By Rafiu Ajakaye
LAGOS, Nigeria
Femi Balogun, 12, has just sat his school leaving exam in Boripe, Osun state, southwest Nigeria.
He lives with his grandparents on their farm since he was six, but now he sees no future there.
"I have always looked forward to my final year in primary school because I am leaving our village to attend secondary school in Ibadan where my parents live," he said, rejecting any possibility of staying on the farm.
"I can't live here again. I want to go to the city. We don't have roads, we don't have hospitals and we are deprived of other social amenities too. It is like we live in another world," he said.
Femi's distaste for village life deepened three years ago when he visited his parents in Ibadan, capital of Oyo state, where, he says, "I saw my mates enjoying things I have never seen before."
His story is not unique in Nigeria’s countryside, where young adults are fascinated by what the cities offer, not least the basic amenities that are fairly widely available there.
Ademoyo Philips, an educational instructor with the north-central Kogi state government, says official records indicate that three out of every five school leavers in the state do not enroll in secondary education within the largely agricultural state.
The government wants these energetic young people to seek a future in farming, rather than join millions of other college graduates in under and unemployment.
But according to Philips, it is precisely these youth who are escaping to the cities every day. He said the crisis arises partly from the lack of opportunities in rural areas.
Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, receives an average of 30 people a day from the countryside who never return home.
The government's hope of using agriculture to arrest the poverty rate, now at 35 percent, and high unemployment rate, officially seven percent with those between 15 and 24 being worst hit, is being threatened by young people shunning farming.
Abdullah Yusuf, an agricultural entrepreneur, said rural urban migration has been most pronounced in the country's north, Nigeria's agricultural hub.
He said Kano, once popular for its groundnut pyramids in the 1950s, has suffered a similar fate.
"I blame this on a number of factors that include a lack of basic social amenities, poor funding of the agro-allied sectors by the government and a lack of sound agricultural policies and incentives for farmers," Yusuf said.
The Boko Haram insurgency in the north has worsened the crisis, he added.
"Prior to the insurgency, most of our youths were engaged in farming activities despite the challenges I mentioned," he said. "But youths from states like Kano, Zamfara, Sokoto and Katsina are more involved in the migration than other states in the north. If you are in Abuja, you can see hundreds of these youths doing menial jobs after running away from the farms."
Olukayode Ajayi-Smith, a social entrepreneur in the education, youth and business development sectors, says the government can get young people to love farming if it commits enough resources to make it attractive.
"I think the government has to invest in rural areas and ensure that such investments are lucrative to young people," he said. "The major reason young people leave rural areas is to pursue better opportunities."
