Youth questions in Nigeria- Part two: When shortcut becomes culture

– By The Conscience Chronicler

Something deeper than unemployment is happening in Nigeria. It is a contest over what success means. For generations, Nigerian society told its children a relatively familiar story: Go to school. Study hard. Obtain a degree. Learn a profession. Work. Save. Build.

Become somebody. It was never a perfect system. Poverty, corruption, nepotism and inequality have always complicated that narrative. But the basic social bargain was understandable: Education and productive work were supposed to lead, however imperfectly, toward a better life.

Today, that bargain is under enormous pressure. And social media has amplified the pressure. A young Nigerian can wake up and, within minutes, encounter hundreds of images of people apparently living extraordinary lives. Cars. Houses. Travels. Extraordinary parties. Luxury watches. Designer clothing. Foreign currency. Business empires.

Influencers. Cryptocurrency gains. Online trading successes. And, sometimes, the mysterious young man who seems to have become wealthy without anyone being able to explain precisely what he does. The smartphone has therefore become something more than a communication device.

For millions of young people, it is simultaneously a classroom, marketplace, entertainment centre, employment office, casino-like temptation, news source, social-status scoreboard, and window into other people’s lifestyles. That creates opportunity, but it also creates distortion.

Legitimate wealth is often invisible in its formative stages. The young engineer spends years acquiring competence. The farmer spends months preparing land, planting, managing weather risk and waiting for harvest.

The entrepreneur spends years building a customer base. The pharmacist or the doctor spends years in training. The researcher may spend a decade developing expertise before making a breakthrough.

The manufacturer invests capital long before the factory becomes profitable. The craftsman spends thousands of hours mastering a skill. Much of real productivity is therefore boring before it becomes impressive. Fraud, by contrast, can be theatrically impressive.

The luxury is visible, but the process is hidden. And this is the problem of visible wealth: it creates a dangerous psychological asymmetry. Young people see the reward without seeing the work. And where illegal wealth is successfully disguised as legitimate wealth, society sends an even more damaging message: the outcome matters more than the means. That is a moral crisis.

The “Yahoo” economy and the normalization of fraud

Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission continues to prosecute internet-fraud cases, including arrests and convictions involving suspected internet fraudsters. Its own public statistics indicate tens of thousands of investigations and thousands of convictions across its broader mandate. But statistics alone do not capture the cultural question.

The more troubling possibility is that fraud can stop being socially embarrassing when an individual suspected of criminal activity becomes a celebrity, when unexplained wealth becomes something to envy rather than question. When parents ask how much a young person has made before asking how he made it. When peers celebrate displays of wealth without questioning their source and even seek a cut of it.

When young people begin to believe that being caught is the only thing wrong with crime, then the problem has moved beyond law enforcement. It has entered the moral economy. This appears to be the case in our Naija. And here society must look in the mirror. We cannot condemn the young fraudster while applauding the older person whose unexplained wealth we celebrate just as enthusiastically.

We cannot tell young people that corruption is evil while celebrating corruptly acquired wealth when it benefits us. We cannot demand integrity from the poor while making exceptions for the powerful. A society teaches values not only through sermons, but through whom it rewards, whom it celebrates and whom it excuses.

The tragedy of “Easy virtues”

Another phrase worth examining is the attraction of the easy life. Wanting a comfortable life is not wrong. The problem is the gradual erosion of respect for productive effort. A society needs people willing to do difficult things. To cultivate food. Repair machines. Build roads. Teach children. Care for patients. Conduct research. Manufacture goods. Maintain infrastructure. Write software—process agricultural products. Manage businesses. Collect waste. Construct buildings.

Operate laboratories. Run honest financial systems. Produce energy. People who solve problems build the future. Yet some of the loudest symbols of success increasingly have little visible connection to solving problems. This creates a dangerous inversion: The person creating value struggles for recognition while the person displaying consumption and immorality commands admiration. Imagine a one million naira cash award to the winner of a rigorous STEM competition against a N50m cash reward to the winner of Big Brother Naija! If that inversion becomes deeply embedded in national culture, productivity suffers.

Consider agriculture. FAO reports that between 2021 and 2024, agriculture contributed about 28 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP and employed approximately 40 per cent of the labour force. Yet the sector remains constrained by land-tenure problems, inadequate irrigation, climate pressures, weak technology adoption, financing difficulties, post-harvest losses, infrastructure deficiencies and market-access problems.

This is precisely why agriculture should not be presented to young Nigerians as a return to subsistence farming. That would be the wrong message. The future of Nigerian agriculture is not simply the young man carrying a hoe into a field. It is indeed: precision agriculture; irrigation technology; agricultural drones; soil science; greenhouses; cold chains; food processing; logistics; agri-finance; farm management software; agricultural insurance; mechanisation; seed technology; livestock genetics; aquaculture; packaging; export marketing; commodity exchanges; food manufacturing. In other words, agriculture can become a technology and industrial sector. Young Nigerians should not have to choose between technology and agriculture. Technology should transform agriculture.

Encouraging evidence suggests the relationship between Nigerian youth and agriculture is already changing. Research published by IFPRI in 2025 found that Nigeria’s share of agricultural employment declined substantially between 2003 and 2022, while employment in non-farm components of the agrifood system expanded. Youth participation in non-farm agrifood activities grew particularly strongly, including in trade and food manufacturing.

That tells us something important. The answer is not necessarily to force every young Nigerian onto a farm. The answer is to build a modern food economy that can absorb young Nigerians across the entire value chain. The farmer. The processor. The transporter. The engineer. The data analyst. The agronomist.

The financier. The marketer. The refrigeration specialist. The exporter. The software developer. The equipment manufacturer. The researcher. The possibilities are enormous.

What is the status of productivity in Nigeria?

This is where the youth debate becomes a nation-building debate. Every functioning society requires a culture that respects competence. The carpenter should have dignity. The mechanic should have dignity. The nurse should have dignity. The farmer should have dignity. The teacher should have dignity. The programmer should have dignity. The researcher should have dignity. The factory worker should have dignity. The entrepreneur should have dignity. And yes, the successful professional should have dignity. But dignity should arise from honest contribution, not merely from consumption or a celebration of immorality.

If a young person grows up believing that the only respectable outcome is conspicuous wealth, society has already lost something. Not every meaningful contribution produces a Lamborghini or a Bentley; some produce a vaccine or a water solution. Some produce a harvest or an innovative invention. Some produce a well-trained child and an exemplar.

Some produce a machine or a new idea. Some prevent a bridge from collapsing. Some keep a hospital functioning. Some build a company that employs 200 people. Some quietly keep a community alive. These are the things that make countries work.

The solution cannot be just a lecture to young people, nor can Nigeria tell young people: “Stop looking for shortcuts.” That is necessary, but insufficient. We must simultaneously make the long road more credible. If honest work consistently produces insecurity while dishonest wealth produces status, moral lectures will eventually lose their persuasive power.

The country needs to make legitimate pathways to prosperity more visible and more attainable. That means: better schools; stronger technical education; credible apprenticeships; access to finance; reliable electricity; digital infrastructure; industrial policy; agricultural transformation; functional transport; property rights; predictable regulation; faster justice; transparent public institutions; and businesses that can create millions of productive jobs. Families also play a role. Parents must ask not only, “How much money did you make?” but also, “What did you build?” “Whom did you help?” “What skill did you acquire?” “What value did you create?” Society must ask a harder question: Are we raising children to become wealthy or useful?

The ideal answer is both, because a prosperous society needs prosperous people. But prosperity without character can become predatory. And character without opportunity can become frustrated idealism. Nigeria needs the two together. Competence and character. Ambition and ethics. Enterprise and responsibility. That combination is what turns a youthful population into a national asset. And Nigeria still has time. But not unlimited time.

The Conscience Chronicler.