By Ikechukwu Samuel
Nigeria’s youthful population must become the central focus of political campaigns ahead of the 2027 general elections, political economist Professor Pat Utomi has said, warning that the country risks wasting its demographic advantage if politicians fail to address the challenges confronting young Nigerians.
Utomi said the future of Nigeria’s young people was under serious threat and urged political parties and candidates to move beyond short-term political interests and develop policies capable of turning the country’s youth bulge into an economic advantage.
He spoke on national television TV while fielding questions from the lie television show on Thursday Morning.
“Today the most important thing before Nigeria is the young people of Nigeria, whose future is not just at stake in the typical way we talk about it, but is” seriously “at stake because it has significantly beeen threatened,” he said.
He argued that Nigeria’s political leadership must deliberately pursue policies that would allow the country to extract a demographic dividend from its large youth population.
“If we allow them to just go off on the kinds of things they talk about, Nigeria is in trouble,” Utomi warned.
The political economist linked the youth crisis to a wider failure of political leadership and economic management across Africa.
“If there’s one thing that is clear about the Nigerian experience, it’s that politics has damaged the economy of Africa. It is that politicians have mismanaged Africa,” he said.
Utomi recalled that after Ghana attained independence in 1957, its first president, Kwame Nkrumah, shifted attention towards economic development and industrialisation.
He argued that Nigeria must similarly ensure that political competition produces concrete economic outcomes for citizens rather than merely serving the short-term interests of politicians.
Utomi also recalled his earlier work on what he described as “The Pursuit of Poverty,” arguing that poor political leadership had contributed significantly to the persistence of poverty in Nigeria.
He said the country’s economic underperformance could not be separated from the quality of leadership it had produced over the years.
Recalling his return to Nigeria in 1982 after completing his PhD, Utomi said he had expected the country to achieve a far higher level of prosperity by the time he reached 60.
“I was dead certain that by my 60th birthday Nigeria would be a $30,000-per-capita economy,” he said.
But, he added, “I turned 70 and it was around $1,000. There’s a reason. The reason is because we’ve not been led properly.”
Utomi said the experience should force political parties and voters to demand greater attention to economic transformation, particularly policies that create opportunities for young Nigerians.
He warned that without deliberate action to convert the country’s youthful population into productive human capital, Nigeria could face even greater economic and social pressures.
For him, the 2027 election should therefore be about more than winning political power. It should provide Nigerians with competing visions for how to secure the future of the country’s young population and reverse decades of economic mismanagement.
