Dear Adult, You Failed The Youth! It’s Long Overdue To Admit Your Adamance And Nonchalance…

If you’re in your late forties and fifties upwards, it’s long overdue to admit that you have failed young people in this country. In your heyday, employment in the public sector wasn’t as limited as we have now. The numbers were not as we have now. Education (or schooling) was a panacea for success. Going to school somehow changed lives because the promise of jobs existed (albeit not absolutely).

The population increased (obviously and expectedly). The education system which you created, perpetuated, or supervised didn’t address the realities of our development or ‘undevelopment’. The system focused on what was passed on from our masters: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Grammar education appeared to be the sine qua non for success. At the secondary and tertiary levels, you packaged the humanities and social sciences to be overly attractive to the neglect of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Vocational and technical education or training, which is essential for development, was ignored and negatively labelled. These were left to the so-called academically poor to pursue. Ironically, the creatives were neglected, leading us to rely heavily on the importation of everything from used underwear to useless knowledge and wisdom. The results? You turned a blind eye to the realities that the public sector could employ less than 10% of the labour force. Somehow, you forgot that the government should only be an enabler of employment creation, not the sole creator. You neglected the potentials of the tailor, seamstress, hairdresser, farmer, mechanic, cook, food vendor, mason, carpenter, etc.

Times changed under your watch, and you did little or nothing. The evidence always pointed to increasing unemployment and underemployment due to the structure of our education (or schooling) system, the remnants of colonialism and imperialism, our sociocultural environment, our checkered economic and political history, our failure to catch up with the rest of the world, and our collective conscience that seems to be anti-development at worst or ‘ambi-development’ at best. I define ‘anti-development’ as the deliberate decision through action or inaction to change and improve, and ‘ambi-development’ as being carefree about development through inaction.

The onus has always been on leadership. True. I believe that leadership is cause, and all other variables are effect. The paradox, however, is which level of leadership? You’ve been leading your family, church, education, departments, and so on. What change and development have you caused there? Admittedly, political leadership has the power to control all other sectors. But that does not mean all other sectors have no significant roles to play. If you can’t change your home, what guarantees exist when an entire nation is handed to you? I don’t intend to hold brief for political leaders. The point to note is that our leaders are a product of and from all of us.

Evidence again shows that industrialisation is the only way to create employment. Various governments have crafted policies and programmes to boost industrialisation, but it seems we have mostly been nonchalant. The programmes have largely been cosmetic and ad hoc and seem to miss their marks. Even the framers and implementers of these policies and programmes have not shown examples with their own kith and kin, most of whom are either in the public sector or outside the country, preparing to take over leadership. Check.

I continue asking. What roles have you played in industrialisation? How have you communicated industrialisation to the young ones around you? How have you given hope to the young ones about the promise of their future? How have you encouraged the youth to understand that times have changed, and hence it’s not their fault if they’re finding it difficult to make it in life? How many times haven’t you blamed the youth for their woes when the reality is that they don’t have the opportunities you had? Who is going to create jobs for the many going to school? How are you causing a paradigm shift among the young ones regarding the future you’ll be absent from? I ask!

This is a tribute to the teeming unemployed youth. Keep hopes alive. Do better, and leave the world better than you met it.

My condolences to the families of the six we lost yesterday. Rest well, comrades. You did no wrong in seeking to serve your country. Your options were limited. You were dropped in the middle of a battlefield uninformed. Your older fellow Ghanaians, who were supposed to know better, failed you. And the worst is that they won’t even accept responsibility. Rest well. 😢 😭

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