Social Exclusion of the Nigerian Youth in Governance Implications for National Development

Bose O. Ibukunoluwa

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Abstract

For development to be sustainable, it requires good governance, social inclusion of the youths and accountable public institutions. Unfortunately, Nigeria has in the last 61 years been exposed to series of maladministration that have become multifaceted and have triggered poverty, insurgency, militancy, terrorism, armed banditry and a large army of ill-equipped and disgruntled youths who are not empowered to be nation builders. The consequence of this ugly situation is that it has facilitated the reign of national turmoil and anarchy. In the light of this, the paper conceptualized governance stating the theory adopted. Qualitative technique was employed and the findings from this paper revealed that one of the reasons for the social exclusion of the Nigerian youth from governance is that some of them lack capacity in the form of education, discipline, reading culture and expertise; their lack of knowledge being attributed to weak capacity building programmes and poor planning on the part of the leadership. Hence, these weak capacity building programmes have rendered the youths less intellectually or mentally empowered to contribute to governance. The paper therefore recommended that the government should adopt a people-oriented approach in policy making in order to ensure an allinclusive governance. This will stem the growing tide of youth restiveness, armed banditry, organized criminality, hostage taking and herdsmen invasion.

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