Youth Restiveness in Nigeria: Challenge for Counselling

The paper examined the meaning of youth restiveness in Nigeria, its causes and challenge for counselling. The youths were seen as young people who are still in the most active period of their lives. They are cognitively capable of hypothetical deductions, analysis and synthesis of situations by which they find themselves. They are restive; in other words impatient, obstinate and agitated especially when they are not satisfied with the state of things around them. The complexity of modern life makes the situation to be even more difficult for the youths, while the Nigerian factor further complicates matters for them. Some of the factors that contributed to the restiveness of youths in Nigeria include: leadership styles, economic situation, educational pursuits, poverty, unemployment, marginalization, exuberance, drugs, sexually transmitted diseases and activities of significant adults in the communities. Good guidance and counselling were seen as possible strategies that could help in harnessing the inert potentials of the youths and channeling them into vehicles for national development (if the challenges are dealt with); otherwise their restiveness could become fuel for mal-adaptive and mal-adjustive behaviour, thus constituting social problems for the nation as a whole.