farm, Ohambele, in Ukwa. There are plans to post its graduates to all 17 local government areas. They will be provided with improved seedlings, modern farm tools, granted loans and given land to take off. Young farmers are being launched into modern agriculture to replace rapidly ageing farming workforce.

Abia, Oyo, Osun, Edo, Rivers and Bayelsa are among states known to have started these schemes.

A top official told me that the element of the A-YES most young men prefer is the transport sector. Government is distributing branded transport vessels such as cars, buses and tricycles.

“Most of our youth have been broken by poverty and unemployment. They have no patience to go and sit down to learn a trade. They want something they can start and begin earning money immediately. That is why the governor is investing heavily in the transport sector”.

When this programme was launched with some of our biggest music and movie celebrities providing fun and gaiety, about 200 vehicles were distributed for the Umuahia area alone. All the local government areas will be visited with their respective goodies, in a scheme that the World Bank, Bank of Industry and other development partners have formed a rescue coalition.

I hope the Abia State Government will keep their word that the youth empowerment scheme has come to stay as a permanent component of governance in the state. There must be a strategic plan for the immediate, mid-term and long term engagement of the youth.

Their faith in the system they will govern in the future must be restored. It is the only way to ensure a stable, civilised and progressive society.

Off to Toronto Canada

Right now, I am here in Toronto, Ontario Canada, venue of the Canada-Nigeria Investment Summit, which has Diamond Bank PLC as the main sponsor. You will be hearing regularly from me about possibly the biggest investment road show the President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has ever staged outside Nigeria since he came to power.

Join me, and cheers!