By Dr. Omolaraeni Olaosebikan

Nigeria does not suffer from a shortage of youth empowerment programmes. For years, we have trained, mentored, equipped and “empowered” young people. We have organised boot camps, distributed starter packs, presented certificates and encouraged a generation to become entrepreneurs.
Yet one uncomfortable question remains: empowered to do what, and within what kind of economy?

“Start a business” has gradually become one of our default responses to youth unemployment. The intention is understandable. Entrepreneurship creates businesses, jobs and innovation. Nigeria certainly needs more of it.
But entrepreneurship cannot become an escape route from the harder responsibility of building an economy in which young people can actually succeed.
A young Nigerian can learn tailoring, catering, coding, photography or digital marketing. She can attend an entrepreneurship programme and write an impressive business plan. But after the training comes reality: How does she finance the business? Where are her customers? What does electricity cost? How does she move goods? Can she afford equipment? And how long can a young business survive while waiting for the market to reward determination? These are not motivational questions. They are structural ones.

Training Is Not the Same as Empowerment
We need to be careful about how easily we use the word empowerment.
A three-day training programme may transfer knowledge. A sewing machine may provide a starting point. A grant may give a promising business its first opportunity. All are useful interventions.
But none, on its own, constitutes an empowerment ecosystem.
The World Bank’s 2026 State of the Nigerian Youth report identifies persistent barriers across education and skills, employment, and financial and digital inclusion. The ILO has similarly highlighted skills mismatch as a challenge in Nigeria’s labour market.
This matters because we cannot continue training young people simply for the sake of saying they have been trained. Skills programmes must increasingly answer a tougher question: where is the economic demand for this skill?

Government, educational institutions and the private sector need to talk to one another far more seriously. Training should connect to sectors where opportunities are emerging, employers should have a greater voice in skills development, and young people need practical pathways from learning to work and enterprise.
Otherwise, we risk producing certificates without producing livelihoods.

Capital Changes the Conversation
Then comes perhaps the most stubborn obstacle: money.
Ideas require capital. Equipment requires capital. Inventory requires capital. Growth requires capital.
IFC research has identified access to finance as a major constraint for Nigerian MSMEs. A recent IFC project assessment notes that more than 95 per cent of Nigerian MSMEs cite access to finance as a major obstacle to growth, while more than half lack access to working capital.

So when we tell a young person to “become an entrepreneur”, we must also ask whether our financial system gives that entrepreneur a realistic chance.
This does not mean indiscriminately handing out money. Sustainable empowerment requires smarter financing: credible grants for viable early-stage ideas, affordable credit, guarantees, patient capital and financing structures that recognise that a 24-year-old entrepreneur is unlikely to own the collateral demanded by conventional lenders.
And importantly, finance should be accompanied by mentorship, market access and business support. Evidence from earlier Nigerian youth-employment programmes has shown the importance of combining training with access to capital when self-employment is the objective.

Not Every Young Person Must Become an Entrepreneur
There is another truth we rarely say loudly enough.
Not every young Nigerian needs to become a business owner.
Some will be exceptional entrepreneurs. Others will become exceptional engineers, technicians, researchers, teachers, designers, managers, health professionals and skilled employees.
That is not failure.
A functioning economy needs both entrepreneurs and productive employees. Youth policy therefore cannot be reduced to teaching everybody how to start a small business. Nigeria also needs companies that can grow, industries that can expand and an economy capable of creating decent work at scale.
The real objective should be economic agency: giving young people credible choices about how they build productive lives.

From Programmes to Ecosystems
This is where the empowerment conversation needs to change.
Success should not simply be measured by how many youths attended a programme, how many certificates were issued or how many starter packs were distributed. We should be asking what happened afterwards.
How many businesses survived after two years? How many jobs did they create? How many participants gained sustainable employment? Did incomes improve? Did businesses gain access to markets and finance? Did the programme address a real economic opportunity?
That also means changing how empowerment programmes are designed and reported. Too often, the most visible moment is the launch: officials make speeches, beneficiaries receive equipment, photographs are taken and impressive participation numbers are announced. But the real test begins after the ceremony. Six months or a year later, are those businesses still operating? Were beneficiaries able to find customers, obtain additional finance, maintain their equipment and grow beyond subsistence? Public institutions and corporate sponsors should be willing to publish those outcomes, not simply the number of people who passed through a programme.

This is not about dismissing existing interventions. It is about demanding more from them. If an initiative works, scale it. If beneficiaries repeatedly encounter the same barriers, redesign it. If a training programme produces little economic value, stop measuring attendance as success. Empowerment policy should learn from outcomes rather than celebrate inputs.
Those are harder questions. But they are the questions that distinguish empowerment as publicity from empowerment as policy.

Nigeria’s young people do not lack ambition. What many lack is an environment that converts ambition into opportunity. So, yes, teach entrepreneurship.

Fund promising businesses.
Celebrate young founders. Encourage innovation. But let us stop pretending that entrepreneurship alone can compensate for weak infrastructure, inaccessible finance, skills mismatch and insufficient productive employment.

The next generation does not need another slogan telling it to hustle harder; it needs an economy that makes hard work worth something. Because ultimately, youth empowerment will be judged not by how many young people we tell to become entrepreneurs, but by how many are genuinely equipped and enabled to build productive lives. And that is why the narrative matters.

Dr. Omolaraeni Olaosebikan
Strategic Communications & Reputation Management Expert | Founder, The Narrative Matters®

By Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D

Nigeria has never suffered from a shortage of institutions created to fight corruption. We have the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. We have the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission. We have the Code of Conduct Bureau. We have the Code of Conduct Tribunal. We have the police. We have courts. We have laws prohibiting practically every conceivable manifestation of public corruption.

Yet corruption has proved remarkably unimpressed.

Now comes another proposition. The leadership of the Code of Conduct Tribunal is pushing for the Tribunal to be transformed into a full fledged National Anti Corruption Court, with seven judicial divisions and 37 judges dedicated to corruption cases.

The attraction is immediately obvious.

The CCT says it inherited about 1,037 unresolved cases, some of which had remained unattended for between five and ten years. Under the proposed arrangement, corruption trials would proceed through a summary procedure designed to conclude cases within six weeks of arraignment.

Six weeks? In a country where politically exposed defendants can spend years travelling through adjournments, preliminary objections, interlocutory appeals and changes of counsel before the substance of allegations against them is determined, six weeks sounds almost revolutionary.

The frustration behind the proposal is therefore understandable.

Justice delayed is not merely justice denied to defendants or victims. In corruption cases, delay can become a defence strategy.

Witnesses disappear. Memories fade. Investigators are transferred. Governments change. Political alliances shift. Public attention moves elsewhere.

Eventually, a scandal that once dominated newspaper headlines becomes another dusty case file.

So, there is merit in asking whether Nigeria needs a judicial structure specifically designed to prevent corruption trials from becoming marathons.

But before creating another institution, we should ask a more uncomfortable question.

Is the absence of a specialised court really the principal reason Nigeria struggles to punish corruption?

That question matters because Nigeria has a familiar response to institutional failure.

We create another institution.

When an agency is ineffective, we establish a committee. When the committee disappoints, we create a task force. When the task force falters, we propose a commission. And when existing courts appear too slow, we contemplate another court.

Institutional multiplication can sometimes disguise institutional weakness.

A National Anti Corruption Court may accelerate trials. But it cannot investigate a case for the EFCC or ICPC. It cannot manufacture evidence that investigators failed to obtain. It cannot rescue a badly drafted charge. It cannot prevent witnesses from being compromised. It cannot replace diligent prosecution. And it cannot guarantee that politically powerful defendants will be treated exactly like ordinary citizens.

Those are the harder parts of the corruption problem.

A judge can decide only the case placed before the court. If investigators bring weak evidence and prosecutors present defective cases, giving the judge six weeks instead of six years will merely produce a faster failure.

That is why the conversation must extend beyond speed.

Nigeria needs competent investigation, professional prosecution and judicial efficiency operating together.

There is another question. What happens after judgment?

A specialised anti corruption court would still exist within Nigeria’s constitutional judicial architecture. Defendants must retain their rights to fair hearing and appeal. Any reform that pursues speed by sacrificing due process would simply exchange one problem for another.

Corruption trials should be swift. They must also be fair. The objective cannot be conviction at all costs. It must be credible justice delivered without unnecessary delay.

There is nevertheless something deeply troubling about a system in which corruption cases can remain unresolved for five or ten years. If the figure of 1,037 inherited cases reported by the CCT tells us anything, it is that the status quo cannot simply be defended.

No serious justice system should regard a decade as a reasonable period for determining whether a public officer violated the law.

But perhaps the more useful lesson is that deadlines should not begin and end with judges. Investigating agencies should have performance standards. Prosecutors should face consequences for habitual incompetence. Courts should control frivolous adjournments.

Defence lawyers should be entitled to deploy every legitimate protection available to their clients, but the administration of justice should not permit procedure to become an instrument for ensuring that substance is never reached.

And where corruption is established, sanctions must be sufficiently certain to deter the next offender.

That last point may be more important than the name on the courthouse.

People are not principally deterred by the number of anti corruption agencies or courts a country possesses. They are deterred by the probability that wrongdoing will be discovered, prosecuted and punished.

Certainty matters.

If a public officer believes there is a substantial chance that stolen money can purchase influence, frustrate investigation, finance endless litigation or eventually disappear into a negotiated political settlement, another court building will not frighten him.

But if he knows that suspicious transactions will be detected, investigators will follow the money, prosecutors will present competent evidence, trials will proceed without needless delay and punishment will follow conviction, behaviour begins to change.

That is deterrence.

There is therefore a case for considering the CCT proposal seriously. Specialisation can improve expertise. Dedicated judges can reduce competing caseloads. Strict case management can prevent unnecessary delay.

But Nigeria should resist the temptation to believe that institutional redesign is itself reform.

The National Assembly must interrogate the proposal carefully. What jurisdiction will the new court possess? How will it relate to existing Federal and State High Courts? What constitutional amendments may be required? How will its judges be appointed? What safeguards will protect their independence? How will appeals work? And, crucially, what prevents the same culture of delay migrating into the new institution?

These questions are not arguments against reform. They are the conditions for making reform meaningful.

Nigeria’s anti corruption struggle has produced enough agencies, slogans, arrests, arraignments and televised declarations of war against corruption.

What it desperately needs is consequence.

If a National Anti Corruption Court can help deliver competent, independent and timely justice, then it deserves serious consideration.

But if we simply change the signboard, appoint 37 judges, create seven divisions and reproduce the weaknesses already haunting our justice system, corruption will adapt quickly. It always has.

The real measure of this proposal will therefore not be how quickly Nigeria creates another court. It will be whether those who steal from Nigeria finally begin to believe that the law will catch them.

Until then, we may have another court. But will corruption be afraid?

Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D, FIMC, CMC

Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com
WhatsApp ONLY: +2348069716645

There are deaths that become statistics, and there are deaths that should force a nation to interrogate itself. The tragedy at Okari Jetty in Okrika, Rivers State, belongs to the latter category.

At least 37 people reportedly died after inhaling toxic fumes while allegedly siphoning petroleum products from an illegal tapping point in the early hours of Thursday. Others were reported missing, while some who escaped suffered serious respiratory complications. The police have confirmed the deaths, although the precise casualty figure remains under investigation.

It is easy to write the headline: oil thieves die stealing petroleum products. Factually, that may describe what happened. But morally and socially, it does not tell the whole story.

Oil theft is a crime. Pipeline vandalism is dangerous. Illegal bunkering costs Nigeria enormous revenue, damages the environment, threatens legitimate economic activity and sometimes finances sophisticated criminal networks. Nothing about poverty makes stealing crude oil lawful, and nothing about deprivation makes puncturing pipelines safe.

But after condemning the crime, Nigeria must summon the courage to ask a harder question. Why are so many young people prepared to risk death stealing the resource beneath their own communities? That question does not excuse criminality. It interrogates the environment in which criminality flourishes.

For decades, the Niger Delta has carried one of Nigeria’s most painful contradictions. It produces the resource that built much of the country’s modern economy, yet many of its communities still struggle with poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation and inadequate infrastructure. Crude worth millions of dollars travels beneath soil where families struggle to escape poverty. The wealth moves. Too often, opportunity does not. That is the paradox that makes the Okrika deaths more than another story about oil theft.

These young people reportedly went onto the water in locally made boats to siphon petroleum products. They knew the activity was illegal. Surely, they also knew it was dangerous. Yet they went, and some never returned. That should disturb us. Human beings do not gamble with death unless they believe the risk is worth it.

Across the Niger Delta, illegal refining and oil theft have grown into an underground economy involving far more than desperate youths with containers and wooden boats. There are financiers, buyers, transporters and sophisticated networks, and there are people who profit enormously without ever inhaling fumes beside a pipeline. That distinction matters, because whenever tragedy occurs, it is usually those at the bottom of the chain whose bodies we count. The poor young man on the creek becomes the face of oil theft, while the wealthy beneficiaries of the illicit economy frequently remain invisible.

Nigeria’s response must therefore be twofold. First, the state must continue to protect oil infrastructure and prosecute those involved in organised theft. A country cannot surrender strategic national assets to criminal enterprise. Oil theft deprives every tier of government of revenue that should fund education, healthcare, infrastructure and development, and it devastates the environment in the same communities where it occurs.

But enforcement alone cannot solve the problem. If authorities seal one illegal tapping point while hundreds of unemployed young people still see the creeks as their only economic opportunity, another will eventually appear. Security can protect pipelines. It cannot manufacture hope. That requires governance.

For decades, enormous sums have supposedly been committed to developing the Niger Delta. There is the Niger Delta Development Commission, the Ministry responsible for regional development, the 13 per cent derivation principle, intervention programmes, oil company community development initiatives and host community provisions under the Petroleum Industry Act. Yet tragedies such as Okrika compel an uncomfortable audit of what these interventions have actually produced for ordinary people. Where has the money gone? How many young people have acquired skills capable of providing genuine alternatives to illegal bunkering? How many communities have seen the environmental restoration repeatedly promised them?

These are not questions for Abuja alone. Political leaders from the Niger Delta must answer them too: governors, local government chairmen, federal and state legislators, community leaders, development agencies, traditional institutions and oil companies. This tragedy cannot forever be explained as something done to the Niger Delta by outsiders. The region has produced powerful politicians, ministers, governors and business leaders, and it has received substantial public resources. Accountability must therefore travel in every direction.

There is another uncomfortable dimension. We must resist the temptation to dehumanise the dead because they allegedly died committing a crime. They were still human beings. Somebody’s sons. Perhaps somebody’s fathers, husbands or brothers. Their families will not mourn statistics or “suspected oil thieves”. They will mourn names. Condemning what they were doing should not stop us asking why young people keep choosing such dangerous livelihoods.

The Okrika tragedy therefore presents Nigeria with two truths that must coexist. Oil theft is criminal and must be stopped. But the socioeconomic conditions that make illegal oil activity attractive to thousands of young people must also be confronted. Choosing only one truth guarantees failure. Treat every participant merely as a criminal and another generation will replace those arrested. Treat criminality merely as poverty and oil theft will continue destroying the economy. Nigeria needs enforcement with development, accountability with opportunity, and pipeline security with human security.

Oil has flowed from the Niger Delta for decades, helping finance the Nigerian state. The tragedy is that people living closest to that wealth still risk death trying to take a fraction of it illegally. Thirty-seven reported deaths should therefore be more than another grim headline. They should be a question addressed to the Nigerian conscience. How does a country become so rich beneath the ground, yet leave some of its citizens feeling so poor above it that they are willing to gamble their lives beside a pipeline? Until we answer that question, we may secure the oil wells. But we will not have secured the people living beside them.

Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D, FIMC, CMC
Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com
WhatsApp ONLY: +2348069716645