Abstract

Despite the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, the Nigerian youth is still caught in a web of poverty, hopelessness and missed opportunities. The paper argues that though corruption, lack of political will, poor policy implementation, etc. limit government’s efforts at youth development, the primary challenge remains the fact that the government has not been able to properly conceptualise and prioritize youth development. In addition, government’s implementation of the Millennium Development Goals remains manifestly insincere to an alarming degree. This paper relied on secondary information and data sourced from newspapers, magazines, journals, textbooks, etc. The methodology is analytical. The structural functionalist theory is adopted in the analysis. This study emphasizes the fact that the future progress of the Nigerian nation is critically tied to the quality of youths she is able to produce in the present. It posits that until government’s efforts in the implementation of the MDGs become manifestly sincere to an appreciable degree and youth development is properly conceptuali(z)ed, the Nigerian youth will continue to be plagued by the challenges of poor value orientation(s delete s), disenchantment, negativity and inadequacy. The paper recommends that youth development should be given a priority attention in the ongoing constitutional review efforts in Nigeria.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.