Mr Obinna Chukwuezie, a Youth Employment Practitioner and founder of Journalists Initiative for Youth Empowerment in this interview, argues that the Ministry of Interior and the Nigerian Immigration Service, NIS, should be held responsible for the manner in which the recent recruitment exercise into the NIS was conducted.

My position on the saga: First of all, it was wrong for a government agency to charge a job-application fee. It is discriminatory and deprives those who cannot afford it the right to apply. Secondly, it was wrong to use stadium for a recruitment test. Thirdly, it was wrong to attend to the entire applicants at the same time, when you do not have such capacity.

Those to be held responsible: Of course, the Minister of Interior and the Comptroller General of Nigeria Immigration Service who made shoddy recruitment should be held responsible. They should be suspended according to civil service rules pending the outcome of the investigation. Both organisations should apologise to Nigerians; they should take up the bills of funerals, treatment and compensation. They should give automatic job to one member of the bereaved family. The Federal Government should declare March 15 as National Youth Unemployment Day.

Implications of huge turnout of youth unemployment

Being a fresh graduate in Nigeria is becoming a nightmare – they do not have skill to create job, they do not have godfathers to secure a job, they do not have money to pay job-racketeers, they are prey to job-scammers, they are prey to witch doctors who extort from them to give them interview-success charms; their parents and younger ones expect them to give back.

In 2013 as reported by the Nigerian Tribune on September 17, the World Bank put the youth unemployment rate at 38 per cent. Journalists Initiative for Youth Empowerment in 2013 discovered that graduate unemployed youth make up over 70 per cent of the entire unemployed youth population in Nigeria. In a nation where over 20 million are idle and angry, then insurgency, kidnapping, ballot-stuffing and other violent crimes will continue to rise despite the huge budget for the military campaign.