Last week I attended a symposium on youth and electoral violence, organized as part of the 10th anniversary of democracy in Nigeria by the Bayero University-based Malam Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic Research and Training. Leaving the contentious matter of whether indeed Nigeria can be classified as a democracy or not, I was sufficiently interested in the theme of the workshop. As I listened to the proceedings of the symposium that day, two trends emerged. One, which was well applauded by the youthful audience, was that which exonerated the youths and squarely put the blame on parents who have failed to bring up their children properly. The other put the blame on politicians, who in their devilish plan mobilize the youth to commit thuggery and electoral violence.

Both of them are reductionist and leave us nowhere in tackling the problem. This is because if the family is to blame, how do we hold that family accountable nationally in a political sense? Similarly, if we should say it is the politicians, why do the politicians find it somehow easy to mobilize the youth?

While there are elements of both in the complex reality of the construction of the marginal world of violent youth, in themselves, these two causal theories do not explain the availability of such violence that could be rented for political purposes and therefore cannot provide the solution to youth involvement in electoral violence. For me a critical question to ask is, why is it that the youth are susceptible to being mobilized?

I have often heard the refrain told to young people that when politicians mobilize them, they should refuse and tell the politicians to use their own children. The irony is that this refrain is never told directly to the actual youth engaged in electoral violence, for they hardly have the chance to be the audience of air-conditioned seminars and symposia like this one. Moreover, the academic jargon used on these occasions is not accessible to them.

Of course we know the answer that the politicians will not bring their children because their children are either in school or otherwise gainfully engaged. The more interesting question to ask is why there are always available youth to be mobilized.

A starting point in understanding this dyfunction is to look at some statistics. According to the National Population Commission (NPC), youth defined by the age bracket 18 to 30, constitute about 60% of the population of the country. If you add up children below the age of 18, which is the lower limit for the youth category, they will constitute about 85% of the population, if not more. This means that more than 85% of Nigerians are below the age of 30, implying that we have a predominately youthful population.

Out of these 85% of Nigerians, the Minister for Youth Affairs recently told the nation that more than 70% were either unemployed or under-employed. Thus, over 60% of Nigerians are economically disempowered. Once you are economically disempowered, you are also politically disempowered and therefore marginalized. This is an interesting a point to ponder on the typology of the democracy being practised in Nigeria. Can we call a political system that is built on the basis of the exclusion of the majority of the citizens democratic?

But more close to the point is the fact that of these 60% of Nigerians, only a few of them have access to education. The total combined admission capacity of Nigerian universities is just less than 20% of all those who are qualified and seeking admission. Thus, the majority of qualified candidates seeking admission are unable to get it. These young people are hardly able to get employment either, thus they are literally on the streets. But this category of youth is even luckier because they were able not only to complete a secondary school education but have also made their papers.

On the other hand, there are millions of other youth who are unable to make it to secondary school. And the reasons for this are obvious: ranging from inadequate spaces to the fact that education has increasingly become priced out of the reach of many parents in the country. Besides, many of the secondary schools, both public and private, are merely schools in name only, but not in substance. Many of those innocent children forced into these schools come out of them utterly useless, further undermining the confidence of other parents in making the investment for the education of their children.

Without education and without any other skill, these youths are driven to make a living on the thin divide between creativity and criminality. Often the state's response to them is to criminalize them, thereby pushing them to the underground world of criminal gangs. This is where the politicians go to bring them out for their political projects. That these youths are susceptible to the mobilization of the politicians is not the failure of parenting or the result of deviance gone out of control. It is the failure of the state to meet its obligation to the citizens.

We will not be able to curb electoral violence and generalized insecurity arising from urban youth violence without bringing back the welfare state in Nigeria, which has banished to an extended sabbatical since the introduction of the IMF-inspired Structural Adjustment Programme by the IBB administration, and the situation has further been fortified against the return of the welfare state by the uncritical worship of the market mantra by our lords in Aso Rock Villa all these years.

The state must justify itself by providing for the education of its future, that is the youth, providing healthcare services and ensuring the necessary conditions for the youth to have decent jobs. Without this, there can be no democracy, although I must admit that many of the political functionaries of the state only pay lip service to democracy, and so will only be too glad to kiss goodbye to it.

Moral preachment will not do the magic. Even electoral reform without political accountability will not take us anywhere. For a start, therefore, we must tackle Yar'Adua and the National Assembly in the process of the constitutional/electoral reform, while getting Dr. Sam Egwu to take the Ministry of Education seriously and rescue the future of our country that has been doomed by a collapsed education system. Last week I attended a symposium on youth and electoral violence, organized as part of the 10th anniversary of democracy in Nigeria by the Bayero University-based Malam Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic Research and Training. Leaving the contentious matter of whether indeed Nigeria can be classified as a democracy or not, I was sufficiently interested in the theme of the workshop. As I listened to the proceedings of the symposium that day, two trends emerged. One, which was well applauded by the youthful audience, was that which exonerated the youths and squarely put the blame on parents who have failed to bring up their children properly. The other put the blame on politicians, who in their devilish plan mobilize the youth to commit thuggery and electoral violence.

Both of them are reductionist and leave us nowhere in tackling the problem. This is because if the family is to blame, how do we hold that family accountable nationally in a political sense? Similarly, if we should say it is the politicians, why do the politicians find it somehow easy to mobilize the youth?

While there are elements of both in the complex reality of the construction of the marginal world of violent youth, in themselves, these two causal theories do not explain the availability of such violence that could be rented for political purposes and therefore cannot provide the solution to youth involvement in electoral violence. For me a critical question to ask is, why is it that the youth are susceptible to being mobilized?

I have often heard the refrain told to young people that when politicians mobilize them, they should refuse and tell the politicians to use their own children. The irony is that this refrain is never told directly to the actual youth engaged in electoral violence, for they hardly have the chance to be the audience of air-conditioned seminars and symposia like this one. Moreover, the academic jargon used on these occasions is not accessible to them.

Of course we know the answer that the politicians will not bring their children because their children are either in school or otherwise gainfully engaged. The more interesting question to ask is why there are always available youth to be mobilized.

A starting point in understanding this dyfunction is to look at some statistics. According to the National Population Commission (NPC), youth defined by the age bracket 18 to 30, constitute about 60% of the population of the country. If you add up children below the age of 18, which is the lower limit for the youth category, they will constitute about 85% of the population, if not more. This means that more than 85% of Nigerians are below the age of 30, implying that we have a predominately youthful population.

Out of these 85% of Nigerians, the Minister for Youth Affairs recently told the nation that more than 70% were either unemployed or under-employed. Thus, over 60% of Nigerians are economically disempowered. Once you are economically disempowered, you are also politically disempowered and therefore marginalized. This is an interesting a point to ponder on the typology of the democracy being practised in Nigeria. Can we call a political system that is built on the basis of the exclusion of the majority of the citizens democratic?

But more close to the point is the fact that of these 60% of Nigerians, only a few of them have access to education. The total combined admission capacity of Nigerian universities is just less than 20% of all those who are qualified and seeking admission. Thus, the majority of qualified candidates seeking admission are unable to get it. These young people are hardly able to get employment either, thus they are literally on the streets. But this category of youth is even luckier because they were able not only to complete a secondary school education but have also made their papers.

On the other hand, there are millions of other youth who are unable to make it to secondary school. And the reasons for this are obvious: ranging from inadequate spaces to the fact that education has increasingly become priced out of the reach of many parents in the country. Besides, many of the secondary schools, both public and private, are merely schools in name only, but not in substance. Many of those innocent children forced into these schools come out of them utterly useless, further undermining the confidence of other parents in making the investment for the education of their children.

Without education and without any other skill, these youths are driven to make a living on the thin divide between creativity and criminality. Often the state's response to them is to criminalize them, thereby pushing them to the underground world of criminal gangs. This is where the politicians go to bring them out for their political projects. That these youths are susceptible to the mobilization of the politicians is not the failure of parenting or the result of deviance gone out of control. It is the failure of the state to meet its obligation to the citizens.

We will not be able to curb electoral violence and generalized insecurity arising from urban youth violence without bringing back the welfare state in Nigeria, which has banished to an extended sabbatical since the introduction of the IMF-inspired Structural Adjustment Programme by the IBB administration, and the situation has further been fortified against the return of the welfare state by the uncritical worship of the market mantra by our lords in Aso Rock Villa all these years.

The state must justify itself by providing for the education of its future, that is the youth, providing healthcare services and ensuring the necessary conditions for the youth to have decent jobs. Without this, there can be no democracy, although I must admit that many of the political functionaries of the state only pay lip service to democracy, and so will only be too glad to kiss goodbye to it.

Moral preachment will not do the magic. Even electoral reform without political accountability will not take us anywhere. For a start, therefore, we must tackle Yar'Adua and the National Assembly in the process of the constitutional/electoral reform, while getting Dr. Sam Egwu to take the Ministry of Education seriously and rescue the future of our country that has been doomed by a collapsed education system.