Nigeria may not have solved unemployment, but it has certainly streamlined the options for survival.
Today’s young Nigerian has two clear career paths: work legally and stay broke, or bend the rules and cash out. One route comes with certificates and humility; the other comes with burner phones and backup generators. And between both, the country has made it embarrassingly clear which one pays dividends.
Let’s run a quick nationwide audit — not from an economist’s PowerPoint, but from the streets.
In Abuja, an entry-level bank worker earning ₦150,000 a month is expected to dress like a diplomat, rent like a senator, and eat like a monk. Lagos isn’t much kinder — a junior tech employee on ₦250,000 is one traffic jam away from insanity and one rent increase away from homelessness. Meanwhile, in Zamfara, legitimate work barely pays enough to fuel a motorcycle, yet illegal mining syndicates casually hand out millions like transport stipends. And in Owerri — the newly crowned Capital of Nightlife Economics — one undergraduate “hook-up consultant” reportedly makes in a weekend what a civil servant earns in three months. All four cities, different lifestyles — same economic verdict: salary jobs build character, not savings.
This is not to discredit the millions working honestly. Nigeria’s youth are not lazy — they are exhausted. They sell clothes online, design flyers, braid hair, code websites, run delivery bikes, trade crypto, do makeup, run POS terminals, and still end every month asking the same question: “What exactly did I work for?”
But alongside them exists another growing segment of the economy — the Alternative Workforce. They do not fill CVs — they collect ransom. They do not chase KPIs — they phish emails. They are strategic, tech-savvy, well-funded, and highly collaborative. They operate in syndicates, share tools, offer internal training, and reinvest profits. In other words, they are everything Nigeria wishes its formal economy could be — organised and scalable.
According to the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, cybercrime now contributes billions of naira to illicit financial flows annually. The UNODC has consistently ranked Nigeria among high kidnap-for-ransom territories. Even the former Minister of Communications once stated openly that “the average successful cybercriminal makes more than a mid-level oil worker.” No motivational speaker can compete with numbers like that.
Of course, not every young person wants to steal. Many are holding the line — choosing dignity over fast profit. But let’s be honest: dignity does not pay NEPA bills. The cost of morality in Nigeria has become too high for minimum wage earners to afford.
What Must Change
The real crisis is not just crime — it’s the economy that makes crime look like a reasonable career alternative. You cannot underpay young people, deny them credit, block them from opportunities, then appear surprised when they hack the system instead of applying through it. If the government truly wants fewer Yahoo boys, fewer kidnappers, fewer exploited girls, and fewer desperation-driven hustles, then it must make legality profitable — loans without impossible collateral, jobs with liveable pay, policies that treat youth as investors, not risks. A country where working hard and working smart don’t have to be opposites.
Final Question — To Government, Employers, and Anyone Listening
How long can a nation survive when its honest citizens feel like fools and its criminals feel like entrepreneurs?
Because right now, Nigeria is not just losing its youth to poverty — it is losing them to logic.
