President Tinubu’s promise to Nigerian youths: From wings to flight paths

History, as the philosopher George Santayana once reminded us, condemns those who fail to learn from it to repeat its errors. One lesson that echoes across centuries and continents is this – when governments underestimate, neglect, or patronize their youth, the consequences are often destabilizing. The student uprisings in Paris in 1968, the Arab Spring a decade ago, and more recently the youth-led revolts in Kenya, Nepal, and Madagascar all bear testimony to this fact. Youthful energy, when stifled, does not disappear; it accumulates and eventually erupts.

Nigeria is not exempt from this truth. In fact, Nigeria may be its most striking embodiment. With two-thirds of its population under the age of 30, the fate of this nation is inseparable from the dreams and frustrations of its youth. Which is why President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Independence Day broadcast on the occasion of Nigeria’s 65th anniversary struck such a resonant note. In that broadcast, the president described Nigeria’s youth as the nation’s “greatest assets” and promised: “Our administration, through policies and funding, will continue to give you wings to fly sky-high.” For once, the language from the presidency matched the aspirations of the nation’s restless demographic. He urged them to dream big, innovate, and conquer new territories in technology, science, arts, and sports. The rhetoric was inspiring. Yet, Nigerians have heard such words before. The challenge is not in articulation but in execution.

Now, let’s recall the weight of history. The story of Nigeria’s youth is also the story of Nigeria itself. The independence struggle of the 1940s and 1950s was spearheaded by young leaders – Macaulay, Azikiwe, Awolowo, Balewa, and others were men in their thirties and forties. The energy of youth was the driving force of decolonization. In the 1990s, the fight against military dictatorship again found its backbone among student movements, campus unions, and young pro-democracy activists. The June 12 struggle, led by coalitions that included youth organizations, kept the flame of democracy alive.

Globally, too, youth have shaped transitions. Nelson Mandela often acknowledged the role of young militants in sustaining the anti-apartheid fight. Barack Obama’s historic “Yes We Can” campaign was youth-powered. Ghana’s independence was carried on the shoulders of Kwame Nkrumah’s Youth Movement. History is unambiguous: ignore youth at your peril, empower them and the nation thrives.

And now banging unceasingly and menacingly on the door of our subconscious is the cautionary tale of Madagascar. This is why the ongoing turmoil in Madagascar should be more than a passing headline for Nigeria; it should be a red warning signal. In Antananarivo today, disillusioned youths have taken over streets, protesting unemployment, corruption, and political exclusion. What began as scattered demonstrations has grown into organized defiance, threatening to topple governance structures.

The parallels with Nigeria are unsettling. High unemployment, exclusion from decision-making, rising cost of living, and disillusionment with promises of reform are common denominators. The difference is scale. Nigeria is larger, more complex, and its youth far more interconnected through social media. If Madagascar can descend into upheaval, Nigeria must recognize that the same volcano simmers beneath its own surface.

Now, let’s turn to President Tinubu’s haerat-warming pledge and words backed with initiatives. To dismiss Tinubu’s promises as mere rhetoric would, however, be unfair. His administration has launched a suite of youth-focused programmes that, if faithfully implemented, could mark a turning point. Let’s walk through them.

Read also: Amaechi rallies Nigerian youths on politics, says Tinubu won’t give them power easily

NELFUND Education Loans: With over 510,000 beneficiaries, this scheme addresses the crippling financial barrier to tertiary education. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian philosopher of education, argued that true freedom begins with access to learning. NELFUND represents an attempt to democratize opportunity.

CreditCorp Loans (₦30 billion disbursed): Youth-led businesses often die at conception due to lack of capital. Affordable credit breathes life into entrepreneurial dreams.

YouthCred for NYSC Members: By extending credit to Corps members, the government turns the service year from a dead-end ritual into a springboard for innovation.

iDICE Initiative: The Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises connects Nigeria’s comparative advantage in arts and technology with global opportunities. In an era where Afrobeats and Nollywood dominate global markets, this is a policy aligned with reality.

Presidential CNG Initiative (Pi-CNG): Distributing 2,000 clean-energy tricycles empowers youth while promoting sustainability. This is an attempt to fuse employment with ecological responsibility.

Youth Agro-Entrepreneurship Programme (YEIDEP): Agriculture remains a sleeping giant. By modernizing youth participation, YEIDEP could transform rural underemployment into agribusiness prosperity.

Labour Employment and Empowerment Programme (LEEP): With its focus on vocational training and mass employment, LEEP has potential to absorb thousands into productive industries.
Yo! Health Initiative: Structured on six pillars – mental health, drug abuse prevention, communicable and non-communicable diseases, reproductive health, and insurance – this is perhaps the most holistic attempt at youth welfare. Health is wealth, and without it, no wings can fly.

Taken together, these initiatives reveal intentionality. Unlike past governments, Tinubu is not blind to the urgency of youth empowerment. He is laying down the runway for the wings he has promised. Yet, Nigerians are realists and the risk of empty programmes delivered with rhetorical relish would be better imagined than described. They have seen initiatives launch with fanfare only to die in silence. For every NELFUND, there is a defunct YOUWIN. For every iDICE, there is an abandoned IT village. The graveyard of Nigerian policy is filled with beautiful designs that never became reality.

The pitfalls to avoid are clear – elite capture (If youth funds are hijacked by politicians and their cronies, trust will collapse); bureaucratic bottlenecks (Complicated applications discourage real beneficiaries); tokenism (Isolated projects without scale do not address systemic unemployment); exclusion (Programmes designed without youth input risk irrelevance). Durkheim’s sociology warns that a society that fails to integrate its youth risks anomie—a state of normlessness that breeds instability.

From the philosophical standpoint, reflecting on the youth as vanguard, Frantz Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, insisted that it is the youth who serve as the revolutionary vanguard in colonized societies. Nigeria’s youth may not be fighting colonizers, but they are resisting internal structures of exploitation, corruption, and exclusion. They are the “not yet” of Nigerian history – the potential that could lift the country into prosperity. But potential unrealized becomes peril. A generation denied its place becomes a generation that destabilizes. This is why Tinubu’s metaphor of wings is so apt, but incomplete. Wings without skies, wings without flight paths, wings without pilots, these are dangerous illusions. For promises to have weight, they must become reality.

One of the most sobering lessons of the 21st century is that when a nation neglects its youth, it risks igniting a firestorm of restiveness that no power can easily contain. Across Africa—and indeed the Global South—youth movements have emerged as the vanguard of resistance, catalyzing seismic political shifts. The Nigerian leadership cannot afford to ignore these warning signals, for they point to what happens when promises remain unfulfilled. Nigeria already tasted this bitter medicine during the #EndSARS protests of 2020, where millions of young Nigerians poured into the streets to demand an end to police brutality and systemic neglect. Four years later, in 2024, another wave—the #EndBadGovernance protest—surfaced, powered by the same restless demographic whose frustration had deepened under economic hardship, unemployment, and insecurity.

These movements underscore a truth: youth energy, if unchanneled, mutates into explosive dissent.

Across the continent, Kenya’s Gen Z protest of 2024 presented another vivid case. Initially triggered by punitive tax hikes, the demonstrations quickly morphed into a larger indictment of governance failures. Young Kenyans deployed digital tools—TikTok, Twitter (X), Instagram—to mobilize, amplify their voices, and shame the establishment. In a sense, Kenya’s protest became Africa’s masterclass in how a digitally native generation can leverage technology to challenge entrenched systems. The lesson for Nigeria is clear: this generation has new weapons, and silence or dismissal is no longer an option. The current Madagascar turmoil provides perhaps the most pressing warning. What began as grievances over food insecurity and unemployment has spiraled into sustained youth-led unrest. In Antananarivo, protesters chant about “a future stolen” and “dreams deferred.” The symbolism is striking: a young generation, weary of waiting, has decided to claim its destiny directly. For Nigeria, the images from Madagascar should serve as an unignorable alarm bell—because the triggers are uncannily similar: economic stagnation, corruption, and dashed expectations.

Beyond Africa, the story repeats. In Nepal, September 2025 witnessed a Gen Z-driven revolution sparked by Abiskar Raut’s fiery speech, galvanizing thousands of young people to rise against systemic exclusion. The resonance of this uprising across borders is instructive: youth discontent is not contained by geography. It is a generational phenomenon, powered by shared tools (social media), shared conditions (inequality, unemployment), and shared aspirations (dignity, opportunity, voice). Taken together, these cases demonstrate a sociological constant: youth restiveness thrives in the gap between rhetoric and reality. Leaders often laud young people as “the future,” but when such words are not matched with concrete opportunities, they morph into bitter reminders of betrayal.

Tinubu’s Independence Day metaphor of giving Nigerian youths “wings to fly” therefore bears both promise and peril. If his administration sustains its youth-centered initiatives—education loans, credit access, health interventions, clean energy empowerment, and digital enterprise investments—Nigeria may avoid the tinderbox scenario playing out elsewhere. If not, the same demographic being celebrated as “greatest assets” could become the most formidable opposition.

History has shown that no government can indefinitely suppress a restless youth bulge. In the long run, demographics always win. Africa is the youngest continent in the world, with Nigeria at its epicenter. Harnessing this demographic dividend requires foresight, sincerity, and delivery—not just rhetoric. Tinubu has the right words. What remains is the right action, lest Nigeria joins the growing catalogue of nations learning too late that ignoring youth restiveness is a gamble no leadership survives unscathed.

More importantly, it makes little sense to fall an easy prey to the resilience fallacy. Nigerians are often described as resilient, enduring hardship with stoic calm. Yet, resilience is not infinite. Stretch patience too far, and it snaps. The Madagascar turmoil shows the next stage of what happens when governments mistake patience for passivity. Nigeria must learn before it is too late. This is not to overlook skepticism and the burden of proof.

There are skeptics, who dismiss Tinubu’s programmes as propaganda, arguing that they are more photo-op than policy. Their skepticism is not without basis. Nigeria’s history of unfulfilled promises invites doubt. President Tinubu therefore carries a burden of proof. He must demonstrate that his initiatives are not designed for applause but for impact. He must prove that his government is not repeating history’s mistakes but rewriting the script. Surely, the Tinubu administration deserves commendation for rolling out such youth-targeted initiatives such as NELFUND, CreditCorp, YouthCred, iDICE, Pi-CNG, YEIDEP, LEEP, and Yo! Health. As it is said in Igbo proverbial parlance, ‘E too dike na nke o mere, o mekwaa ọzọ’ (When one gets commended for achieving a great feat, they strive to achieve more). These are significant steps in the right direction. But they must not end as headlines. They must become lived realities for millions of Nigerian youths. Execution, transparency, inclusivity, and accountability must be the watchwords. Youth must not only be beneficiaries but also co-creators of policy.

Let’s conclude on the imperative of transiting from winging the youth to charting the flight paths.

History will not judge Tinubu by the melody of his promises but by the symphony of his delivery. Inspiring words are valuable, but tangible transformation is indispensable. Nigeria’s youth have been promised wings. It is now time to provide flight paths. The choice before Tinubu is stark: either to be remembered as another leader of unfulfilled promises or as the president, who turned rhetoric into renewal, promises into programmes, and wings into soaring realities. The turmoil in Madagascar stands as a vivid warning. Nigeria must not wait for its own eruption. A stitch in time saves nine. If President Tinubu stays the course, deepens implementation, and shields these initiatives from corruption and elite capture, then history may record him as the leader who gave Nigerian youth not just wings, but also the skies.

Asiwaju, the Jagaban! You have all it takes to make things happen. As the Igbo would ask: “Ọ bụ nwa Mgbeke amaghị isi akpụ, ka ọ bụ agụba adịghị nkọ?” Loosely translated, “Is it that Mgbeke lacks the expertise of a barber or that the razor is not sharp?” President Tinubu, as the proverbial Mgbeke, has the expertise of a legendary barber armed with the full complements of a sharp clippers! Let the scooping motion begin in earnest.

Prof. Agbedo writes from the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN).