Parents sold land, borrowed money, suffered hunger, and sent children to school. Students stayed awake at night reading with candlelight. Some walked long distances to attend lectures. They endured strikes, poor hostels, overcrowded classrooms, decaying laboratories, and insecurity. After all the sacrifices, the country presented them with unemployment. That is the heartbreak of today’s Nigeria.
There is a silent cry moving across Nigeria today. It is the cry of millions of young people who believed in education, who believed in hard work, who believed that if they went to school and got degrees, life would reward them. Today, many of those same young people are looking at their certificates with sadness because the country has turned their degrees into almost-useless papers.
Parents sold land, borrowed money, suffered hunger, and sent children to school. Students stayed awake at night reading with candlelight. Some walked long distances to attend lectures. They endured strikes, poor hostels, overcrowded classrooms, decaying laboratories, and insecurity. After all the sacrifices, the country presented them with unemployment. That is the heartbreak of today’s Nigeria.
Graduates are everywhere with no jobs. They carry files from office to office. They submit CVs until they lose count. They stand under the sun for interviews that never come. Many now depend on the same parents who were depending on them. The promise of education was that it would open doors, but in today’s Nigeria, the doors are locked and the key is missing.
Undergraduates have seen what is happening to graduates. They have seen their older brothers and sisters at home after school with no job. Because of that, many are no longer motivated by the dream of national development. Instead, they are thinking of survival at any cost. Some are planning to buy laptops not for creativity or legitimate business, but to enter online-fraud networks. They say to themselves that it is better than graduating into hunger. This is how far Nigeria has pushed its own children.
Nobody is saying fraud is right. Wrong is wrong. But a serious country must ask why its young people are losing hope so fast. When hard work is not rewarded and talent is ignored, frustration takes over. Leaders who created this hardship now act surprised when youths struggle to survive inside the same hardship. That is the painful hypocrisy of our time.
Then comes the EFCC. Raids, arrests, and headlines are everywhere. But behind every arrest there is a deeper story of a country that failed to build factories, failed to support innovation, failed to create jobs, and failed to treat its graduates as assets. A wise nation will not only chase crime. A wise nation will ask why many young people no longer believe that honesty can feed them. A wise nation will focus on skills, empowerment, real opportunities, and working systems.
It is heartbreaking to say this, but many Nigerians now believe that education no longer guarantees anything. They see politicians who did not build anything becoming billionaires. They see hardworking citizens struggling to eat. They see public funds stolen with boldness while unemployed graduates are blamed for being desperate. They see a country where the wrong people sit in the right places.
The truth is simple. A country that neglects its youths is negotiating with disaster. A country that treats education as decoration and not as a tool for development is planning failure. A country where leaders fight for power while the future generation is abandoned is not yet ready for progress. You cannot abandon children today and expect a better nation tomorrow.
The situation in Nigeria should make every citizen think very deeply. Is this the path we want to continue following? Do we want to keep graduating students into hopelessness? Do we want our undergraduates to believe that only shortcuts work? Do we want to keep recycling politicians who broke the system? Do we want to keep pretending everything is fine when the truth is burning in our faces?
Real change will not come from repeating the same election-drama with the same characters. Real change will come when Nigerians finally say enough to failure, enough to corruption, enough to leaders who do not care, enough to systems that destroy dreams instead of building them. Until that spirit of collective courage rises, the story will repeat itself year after year.
The Nigerian youth is not lazy. The Nigerian graduate is not useless. The problem is a nation that refuses to create space for them to shine. Give them good education, working institutions, stable electricity, industries, fair opportunities, and watch them transform this country. They do not need pity. They need justice, tools, and trust.
Nigeria is at a crossroads. One path leads to more frustration, more wasted degrees, and more broken dreams. The other path leads to honest leadership, accountable government, working systems, and restored dignity. The choice belongs to the people. The future will answer to whatever choice is made.
And let every Nigerian understand this clearly - only a revolution, not elections, will put an end to this endless cycle of failure, neglect, and broken promises. Until the people rise as one, nothing will change.