By Daniel Nduka Okonkwo

Walk through any Nigerian city before sunrise and you will meet the youth of this country already awake, already moving, already working, already fighting to make a living before much of the nation has opened its eyes.

There is the delivery rider weaving through traffic, sometimes before breakfast. There is a graduate selling goods by the roadside with a university certificate at home. A young woman is running a provisions shop while spending a significant part of her income keeping a generator running. There is a software developer working through the night for clients abroad because the domestic market cannot provide sufficient income.

There is the artisan, the farmer, the POS operator, the online trader, the mechanic, the barber, the tailor, the content creator, and the young entrepreneur employing a handful of workers while struggling to keep the business alive. These are not isolated stories. They represent a much larger reality confronting Nigeria’s young population.

Nigeria is one of the world’s youngest countries, with more than 60 percent of its population under 30. The country’s youthful population is a major potential engine of social and economic transformation, while also identifying persistent structural barriers preventing many young Nigerians from realising that potential. The question is therefore no longer whether Nigerian youths are willing to work.

The harder question is why a country with such a large, energetic, and increasingly entrepreneurial young population has struggled to convert that enormous human effort into productive, secure, and dignified economic opportunity. This is the question Nigeria must confront. It is also a question government policy must answer.

Consider the university graduate who leaves home early, spends much of the day delivering packages across a crowded city, and returns exhausted, only to spend part of the night learning another skill or pursuing freelance work. The graduate may technically be employed. But employment alone does not tell the whole story.

If the work is informal, income is unstable, access to affordable credit is limited, social protection is weak, and there is no realistic pathway for the worker to build a sustainable enterprise, the work employed can conceal a much larger economic problem.

Nigeria’s official labour statistics demonstrate why the issue requires careful examination. The National Bureau of Statistics reported an unemployment rate of 4.3 percent in the second quarter of 2024, with unemployment among people aged 15 to 24 at 6.5 percent. At the same time, informal employment stood at 93 percent, time-related underemployment at 9.2 percent, and the proportion of young people not in education, employment, or training, the NEET rate, at 12.5 percent.

These figures should not be interpreted to mean that only a small proportion of young Nigerians face economic hardship. Neither should the official unemployment figure simply be dismissed as meaningless. Nigeria’s labour statistics follow internationally recognised concepts for measuring employment and unemployment.

The important point is that unemployment is only one measure of labour-market wellbeing. A person can be counted as employed while working in an informal occupation, earning an unstable income, or operating a small enterprise with little prospect of expansion. That distinction is critical. Nigeria’s problem is therefore larger than unemployment alone. It is also a problem of job quality, informality, underemployment, productivity, income security, and opportunity. Africans & Diaspora

The NBS figures provide a striking picture. In Q2 2024, unemployment was 4.3 percent. But informal employment was 93 percent. The combined unemployment and time-related underemployment measure, LU2, was 13 percent. What does that mean? It means Nigeria’s labour-market challenge cannot be understood simply by asking how many people have no work. kind of work people are doing, how much they earn, how secure that work is, and whether it gives them a realistic opportunity to improve their economic position.

A young Nigerian who spends ten or twelve hours selling goods, riding a motorcycle, operating a POS terminal, farming, freelancing, or running a small business is not necessarily unemployed. But neither should policymakers assume that the person has achieved economic security simply because the person is counted as employed. This is the statistical paradox at the heart of Nigeria’s youth economy. People are working. Yet too many remain economically vulnerable.

In 2023, figures circulated by the World of Statistics placed Nigeria second among the countries compared for average annual hours worked, at about 2,124 hours per worker, behind Mexico’s 2,128 hours. The figures were subsequently reported by Nigerian media.

That comparison is several years old and should not be presented as a current 2026 ranking. But it remains useful in illustrating a deeper point. Long working hours do not automatically produce prosperity. The Nigerian worker often works hard because failure to work has immediate consequences. A trader cannot simply close the shop. A mechanic cannot afford to lose customers. A delivery rider cannot afford to stop riding.

A farmer cannot postpone the planting season because input prices are rising. A young woman selling clothes online cannot simply abandon her business because electricity, transport, and logistics costs have increased. A freelance designer may work late into the night because the next client is never guaranteed. This is the deeper story behind Nigeria’s famous hustle culture.

The extraordinary resilience of Nigerian youths is an economic asset. But it should also be a warning. A society should not have to depend indefinitely on the ability of its youngest citizens to survive increasingly difficult conditions.

Across Nigeria, young people are effectively creating economic opportunities where formal systems have failed to create enough of them. They establish online clothing businesses. They build websites and applications. They design graphics. They operate POS terminals. They provide logistics and delivery services. They repair phones and computers.

They run restaurants and food businesses. They work in agriculture. They manufacture products on a small scale. They sell through WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and other digital platforms. They combine formal employment with side businesses.

They learn vocational skills outside conventional educational institutions. They move from one occupation to another in search of opportunity. This entrepreneurial culture is not merely a social phenomenon. It is an economic resource.

The Mastercard Foundation’s 2026 Africa Youth Employment Outlook estimates that about 57 percent of Africa’s youth were working in 2025 and that 90 percent of employed young Africans were in informal work. The report also warns that high employment can coexist with working poverty, low productivity, and weak job security. These are continental figures, not Nigeria-specific estimates, but they provide useful context for understanding the wider labour-market environment in which Nigeria’s young population operates. The opportunity is enormous. But so is the policy challenge.

The problem is not necessarily that Nigerian youths lack ambition. It is the environment in which they operate that often prevents ambition from becoming scale. A young software developer may have the skills to serve international clients but struggle with electricity and internet costs. A fashion entrepreneur may have customers but lack affordable working capital. A young farmer may have land but lack irrigation, storage, transportation, and reliable access to markets.

A mechanic may have customers but lack modern equipment. A food entrepreneur may have demand but find that electricity, fuel, transportation, and raw material costs consume much of the business margin. A graduate may possess qualifications and professional skills but discover that the formal economy cannot absorb enough people with similar credentials.

This is the difference between working hard and working productively. Nigeria has millions of young people supplying labour. What it has not yet adequately supplied is the infrastructure, affordable finance, energy, education, security, and market systems required to multiply the value of that labour.

It would be inaccurate to suggest that the government has done nothing. There are substantial public programmes aimed at youth employment, entrepreneurship, skills development, and enterprise financing. In July 2026, the Federal Government launched Power Force, an initiative designed to train 5,000 young Nigerians in smart-meter deployment and create pathways into employment and entrepreneurship within the electricity sector.

The government said participants would receive technical training and certification before being connected to opportunities with distribution companies, meter providers, and other industry participants.

The Bank of Industry reported that in 2025 it disbursed ₦636 billion to more than 7,000 businesses across several sectors. It said ₦12 billion went to youth-owned enterprises, while its interventions supported more than 7,000 new MSMEs and 570 startups. BOI also reported that its 2025 interventions created or retained an estimated 1.6 million jobs.

These figures are claims and estimates reported by the institution and should be treated as such. They are important. They should also be independently tested, because the existence of a programme is not the same thing as proof that the underlying structural problem has been solved.

More importantly, distributing funds is an output, not necessarily an outcome. A loan being disbursed does not, by itself, establish that a business has become sustainable, that employment has been permanently created, or that the structural conditions confronting Nigerian enterprises have improved.

Businesses continue to contend with inflation, high energy and transportation costs, inadequate infrastructure, limited access to markets, and other operating pressures. The existence of a financing programme, therefore, cannot, on its own, be treated as proof that these deeper structural challenges have been solved.

There is also a need to examine how such intervention figures are measured. Institutions naturally tend to highlight indicators such as the volume of funds disbursed, number of beneficiaries, and estimated jobs created, while the longer-term picture may require additional scrutiny, including business survival rates, loan repayment and default rates, the number of enterprises that subsequently scale or fail, and whether the interventions produce sustained improvements in household incomes and local economic activity.

That is why the BOI figures deserve independent testing rather than either automatic dismissal or unquestioning acceptance. Independent audits, transparent beneficiary-level data where appropriate, and longitudinal socioeconomic studies could help determine how many of the businesses supported

remain operational, how many have expanded, how many jobs have actually been sustained, and whether the financing is translating into measurable improvements in livelihoods. The numbers may demonstrate the scale of intervention, but only credible outcome-based evidence can establish its longer-term economic impact.

Nigeria has seen loans. It has seen grants. It has seen training programmes. It has seen entrepreneurship schemes. It has seen digital skills initiatives. It has seen public announcements involving billions of naira. The investigative question must therefore move beyond how much money was announced. It must ask how many young Nigerians actually received it.

How many received the full amount? How many businesses survived? How many jobs remained in existence after one year? How many beneficiaries remained economically active after three years? How many businesses moved from survival-level operations into sustainable enterprises? How were beneficiaries selected? Were beneficiary lists published? Were programmes independently audited? What percentage of the country’s youth population was actually reached? These are not hostile questions. They are basic questions of public accountability.

A programme can genuinely help thousands of people and still be too small to transform the national youth labour market. Both things can be true. That is why the government should publish measurable outcomes rather than relying principally on announcements of inputs, training numbers, or disbursement figures.

There is also a deeper policy issue. Nigeria cannot solve a structural youth-employment problem simply by distributing money. A grant may help a young entrepreneur start a business. But what happens when electricity costs rise? What happens when transport costs increase? What happens when raw materials become more expensive? What happens when inflation reduces purchasing power? What happens when insecurity disrupts supply chains? What happens when the entrepreneur needs another round of affordable financing? What happens when the local market itself becomes too weak to sustain expansion? The entrepreneur can receive capital and still fail because the operating environment destroys the economics of the business. This is why youth policy must move beyond empowerment to productivity.

For millions of Nigerian entrepreneurs, electricity is not simply an infrastructure issue. It is an employment issue. A barber needs electricity. A tailor needs electricity. A restaurant needs electricity. A graphic designer needs electricity. A software developer needs electricity.

A small manufacturer needs electricity. A cold-room operator needs electricity. A phone-repair technician needs electricity. When public electricity is unreliable, entrepreneurs often have to purchase generators, fuel, and maintenance services simply to remain operational. That creates a hidden tax on enterprise. Money that could have been used to employ another worker, buy equipment, expand production, or acquire new skills is instead spent merely keeping the business alive.

Nigeria, therefore, loses productivity twice. First, through inadequate infrastructure. Second, through the additional cost entrepreneurs incur to compensate for it. This is why electricity policy should also be understood as an employment policy.

The same applies to inflation. When the cost of food, transportation, rent, fuel, and business inputs rises faster than income, young entrepreneurs experience a silent contraction. The business may remain open. Customers may still arrive. Sales may continue.

But real purchasing power and profit margins can deteriorate. The entrepreneur then works longer hours simply to maintain the same standard of living. That is how a young person’s economic life can become an endless cycle of work without accumulation. The objective of economic policy should not merely be to keep young Nigerians busy.

It should be to ensure that their work generates enough value to allow them to save, invest, acquire assets, employ others, and build stable futures.

There is another structural problem. Nigeria produces graduates, but the economy does not always generate enough high-quality opportunities to absorb them. At the same time, employers frequently report skills gaps. Young people then face a familiar contradiction. Employers want experience. Young people need employment to acquire experience. Unable to enter the formal labour market, many create side businesses.

The side business becomes the main occupation. The person is then economically active, but potentially remains financially insecure. This is why Nigeria’s youth-employment debate must extend beyond unemployment figures. It must include informality, underemployment, productivity, income, and job quality.

Afrobarometer’s survey of Nigerians aged 18 to 35 provides important evidence about how young people themselves view their economic circumstances. The cost of living was identified as the most important problem young Nigerians wanted the government to address, followed by unemployment, crime and security, poverty, management of the economy, and electricity.

On inflation control and job creation, only 2 percent and 6 percent, respectively, said the government was doing fairly well or very well. The survey also reported that 91 percent said the country was moving in the wrong direction. Sixty percent said they had considered emigrating, with jobs and economic hardship among the reasons cited.

The survey further found that nearly one quarter of young respondents were unemployed and looking for work.

These findings are not a verdict on one political party or administration. They are survey findings reflecting the views of the respondents at the time the research was conducted. They provide evidence of widespread economic concern among a generation confronting difficult conditions. That should concern every policymaker.

Nigeria’s youth migration, popularly described as japa, is frequently discussed as an individual decision. It is also an economic issue. When Nigeria educates and trains a young person, that person acquires skills, knowledge, and experience.

When that person subsequently leaves because domestic economic opportunities are inadequate, Nigeria does not lose everything, but it can lose part of the potential return on its investment in human capital. The receiving country gains the worker’s skills. Nigeria may lose labour, entrepreneurship, and future tax contributions.

Migration itself is not inherently negative. Nigerians abroad contribute significantly through remittances, investment, professional networks, and knowledge. The policy question is different. What conditions are causing so many young Nigerians to consider leaving in the first place? Afrobarometer’s finding that six in ten young Nigerians had considered emigration makes that question impossible to ignore.

There is something admirable about Nigerian youth resilience. But resilience should never become an excuse for structural failure. A government should not point to a young person selling products online and simply say, look, Nigerians are entrepreneurial.

The next question must be, why does that entrepreneur have to fight electricity costs, inflation, taxation, insecurity, expensive credit, poor infrastructure, and weak purchasing power simultaneously?

When a graduate becomes a delivery rider, society should respect the dignity of that work. But policymakers should also ask why a university graduate cannot more easily convert education and skills into productive, sustainable employment.

The answer is not to discourage hustling. It is to create an economy where hustling can become an enterprise.

The solution does not lie in one giant youth programme. It requires a different approach to youth economic policy. The government should measure outcomes rather than announcements. Major youth programmes should publish the number of beneficiaries, geographic distribution, amounts disbursed, business survival rates, jobs created, repayment rates where applicable, and independently verified results.

Financing should be easier to access and linked to genuine economic opportunities. Technical and vocational education should be connected directly to employers and industries.

The government should invest in reliable electricity, broadband, transport, and industrial infrastructure. Young entrepreneurs should be protected from overlapping taxes, unofficial charges, and regulatory uncertainty. Government procurement can create opportunities for credible youth-owned businesses. Agricultural policy should address the entire value chain, from production to storage, processing, transportation, and markets.

Skills programmes should measure whether participants actually obtain income-generating opportunities after training. And formalisation should become easier and less punitive for small businesses.

The objective should be simple: to move young Nigerians from survival-level economic activity to a productive, scalable enterprise.

The Mastercard Foundation’s 2026 Africa Youth Employment Outlook offers an important lesson for Nigeria. Africa’s challenge is not simply unemployment. It is also the prevalence of informal, low-productivity, and insecure work.

The report estimates that 57 percent of Africa’s youth were working in 2025, while 90 percent of employed young Africans were in informal jobs. It also estimates that 104 million young workers across the continent lived in households classified as extremely poor under the report’s international poverty measure.

The implication for Nigeria is profound. The country does not merely need to get young people working. They are already working. Nigeria needs to make its work more productive. It needs to help a trader become a formal business. A rider becomes a logistics entrepreneur. A tailor becomes a manufacturer. A farmer becomes an agro-processor.

A programmer becomes an exporter of digital services. A creative artist becomes a sustainable business. A graduate becomes a professional rather than a perpetual hustler. That is what it means to utilise Nigeria’s youth.

As Nigeria approaches another electoral cycle, young Nigerians have legitimate questions for anyone seeking public office. What precisely will you do to reduce the cost of electricity for small businesses, and how will progress be measured? How many sustained jobs will your policies create, as distinct from loans, training certificates, and temporary programmes? Will you publish beneficiary lists and independently verifiable outcomes for youth-empowerment programmes? What is your strategy for protecting the purchasing power of young workers and entrepreneurs?

How will you reduce multiple taxation and unlawful or unofficial charges imposed on small businesses? How will young entrepreneurs obtain affordable credit without collateral requirements that exclude most people at the beginning of their economic lives? What will you do to connect education and vocational training to actual labour-market demand? How will your policies make it easier for young businesses to survive beyond the first year? And perhaps the most fundamental question, how will you turn Nigeria’s enormous youth population from a demographic challenge into a productive economic advantage?

These are not partisan questions. There are questions about governance, economic policy, and the future of the country.

There is a fundamental difference between surviving and prospering. Nigerian youths have demonstrated that they can survive extraordinary economic pressure. They have demonstrated creativity. They have demonstrated adaptability. They have demonstrated technological awareness. They have demonstrated entrepreneurial courage. They have demonstrated an extraordinary willingness to work.

The evidence from Nigeria’s labour statistics, international youth-employment research, and public-opinion surveys points to a reality much more complicated than the simple label of unemployed youth. Nigeria has a generation that is already contributing. The real question is whether the country can build an economy capable of rewarding that contribution.

Nigeria’s young people do not need to be taught how to hustle. They need an economic environment in which hard work can produce accumulation rather than merely survival. They need electricity that allows businesses to operate.

They need affordable capital that allows businesses to grow. They need education that connects to real economic opportunities. They need security that protects their lives and investments. They need infrastructure that reduces operating costs. They need predictable taxation and regulation. They need transparent public programmes whose benefits can be independently verified.

And above all, they need the government to recognise that youth development is not simply a charity project. It is an economic policy.

The young Nigerian selling clothes from a small room, the graduate riding through traffic to deliver parcels, the woman running a POS business, the software developer working for an international client, the mechanic in a roadside workshop, the farmer struggling to reach the market, and the young entrepreneur trying to keep ten employees on payroll are not peripheral to Nigeria’s economy. They are part of the country’s emerging workforce and productive capacity.

The question confronting Nigeria is therefore not whether its youths are hardworking. The evidence presented here shows that millions of Nigerian youths are economically active and working across formal and informal sectors. The question is whether Nigeria will build an economic system capable of turning that extraordinary effort into greater productivity, higher incomes, sustainable businesses, and dignified work.

Because a nation cannot build its future indefinitely by asking its youngest generation to work harder against obstacles that public policy can reduce. Nigeria’s youths have already shown what they can do with very little. They have built businesses without reliable electricity. They have created careers without guaranteed employment.

They have acquired skills without adequate institutional support. They have survived inflation, insecurity, and weak infrastructure. They have kept moving when stopping was not an option.

Now the question is no longer what Nigerian youths can do for Nigeria.

The question is what Nigeria is prepared to do to ensure that its work finally produces the future it deserves.

Daniel Nduka Okonkwo is an investigative journalist, human rights advocate, and publisher, and the founder of Profiles International Human Rights Advocate, PIHRA. His work focuses on governance, accountability, and the protection of fundamental rights across Nigeria and Africa. His reporting has appeared in Vanguard, Daily Trust, Sahara Reporters, African Defence Forum, Opinion Nigeria, Daily Intel, African Angle, and others.