I remember Obasanjo’s first three years. That was when the term “yuppie” — Young Urban Professional — became the catchphrase for young graduates entering the workforce. Fresh employees moved from job to job in quick succession, often spending less than a year at any one place before an even better offer came calling. We called them upwardly mobile. New employers dangled mouth-watering packages: paying off debts owed to the old employer, new cars, fat housing allowances, sometimes a promotion before you had even settled into the last one. Every profession was growing, and the economy was expanding rapidly around them.
It wasn’t just talk. Nigeria’s GDP grew by an average of nearly 7 percent a year through those eight years, peaking above 15 percent in 2002 — the fastest sustained economic climb the country had seen since independence. Debt relief in 2005 cut Nigeria’s external debt from over $36 billion to about $3.6 billion almost overnight, and banking consolidation put stronger, better-capitalised institutions in place. Telecom liberalisation put a phone in nearly every hand for the first time. None of this trickled down evenly, and plenty of Nigerians were left out of the boom entirely — but for the young graduate with a degree and a bit of ambition, the floor genuinely felt like it was rising under them.
The economy grew so much that it developed bubbles — the mortgage and microfinance sectors being the majorly affected. The youth were simply bubbling. Those who didn’t care for formal employment opened companies of their own and became the new talk of the town. To have a job at all felt almost beneath you if you were sharp enough; the real prestige was in building something, or being courted by three companies at once.
Contrast this with Tinubu’s time. Close to the end of his tenure, the conversation coming out of the presidential villa is about youths frying akara, roasting corn, and grinding kuli-kuli. It isn’t even a metaphor — it’s the literal advice, delivered by the First Lady herself at a Renewed Hope Initiative meeting with governors’ wives, that graduates should embrace bean-cake selling and roadside trading as their path forward. It set off a firestorm online, with critics asking a fair question: should Nigerian graduates be competing globally as software developers and engineers, or fighting over roadside space to fry akara? Meanwhile, business associations report that thousands of small and medium enterprises have downsized or shut altogether under the weight of diesel costs, logistics, and imported inputs, pushing even more people into the same informal trading the government is now holding up as the answer.
That is the Renewed Hope that he has offered: not a generation moving from job to job chasing better offers, but a generation moving from frying pan to frying pan, chasing survival.
Published by Chuks Nwachuku
