Former Senate Leader, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, has warned that Nigeria’s massive youth population could become a “curse” rather than a blessing if urgent action is not taken to provide education, skills, and opportunities for them.
Speaking on The Exchange, a programme hosted by a journalist, Femi Soneye, Sen. Ndoma-Egba said Nigeria’s current path risks wasting its most valuable demographic asset.
He lamented that decades of poor governance and weak institutions have eroded the optimism that once defined the nation’s early years after independence.
“If they are not educated, if they are not skilled, if they are not empowered, they become a curse,” he said.
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“Youth brings innovation, energy, and daring courage — but only if there’s a deliberate policy to invest in them.”
The former lawmaker, who once served as leader of the Senate, recalled that Nigeria was once among the world’s fastest-growing economies, with visible signs of industrialisation across the country.
He cited examples such as the booming textile factories in Kano and Kaduna, and the Bauchi meat factory that once served the entire West African subregion.
“Those were the days when our economy was productive,” he said regretfully.
“Today, those signs of prosperity have vanished and have been replaced by insecurity and economic distress.”
Sen. Ndoma-Egba traced the roots of Nigeria’s decline to the country’s failure to build strong institutions, describing it as “a cultural problem.”
“We are too deferential to authority and too timid about holding it to account,” he said.
“That timidity allows inefficiency to thrive and corruption to fester.”
He also decried the ballooning cost of governance, a problem he said he first noticed as a young commissioner in the 1980s.
According to him, the attempt to reduce costs by merging ministries under fewer commissioners only created unmanageable workloads and deepened inefficiency.
Drawing from his experience at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), where he once served as chairman of the board, Sen. Ndoma-Egba described the agency as a case study in institutional failure.
He revealed that payment processing at the NDDC had 62 different approval “stops,” creating what he called “a system guaranteed to breed bureaucracy, inefficiency, and corruption.”
He blamed political interference and the abandonment of the agency’s original masterplan for much of its dysfunction, urging government to allow NDDC boards to serve their full statutory terms to ensure continuity and accountability.
On the legislative arm, Sen. Ndoma-Egba reflected on the hostility faced by the National Assembly in the early years of Nigeria’s democracy.
He said the public saw the institution as “an irritation” after long periods of military rule, and that misinformation worsened the perception — citing the controversy surrounding lawmakers’ furniture allowances as an example.
Returning to the plight of the youth, the former Senate leader reiterated that education is the foundation of national development but must be complemented with opportunities.
“Education opens your mind to opportunities,” he said. “But an educated person without opportunities is also a danger — an educated armed robber is more dangerous.”
He called for renewed focus on productivity and security as twin pillars of national progress, warning that Nigeria’s stability and prosperity depend on reversing the current trend of institutional decay and youth neglect.
“A secure and productive Nigeria is what we must strive for,” Ndoma-Egba concluded. “The future of our next generation depends on it.”
