By Michael Oche
The Founder and CEO, Black Ancestral Native Communities (BANC), Dr. Chibuzor Onyeama has called for the adoption of strategies to address the trend of irregular migration.
One of such approaches according to Onyeama is the creation of industrial systems to drive employment opportunities for young Nigerians.
Speaking at the 2025 Nelson Mandela Leadership Lecture and Impact Makers Award organised by the Professional Public Speaking & Leadership Academy (PPSLA AFRICA) in Abuja, he said there was need to keep young Nigerians whom he described as highly talented, engaged in activities within their communities that would enable them cater for themselves, rather than look towards migrating to work in other countries.
According to him, when communities are industrialised, young people have an opportunity to work where they need to and the thoughts of wanting to escape Nigeria and leave very haphazard problems won’t arise.
He said: “I have profiled a solution that I call the cirxuitious Industrialization Scheme, which is a programme that can help to build small community industries within where people live. It is circuitious because it’s indirect and within our communities. It is small-scale, yet manufactory-based so that young people can find employment within where they live.
“If you have solved the problem of employment, you have kept young people at home. But where you don’t have the opportunity to engage each one of them who have qualifications, including those who don’t even have qualifications, where you have not provided proper solutions to skilling them up and giving them the right skills that solve problems, it means that you’re giving them tickets or even the hunger to wish to fly away, because that’s what the Japa is about.”
Onyeama who highlighted peer pressure as a strong driver of irregular migration and crimes especially cybercrime, said the government of Nigeria could do better by creating opportunities that would enable young Nigerians contribute their quota to the nation’s socioeconomic system.
“When you approach a certain age, everybody begins to measure what have you achieved and comparing yourself to your friends and that’s how you find a pocket of them going into crimes, find ways and measures by which they will survive and that’s how you have today Yahoo Yahoo boys.
“Even though they are insignificant, they are a menace, they are also causing a lot of embarrassment to other young people, young Nigerians. When you travel out of this country and see the way Nigerian passport is treated, you would almost ask whether you’ve committed anything by being a Nigerian.
“And so we are saying that it is possible to retain young people by intentionally building infrastructure and solution-based industrial systems that can keep the young people engaged so that they can unleash their energy and their talent and be poised to do work for themselves.”
Onyeama who paid a glowing tribute to Nelson Mandela, urged leaders in Nigeria to fight and strive towards making the country better, and also provide leadership that would commit to building young people who were skilled and talented.
