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Nigeria’s economic realignment has laid bare a structural crisis: a rapidly expanding youth population is meeting a labour market that cannot create enough productive work. The most visible symptom is unemployment. The deeper problem is conversion. Too much education still ends in a certificate without a reliable pathway into competence, income, enterprise, or productivity.

In the Southeast, the contradiction is especially striking. The region has a strong educational culture, a dense commercial tradition, and globally connected communities, yet many young people remain confined to low-productivity and precarious work. The arrival of the Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises (iDICE) Skills-to-Jobs programme across Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo therefore deserve attention. Delivered in the region with Del-York Group under the wider federally backed iDICE initiative, it is potentially more than another training scheme. Properly executed, it could become part of a new regional production architecture.

That qualification matters. Nigeria has never lacked skills-acquisition programmes. What it has often lacked is a disciplined chain connecting training to verified demand, demand to placement or enterprise, and those outcomes to measurable economic value. The real test of iDICE will not be how many young people enrol or receive certificates. It will be how many secure sustained work, build viable firms, earn export income, and strengthen the productive base of their communities.

In my January 2026 essay, From Certificates to Competence, I argued that human-capital agility is becoming a decisive source of national competitiveness: the ability to translate learning into productive labour quickly and at scale. In my conversations, with Mrs. Rejoice Wobilor-Agua, who supports one of the participating states, it quickly became clear that Belgium’s dual-learning experience was useful not because Nigeria should copy it mechanically, but because it demonstrates a governing principle. Education performs best when schools, employers and public institutions jointly define what competence means and share responsibility for producing it. The iDICE model contains elements of that logic. Its proposed pathways in business-process outsourcing, user-interface and user-experience design, software development, video editing, product packaging, and leatherwork speak to identifiable markets rather than training for its own sake. The national programme also sets explicit inclusion targets, including at least 40 per cent female participation. Its regional delivery can bring opportunity closer to communities that are normally excluded by the cost of relocating to Lagos or Abuja.

Yet curriculum relevance at the point of design is not enough. Labour demand changes quickly, particularly in digital work. Course content must be refreshed continuously with employers, platforms, and sector associations; instructors must demonstrate current professional competence; and assessment must test the ability to perform real tasks, not merely recall course material. A certificate should be evidence of competence, not a substitute for it.

The Missing Middle Between Training and Work

The programme’s greatest risk lies in the handoff from learning to earning. Training without credible routes to income can deepen rather than reduce frustration. Every cohort should therefore begin with an employment and enterprise map: which firms intend to recruit; which outsourcing contracts can absorb talent; which freelance services face demonstrable demand; which industrial clusters need upgraded capabilities; and which participants require tools, working capital or incubation to trade successfully? This requires more than a closing-day job fair. Employers should help design modules, provide live briefs, host work-based learning and commit to interview or placement pipelines. Enterprise-track participants should leave with market-tested products, basic financial systems, customer-acquisition plans, and staged access to finance. Freelancers need portfolio development, platform navigation, pricing, contract literacy, and payment support. The aim is not simply employability in theory, but income-generating capability in practice.

Infrastructure is another hard constraint. Reliable electricity, broadband, suitable devices, and accessible physical hubs are part of the training intervention, not background conditions that can be wished away. Without them, the programme will select for young people who already possess advantages and reproduce the exclusion it seeks to address. Decentralisation across five states also makes quality assurance indispensable. Common occupational standards, instructor certification, external assessment, and comparable outcome data must prevent geography from determining the value of the credential.

A Regional Strategy, Not Five Isolated Projects

The Southeast should resist treating the initiative as five parallel state projects. Its potential lies in regional specialisation and scale. Aba’s leather and garment clusters could be linked to product design, digital marketing, and export packaging. Enugu’s emerging technology and creative ecosystem could support software, film, and business services. Onitsha and Nnewi bring commercial networks, distribution capability, and manufacturing experience. Ebonyi and other production centres can connect digital tools to agribusiness, logistics, and market access. Such a model would allow learning hubs to become nodes in a regional value chain. States could share labour-market intelligence, recognise common credentials, pool employer partnerships, and coordinate international promotion. Young people would be trained not only for vacancies that exist today, but for sectors the region has deliberately chosen to build.

This is where local government and community institutions matter. European active labour-market policies work best when delivery is close enough to understand individual barriers and local demand. Adapted to the Southeast, that means accessible hubs, transparent selection, support for persons with disabilities, transport, or connectivity assistance where necessary, and local feedback systems that identify dropout risks early. Regional ambition must be matched by neighbourhood-level execution.

The diaspora as market maker

The Southeast’s diaspora is often approached primarily as a source of remittances. That understates its value. Diaspora professionals possess market knowledge, professional networks, technical standards, and institutional memory that can shorten the journey from local talent to global opportunity. Their highest contribution may therefore be catalytic rather than charitable. A dedicated Diaspora-iDICE Innovation Bridge could organise this contribution around concrete functions: international mentors matched to cohorts; overseas firms providing live projects and outsourcing contracts; specialists co-designing curricula and external assessments; angel networks reviewing investment-ready ventures; and business associations opening distribution and export channels. Organisations such as the Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation and Southeast professional and hometown networks could help aggregate participation, but engagement should be governed by clear mandates and measurable deliverables.

The objective is to turn diaspora connections into a market-access infrastructure. When a graduate in Owerri edits video for a Brussels firm, a design team in Enugu serves a European client, or an Aba producer improves packaging and enters a new market, diaspora engagement has moved from sentiment to economic conversion.

Measure outcomes, not attendance

A programme built around jobs must publish job-centred evidence. At a minimum, each cohort should be tracked at graduation, six months, and twelve months. The public should be able to see completion and certification rates; verified job placements; sustained employment; median earnings before and after training; freelance and service-export income; enterprises launched and surviving; capital mobilised; employer satisfaction; and outcomes disaggregated by state, gender, disability and training pathway. These indicators should be independently verifiable and should distinguish commitments from realised outcomes. A participant who completes a course is not yet a job created. A startup registered is not yet a viable enterprise. A freelance profile opened is not yet export revenue. Honest measurement will allow the programme to identify what works, redirect resources from weak pathways and earn the confidence needed for expansion.

The same discipline should shape financing. Future funding to delivery partners and hubs could be tied partly to competence, placement, and enterprise-survival milestones, while protecting providers from incentives to exclude harder-to-place participants. Success should reward both economic performance and inclusion.

If implemented with fidelity, iDICE could help reposition the Southeast as a regional hub for digital services, creative production, and modernised light industry. It could inject design, technology and export capability into established clusters while enabling young people to participate in national and international markets without abandoning their communities. But this outcome will not flow automatically from large enrolment numbers or generous financing. It will depend on the quality of the conversion chain: Market Demand to Competence Formation to Work or Enterprise to Sustainable Income to Regional Value.

That is the bridge between the January argument and the present opportunity. Nigeria must move from certificates to competence; the Southeast must now go one step further, from competence to production. When public finance, private execution, local government, employers, and diaspora networks align around measurable market outcomes, skills policy ceases to be a short-term welfare intervention. It becomes industrial strategy. The region does not need another generation of trained but stranded young people. It needs a system in which every acquired skill has a credible route to productive deployment. That is how demographic pressure becomes economic power, and how a skills programme becomes a blueprint for regional renaissance.

. Nweke is an International Trade Consultant and author of Economic Diplomacy of the Diaspora. A former Belgian politician of Nigerian origin, born in Igbuzo, Delta State Nigeria, he was a 2014 candidate Member European Parliament. A third-term Municipal Legislator at Ostend City Council, Belgium, since 2006 his portfolio included the Economy, Social Policy, Equality Affairs and International Development. Collins features regularly on TV Continental Lagos as Global Affairs Analyst, on Channels TV as Foreign Policy Commentator, on TRT World Istanbul as African Affairs Analyst among other Afrocentric media houses, including BusinessDay Nigeria

Four years ago this time, Peter Obi came to Port Harcourt on the ballot of the Labour Party (LP), with Datti Baba-Ahmed as his running mate from the North. Now, he came back to the same city on the National Democratic Party (NDC) with Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso from another zone in the North as his running mate.

The difference is not only the change of political party and running mate, but the level of enthusiasm waiting for him. Whereas the youths and supporters were simply mad in 2022/23, the mood seemed moderate this time around.

As if his hosts hinted him on this, Peter Obi tried to reassure the over 4000 supporters that turned out at the EUI Event Centre, a premier, five-star luxury event and conference destination located on Abacha Road area of the New GRA in the Garden City.

The last time, crowds climbed over each other to catch a glimpse of the man they desired to lead Nigeria. Whereas other candidates last time poured funds to create huge crowds, in Obi’s case, crowds spend huge funds to attend his rallies.

Crowds and scenes at the Peter Obi town hall meeting in Port HarcourtWhat did they get? That has continued to worry the leadership of the ‘Obidients’. In Rivers State and some other states, what happened to the votes of the youths that were poured for Obi? The then governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, has continued to boast of how he turned the table in Rivers State, an action he strongly claims, made Bola Ahmed Tinubu overtake both Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Probably in return, he was made super minister in the Tinubu cabinet (FCT Minister), and the only minister exempted from the Single Treasury Account (TSA). By this, he could raise revenue and spend without passing it through the CBN first.

He, a PDP chieftain, was also handed all the goodies or spoils of war allotted the Rivers State (minister, NDDC, all federal appointments, etc), and free hands to do whatever pleased him in the state, Abuja, and beyond.

When Tinubu won the 2023 election, he was an ordinary person, and Wike was an opposition governor. Many now wonder what powers are available to Tinubu (now president) and Wike (now FCT Minister overseeing all electoral institutions and judiciary). These realisations may be playing in the minds of the Obidients in Rivers State.

Obi responded by trying to build up faith and hope. He told the crowd that they would defend their votes and that their votes must either count or those stopping it would be ‘counted’, whatever that meant. Peter Obi’s arrowhead in Rivers State now is Dumo Lulu-Briggs, son of an oil magnet (now late), no longer Beatrice Itubo, the then state chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), who was a kind of rabble-rouser. Dumo is a gentleman with a kind of aristocratic disposition: topnotch education, perfect grammar, intelligent, etc, with a huge business empire behind him. Such personalities hardly support violent struggles. They go to court.

Besides, the party in Rivers State witnessed internal divisions and even went to court. However, Success Jack, the State Chairman, confirmed that results were transmitted to the National Working Committee (NWC), and the national leadership convened peace meetings between the State Working Committee and aspirants to foster unity. A subsequent legal challenge regarding the primary was also dismissed by the court, clearing the path forward.

Many looked closely to see bonding and harmony between Obi and Kwankwaso, his running mate. It was noted that both, in their words and actions appear very resolute to run the 2027 election, with seeming belief that they have the support of the masses to win the election.

Severally, Kwankwaso, who referred to the masses and the Talakawas, and Obi expressed faith in democracy and the power it has conferred on the people to decide the fate of the country.

Kwankwaso referred to his Kwankwasiyya Movement and the Obidents, loyal to Obi, as defense for NDC votes in 2027.

The airwaves have been pumping messages of how to defend their votes at all levels from polling units to ward collation, to LGA collation and state collation centres. Most of this will be taking place at night. Many wonder how the followers could cover all the areas where cheating could happen.

Some have advised that the Obidients should focus on forcing INEC to announce results at every polling unit and get the photos and upload to the NDC national situation room from where the party could be briefing the world on correct results. These were the murmurings by followers at the EUI where Obi was received.

Some wanted to know if Obi would possible ditch the NDC as pressure from hoem(Ohanaeze Ndigbo) mounts, asking him to join Tinubu in hope of future opportunity. Many have warned that they would take none of such. ‘Its Peter Obi or nothing’, John Uwalaka, an Obidient in Diobu, told newsmen.

Obi thus possibly unintentionally skipped to respond to the question on being part of a coalition with other opposition parties, such as the African Democratic Congress (ADC) to defeat President Tinubu at the polls.

There however was no mention of any coalition. Besides, the body language of Obi and Kwankwaso did not indicate any hurry to join any coalition against Tinubu. The crowd however patiently waited for Obi to arrive the venue. At the end, they appeared not eager to leave.

The good sign from 2023 was the tenacity of the followers to wait till the late period that the NDC train arrived.

The presidential candidate maintained an open forum and fielded questions from participants with no-holds bar.

He had before the question-answer session invited all present to throw questions, adding that the focus of the town hall meeting was for he and his running mate to hear from the people of Nigeria.

He also offered opportunity for anyone who had any information against him and Kwankwaso, or against their background possibly taking a punch at his rivals with unclarified backgrounds and age, to come forward and say so. These things created huge excitement almost to the scale of 2023. In summary, observers noted that enthusiasm seemed to have waned.

A source said: ‘One could see the fatigue there (maybe it was from physical tiredness, having waited for hours). But what I could sense (even from the number of questions the crowd asked him) was the fear that their votes would not count again this time around.

‘People expressed concern over votes counting, prompting him and Kwankwaso to make assurances on vote defense. Enthusiasm seems to have waned.’

…Claims over 600,000 Nigerians killed under President

…Says Makinde has blueprint to restore security

The Allied Peoples Movement (APM) has challenged the declaration by Christopher Musa, the Minister of Defence, that the Federal Government has defeated terrorists and substantially improved Nigeria’s security situation.

Musa, in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, said terrorist attacks were no longer as frequent or as brazen as they used to be, arguing that the country had moved from terrorism and insurgency to a lower stage of criminality and kidnapping.

‘Frankly speaking, we have defeated terrorists because now, as I said, the attacks are not as rampant and it is now kidnapping,’ the minister said.

He added, ‘I can tell you there is improved security. Maybe if you noticed, you don’t hear so much of Boko Haram attacks, ISWAP attacks and all these things here and there, maybe one-off.’

But the APM, in a statement signed by Abubakar Yusuf, its National Publicity Secretary, described Musa’s assessment as a dangerous distortion of the security situation confronting Nigerians.

The party accused the Tinubu administration of ‘living in denial’ and attempting to downplay a crisis that has continued to claim lives, fuel mass abductions and displace communities across the country.

‘APM condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the attempts by the Tinubu administration to downplay the worsening insecurity in the country,’ the party said.

The party said Nigeria was ranked the fourth most terrorism-impacted country in the 2026 Global Terrorism Index, moving up from sixth position in the previous edition.

It therefore questioned how the government could claim victory over terrorism while Nigerians continue to face killings, abductions, displacement and attacks.

‘It is deeply disappointing that a minister of the Federal Republic could appear on national television to make such claims at a time when millions of innocent Nigerians are being killed, kidnapped, displaced, and terrorised in various parts of the country,’ the APM said.

The opposition party also argued that Musa’s admission that kidnapping had become the dominant manifestation of the security crisis contradicted his declaration that the government had defeated terrorists.

Musa had explained that when terrorists were hit by security forces, the situation moved ‘back downwards’ to abductions and kidnapping because it was ‘the easiest way for them to try and raise money.’

But the APM said the distinction offered by the minister did little to comfort Nigerians whose relatives were being abducted and held for ransom.

‘The comments by the minister further expose the Tinubu administration’s insensitivity to the plight of Nigerians, who bear the pain of the daily killings, maiming, rape, abduction for ransom, and incarceration by bandits in dehumanising conditions in various parts of the nation,’ it said.

The party also cited data from SBM Intelligence showing that kidnapping had become a highly monetised criminal enterprise under the Tinubu administration, with more than N7.78 billion reportedly paid in ransom between July 2025 and June 2026.

The APM said it was particularly concerned about the continued abduction of vulnerable Nigerians, including women, children and the elderly.

‘More disheartening is that while families sorrow across the country, the Tinubu administration is waving off abduction, an act of terrorism, as ‘family affair,” the party alleged.