I begin by expressing my heartfelt appreciation to the Honorable Minister for Youth Development, Comrade Ayodele Olawande, and his team who invited me to deliver this keynote. This is meant to set the critical tone for the commencement of the implementation of the policy decision of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to professionalise youth work practice in Nigeria. Of course, the Ministry of Youth Development is set to provide the lead role in the implementation of the policy. The invitation to deliver this keynote is not fortuitous. It came from the awareness of my past policy efforts, as a permanent secretary in the youth ministry to administratively ground government’s policy on Nigerian youths.
In 2013, and in response to the government’s willingness to deepen policies targeted at youth demographics and development in Nigeria, the then Head of Service of the Federation, Alhaji Goni Aji, invited me to provide the needed intellectual and administrative leadership in the Federal Ministry of Youth Development.
The assignment entailed articulating and crafting a strategy and an organising framework for the implementation of the youth policies. During the strategy development process, I benefitted from the technical support of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) during a visit to participate in a training workshop which held at its Center of Excellence on Youth Development in Turin. There, we got the ILO to organise a dedicated technical conversation and support around the Nigerian government’s strategic policy development concerning the youth.
It is therefore instructive that the Ministry has swung into full operational and implementation mode to deepen and consolidate not only the efforts of the past governments on youth-focused programmes, policies and development strategies, but to also prioritise the dimension of Tinubu administration’s commitment to youth development, especially through the professionalisation of youth work.
This policy strategy of the Youth Ministry involves drawing up blueprint that outline and establish codes of conduct and ethics, as well as standards of practices for youth workers in Nigeria. The Ministry must also necessarily facilitate the expansion of the collaborative partnerships of non-state and non-governmental agencies and actors actively involved in youth development. By far the most significant agenda before the Ministry revolves around designing the strategic parameters and modalities establishing and grounding youth development work as a distinct profession in its own right; a profession that proactively strengthen the Nigerian government’s drive for an overall national development planning that benefits all Nigerians. I hope this keynote will contribute to the success of the Ministry’s agenda.
My keynote is directed at unravelling the fundamental implications of this paradigm shift in youth development: what are the lessons and insights of global best practices in youth work that Nigeria could domesticate in articulating a strategic implementation design? How does the professionalisation of youth work enable youth development and national progress? These questions, and indeed the government’s decision are key, given not only the alarming circumstances of youth unemployment but also the urgency of deploying the youth bulge to enhance Nigeria’s development.
My framework of analysis in this keynote will be guided by two crucial questions. One, how is youth work to be situated within the complex web of professional social work practices? Two, is it possible to professionalise youth work and its support systems and structures as they currently are, while also grounding it within a specialised domain of practice and scholarship? In other words, does youth work have significant theoretical and empirical grounding, to qualify as a specialised domain of practice, scholarship and academic discipline? Three, can youth work practice, given its current level of technical and intellectual support, meet the conditions to qualify as a classic profession?
Youth work is a cogent dimension of youth social work. And this extends, in historical perspectives, from the Young Men/Women Christian Association (YM/WCA) to the more practical focus of child welfare, youth intervention programmes, juvenile justice systems, therapeutic foster homes, and many more. Youth-focused activities also include those organised around sports, counselling practices, community outreaches, online and social media, and more. The diversity that youth work embodies comes directly from the multiplicity of contexts, conditions, geography, regional, specific needs, and circumstances that shape the phenomenon across the world. Thus, when seen as a dimension of social work, youth work is clustered in terms of youth outreaches, volunteerism, interventionist programmes from NGOs, etc. and many of these are often carried out by core social work professionals and specialists who deploy relevant knowledge and skills in social work.
Indeed, in the public services, a new balance is being found in what have to be done professionally and which can be achieved for scope and size of intervention voluntarily, in view of the huge industry of the not-for-profit informal sector work that constitute the largest contributor per capital in youth work, even as the latter are largely unstructured and unregulated. And as I have alluded elsewhere, there is also a raging debate on whether youth work as a profession and academic discipline can be separated from the larger domain of social work.
And this brings us to the critical issue of professionalism and professionalisation. These are concepts that demands an acute level of training and specialised knowledge, as well as ethical framework of practice that circumscribe how the work is to be handled. A profession has its gate keeping body and a systematic body of knowledge that guide the community of practice.
The historical, academic and professional trajectory of social work points at an endeavour that had evolved over a long period into a professional vocation. This condition of youth work is extremely different. It is far from being a professional endeavour, and this is where the decision to professionalise it is both a significant paradigm shift in Nigeria and a daunting task for the Federal Ministry of Youth Development.
The present situation of youth work in Nigeria is that, like in most places, one does not need any specific qualifications of professional competence to serve as a youth worker. This poses lots of disruptive consequences that are capable of undermining the continuous professional and policy efforts to rehabilitate youth development in Nigeria. The matter is further complicated by the absence of relevant courses that attend to the academic demands of youth work, and that could serve as the training ground for servicing the endeavour.
In fact, having courses dedicated to youth work already constitute the basis of a systematic body of knowledge that could become the basis for professionalisation. Unfortunately, even in the developed countries, say, in Europe, available specialised courses specific to youth work are increasingly faced with the challenges of rationalisation, restructuring or even integration as a subfield of other social science disciplines, like social work. Government development agenda, as first order of business, therefore needs to prioritise workforce development and upgrade, to improve the status of youth work, and to make it thereby, a more attractive profession to enter and stay in
But professionalisation calls for more than a rear-guard action to keep picking up the crumbs of youth work. It calls rather for the political will to take bold policy steps that implement significant professional decisions. First, youth work education needs to be taken seriously in ways that lead intentionally to the design and accreditation of youth work curriculum and courses. This not only guarantees that many competent, skilled and qualified youth workers would be trained, it also means that the professionalisation effort can commence.
To be continued tomorrow.
Olaopa is chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission Abuja and Professor of Public Administration. He delivered this as Keynote Address at the Federal Ministry of Youth Development/University of Abuja Collaborative Workshop held at the University of Abuja Main Campus recently.
