Are the blame kicks from leaders to the idling youth justifiable?

Recently different leaders have made generic and hypercritical comments about the youth in the country.

These comments have raised so many questions, indicating not only a lack of flow of thought across the two groups, leaders and the youth but also a perspective divergence.

While from the point of view of those leaders, the youth are responsible for the majority of the things that go wrong in the country, the youth's perspective bounces the troubles back to the leaders as they are in control of the systems that can bring effectiveness if properly managed and supervised.

There is an indicator of a lack of trust on the part of the leaders, in that, many regard this wide category of the youth, containing millions of young people, as a capsule of the incompetent and incapable.

This might be the reason why the opinions of the youth do not soar any higher.

The first wrong footing is the failure to acknowledge that there are weaknesses in the holistic system, which makes it difficult to maximise the potential we have in the population chunk called the youth. This can be fixed by rethinking and re-strategizing the systems of education and mapping afresh the overall prospective demand plan for workers in the country.

The backdrop is essentially economic. Nothing will be fixed if there are no new strategies to end the economic struggle of being young and jobless at no personal fault.

Think of a system that has thousands of trained and qualified teachers who for over six years are unemployed.

Yet, faculties of education still recruit more students. Why train more teachers when those trained previously are not relevant in the mainstream socio-economic functionality of the nation and society? This equally happens in many other fields of study.

It is worrying that such does not make an impression of a problem to the leaders.

The questions of decadence

While moral decadence cannot be justified, the grounds for it can be questioned to get the real culprit of the matter.

While education campaigns are stronger in society, there should be an appropriation of those who adhered to the advocacy and embraced education.

What do we expect if graduates are left jobless, with government loan debts, family expectations, etc. after years of struggles in universities and colleges?

Many drift into the immoral slides because they are frustrated, such things become solutions for their many economic strains. Many young people would have not been in the streets doing drugs, prostitution of different and new kinds, crimes, etc. if they were properly channelled to be productive.

Our education system is not yet that practical in preparing students with the priority of them employing themselves. Such is sheer deception. Regardless, if self-employment is the priority then the government should not allocate people what to study so that they can comfortably go for what they want and are inclined to.

Many dreams are shattered because one is made to study what he or she does not even like.

Even worse, many lose hope after spending years in the university learning to love and study what is imposed on them and they are not able to get jobs.

It is the work of the government to create opportunities for the people to work in the country. Idleness and hopelessness make people turn to other ways of living which are not admirable and are not the best.

Going forward, leaders need to realize that, first, they are dealing with the real lives of people, not mere statistics.

These are people who have loads of responsibilities on their shoulders, are sensible and have dreams to chase.

This realization should stir thoughts of how to make it work now before things get worse, there are more and more young people going for higher education now.

When education does not prove to be a mark of success and social transformation, chances are that many young people will go back to desiring to learn a trade and engage in handiwork rather than pursuing higher education and ending up in the pool of hopelessness.

Milton Friedman, an American economist, speculated about a possibility when he said: “The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.” This is not the situation now, but this might be a prophecy fulfilled if things are not worked upon appropriately.

On the other hand, the government needs to openly audit its functionality and repair the faulty nuts by removing those who underperform or who compromise the holistic integrity of the duty of governance which is given to leaders on trust.

That way the government will be able to take in young people who desire the good for the country.

The troubles we have today are a result of embezzlement and compromises by generations before the youth of today.

Show me a country that compromises the quality and integrity of those in or for public offices, and I will show you a country that will progress very slowly, and if care is not taken, fail woefully. It is time for action.