Nigerian youth need to think outside the box and quit sitting on the sidelines to complain or criticize the government. Instead, young people should actively scan their environment using the resources already available within their reach.

It is without doubt that passion and ambition run deep in the veins of Nigerians, who are naturally committed and dedicated individuals.

Economists define unemployment as both the willing and unwilling lack of a job. The Nigerians being addressed today are those who want to work but cannot find employment, as well as those who are thoroughly discontented with their present economic state.

To get the absolute best out of yourself in a working environment, you must work in an industry you are genuinely passionate about. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case in Nigeria today. Many youth have found themselves trapped in jobs for which they have no passion, dragging through the days with the popular phrase, “we go sha survive.” Yet, passion is the very spark that brings joy, satisfaction, and happiness to whatever one does in life. Without it, an individual is merely existing rather than truly living.

For the Nigerian youth who possess a deep passion for good governance, the time has come to turn that passion into concrete action. If you share this drive, you can join a civil society organization that focuses on good governance or even volunteer for a political party. This active participation enables you to contribute your own meaningful chunk to the structural changes you wish to see. Rest assured that if your passion is not merely motivated by the desire for overnight wealth, and if your dedication is truly concrete, you will definitively become a noticeable figure in whatever path you choose.

Consider the powerful testimony shared by a gentleman earlier this year at Living Faith Church in Durumi. He explained that he was entirely jobless but possessed a massive passion for basketball due to his height. However, age had beaten him to the chase, making him far too old to play professionally.

Seeing that age had bailed on him, he refused to give up and instead joined the coaching staff of the Nigerian national basketball team as a volunteer just to give them a hand with basic tasks.

He dedicated himself to this service for some time until the team went on to play a tournament where they emerged as African champions. The historic win was wildly celebrated by both the government and the public, and a shower of gifts including money, houses, and cars was handed down to the team. In his testimony, the man revealed that he was personally gifted a house in Abuja, a brand-new car, and was honored with the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) national award alongside the players.

He was also integrated as a permanent staff member. This is exactly how a dedicated volunteer transformed into an Abuja house owner and a nationally recognized professional.

There is also the firsthand testimony given by Bishop David Oyedepo, who has noted that he never once actively planned or thought of becoming a pastor. His core focus was simply to add positive value to wherever he found himself and to see the church of God built, describing himself as a passionate, kingdom-addicted person.

He recalls a specific trip that changed everything when he traveled to a village that completely lacked a church. Moved by the total absence of a place of worship in the community, he prayed to the Lord that before his departure, a church must be established. He spent a total of 72 days in that village, and by the time he left, a church had been built and many locals were led to Christ.

On the day he departed, the heavyhearted villagers wept, not wanting him to leave. They gifted him a lantern and told him that the light he brought to their community must shine around the world. That foundational passion transformed a young man who simply loved churches into a leader overseeing more than 22,000 church branches across 146 nations worldwide.

In another instance, Bishop Oyedepo shared that as a young minister, he used to market the books of Kenneth E. Hagin with immense passion, commitment, and dedication, causing thousands of books to be sold through his efforts.

One day, God spoke to him, noting that because of his tireless commitment to marketing other people’s literature, He would make him a writer.

Today, Oyedepo is one of the global stage’s most prolific authors, with thousands of his books circulating worldwide, breaking chains and helping people overcome diverse life challenges.

This exact trajectory brings us to the story of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. While pursuing a highly successful corporate career at Mobil, he informed his colleagues that he was transitioning into politics.

Many laughed at him, warning that he was committing career suicide by quitting a high-ranking, lucrative accounting job for the uncertainty of public life. His response was both simple and striking; he told the Managing Director, Bob Parker, and the Finance Director that he wanted to use his brain for his country instead of remaining an armchair critic. He felt an urgent need to close the vast inequalities existing in the nation and believed that professionals were required to rescue Nigeria from the vultures and vampires in the political arena, as well as to fix uncoordinated government policies.

This passion was evident long before he became a senator, aligning seamlessly with his subsequent involvement in pro-democracy efforts, financial sponsorships, and his eventual NADECO activism against military rule following the June 12, 1993 election annulment. His lifelong drive to help people through difficult times whether providing medical assistance, housing, financial aid, employment, educational scholarships, or mediating complex political disputes ultimately led him to the most powerful seat in Nigeria. Even as president, he retains the very passion for equity he advocated for decades ago, as seen in his recent pushes for local government autonomy, state policing structures, and the regional electricity act.

His commitment extends directly into a passion for true servant-leadership, as anyone who has had a close encounter with him knows he genuinely lives to serve the people.

My own journey and the creation of platforms like the Accountability and Policy Monitoring initiative, BAT-IG, the Value Added Orientation for Youth NGO, and the Spirit of Faith Validation were all birthed by this exact type of raw passion. This advocate spirit has been inside me since my secondary school days.

My very first experience with advocacy occurred when a group of fellow students and I were chased out of school due to unpaid tuition. Our parents did not withhold the fees on purpose; rather, the state government had refused to pay their civil servant salaries, leaving them completely unable to afford the fees. Seeing that the government had failed our parents and the school was punishing the children, I led a direct protest to the local government council.

The demonstration yielded an immediate positive result as we were ordered back into our classrooms, and the teachers who had chased us out were officially queried.

My second major advocacy effort happened after secondary school while I was managing one of my uncle’s shops. I developed a hardcore hatred for police extortion, which occurred routinely around the neighborhood. Officers would frequently arrest and extort local commercial motorcyclists for no valid reason. I would routinely confront them, asking how much an Okada rider even makes in a day that they would demand a ten-thousand-naira bribe just to release a seized bike.

The police constantly weaponized the Lagos State traffic laws banning bikes on certain routes to their own financial advantage. Because they knew I would not stand by and allow extortion to take place, they began taking the riders far away from my shop to carry out their deals. Even then, riders who knew my track record would run to find me so I could intervene, and I frequently used my own personal funds to bail motorcyclists out of illicit police custody.

They viewed me as a direct enemy because I blocked their illegal streams of income, but their hostility did not stop me at all.

Around 2019, this friction came to a head when a tricycle rider was being aggressively chased by an operative in plain clothes around 8:00 PM. I stopped the pursuit and demanded to know why he was chasing the rider so intensely, challenging his lack of a uniform and requesting his official identification card.

The incident quickly escalated, leading to a physical and verbal altercation that dragged us both to the police station. The moment we walked through the gates, a gang of officers surrounded me, mockingly shouting that God had finally caught me today, with another noting that I was the same person who had come the previous week to secure the release of detainees while acting like a big man. The officer falsely accused me of tearing his cloth(he was not on uniform), all because of my unyielding passion to ensure that ordinary people are free from systemic extortion.

Through my intervention, countless people were released at zone 2 police station in Obalende, Alagbon police station in Ikoyi, and Ikoyi prison in 2023.

What eventually led me to the work I do today was the refusal to just sit back and complain about gaps in government policy. I prefer to move actively from place to place, identify those administrative gaps, and close them through the practical, structured solutions offered by BAT-IG and our accountability monitoring frameworks.

This is precisely how passion is transformed into a viable career. When I started out on this path, I never expected a single kobo from it, but looking at how God has elevated the vision, the impact speaks for itself.

Bamidele Atoyebi is the Convener of BAT Ideological Group, National Coordinator of Accountability and Policy Monitoring and a publisher at Unfiltered and Mining Reporting and political social worker