Tobenna Nwagujiobi

Tobenna Nwagujiobi is restoring dignity to young people facing chronic unemployment and to farming, a profession that has been undervalued, and thus, underutilized by rural inhabitants as a means of solving many of their community’s challenges.

In a context where unemployed university graduates are returning to their villages, becoming idle and sometimes destructive, Tobenna is repositioning this group as the leaders of a new kind of employment in their villages: agriculture. Specifically, Tobenna has created a team farming model that partners recent graduates with other unemployed youth struggling to find their footing in the village. In groups of thirty, they work together to incorporate a wide variety of crops and livestock into an integrated farming system that bucks the prevailing practice of planting one seasonal cash crop; leaving farmers without any income for part of the year. Key to this approach is turning around the community’s perception, which too often snubs university graduates who return home without having landed a job in the city, and have little initial tolerance for their bringing shame to the family by taking up farming; considered the work of the poor and illiterate. Through community engagement, Tobenna prepares village chiefs and the community at-large, to understand the role these young people can play in revitalizing farming and catapulting it into the 21st century. Convinced of this rebranded role, and the effect it has had in reducing the incidence of crime in the community, the chief in Tobenna’s village, has not only doubled the land given to the young people executing this model of farming, but has joined Tobenna in spreading the model to nearby villages.

Throughout much of Nigeria, young people are leaving their villages to attend university with the goal of securing a white-collar job upon graduation. However, private sector job creation has simply not kept pace with the number of graduates being churned out, and many of young people find themselves heading back to their villages, where job creation is even more stagnant. With little prospect for employment and an underlying sense of embarrassment that accompanies those who were thought to be on their way to a better life but come back empty handed, many graduates join the ranks of the other chronically unemployed young people in rural areas, sitting idle and depressed at best, and contributing to the rise of community crime at worst. Many will head to the city anyway, with hopes of making it without any clear job prospects, and end up populating one of the many slums surrounding every big city in the country.

At the root of Tobenna’s integrated farming system is a co-op system. To launch it in his own village of Adani in 2008 Tobenna rallied young people who had recently returned from university with degrees in agriculture and a variety of other fields, like himself, but were currently without steady employment. For the first time, they got a chance to discuss their feelings on their situation and the general stagnation that currently pervades rural areas, including the rise in crime stemming from that stagnation. Then they began to brainstorm about what assets are embedded in the community that could serve as a foundation for turning the tide. After pointing out the richness of the soil in Southeast Nigeria, Tobenna challenged the group to take their future in their own hands and embrace the opportunity to employ themselves through creating a new kind of farm that had the potential to generate the income that was currently eluding them. After some initial pushback to the thought of “becoming farmers,” including those with agriculture degrees (who had studied the subject because it was perceived as any easy way to get into university and had no intention of actually farming), a group of fifteen graduates answered the call. They agreed to recruit another fifteen young people who had never had the opportunity to go to university, and spend the next six months using the traditional isusu method of community saving and each contribute 50 Naira daily to generate the initial capital to start the farm.

During this time, they would also sensitize the community on what their intentions were and talk to the village chief about donating some of the idle land to them. After significant initial pushback, the village chief granted the group a small piece of land, which he then extended to one acre after seeing how quickly the group cleared and prepared the land, and how they were able to successfully raise 270,000 Naira among themselves. The group, now an organization under the banner of Youth Development Initiative Project (Y-DIP), then used the money to construct fish ponds, and pig and poultry pens. They also began planting several crops.

A key principle is resourcefulness. The group does all of the direct labor themselves and are always looking for opportunities to keep costs down. They got fingers of fish from streams through local fishermen for their own fish-farm at no cost, for example, and within six months, they had a significant harvest. They also partnered with Ashoka Fellow Betty Agujiobi, who donated ten piglets and training because of her interest in the new initiative. The group also uses the maggots from the wastes in the pig farm as a substitute feed for fish, and utilizes the proceeds from the fish to feed the chickens. Cash crops likes cassava and maize are also farmed, which helps to feed the pigs and chickens. Y-DIP has also introduced the farming of vegetables like tomatoes and various greens, on which Southeast Nigeria often relies on Northern Nigeria to supply, and whose supply can abruptly be cut off when violence erupts in the North.

Y-DIP has proven very successful and after only a few years, they have grown their farm from an initial 100 chickens, to 500 today. The number of pigs are also up to 200. Each of the thirty members takes home an income between 5,000 to 10,000 Naira a month, which represents double the income of local farmers. More importantly, they have maintained the isusu practice to not only support the farm, but to support other community initiatives they deem important. With this money, for example, they have established a community resource center. Not only is this where they gather to problem-solve and attend meetings with invited agricultural experts who offer new initiatives to incorporate into their integrated farm, but more importantly, they have opened it up to be a gathering spot for the community. Young people meet to play tennis, use computers, watch football matches, and converse about what is happening around them.

Tobenna has partnered with the chief of his village, who has recently offered more land to Y-DIP in Adani, to share the model with neighboring villages. A similar farm is already underway in Umulokpa, whose chief was convinced by a visit to the farm in Adani, and has worked with Tobenna to identify a young leader for the initial recruitment of young people. With seed funding and initial inputs donated by Y-DIP, this group has launched, and another is underway in another neighboring village.

Tobenna has empowered other members of his group to continue this “village-to-village” recruitment strategy, while he has begun to focus on using the educational system to spread his approach. He has partnered with the Commissioner of Education in Enugu State to change the messaging in high schools and universities, so that long before they return to their villages, young people have begun to reimagine what it could mean to be a farmer. This has translated into high school visits to the Adani farm, which was so popular with the first school Tobenna approached, that the principal told several other schools, who then approached Tobenna. This also includes partnering with universities to rebrand the agricultural departments by incorporating a more practical, entrepreneurial curriculum and messaging. The agricultural department at Tobenna’s alma mater is in the process of launching its own integrated farm model on campus, which Tobenna will use to further launch his work with universities.

Tobenna graduated from Enugu State University of Science and Technology where he read Applied Microbiology and Brewing in 2005. At university, he was a student union leader and received many awards for excellence in youth development, including a certificate for leading an anti-gang campaign in which he invited gang members to participate in activities usually reserved for student union leaders. Among other positive results, this led to the disarmament and renunciation of violence of forty gang leaders.

Upon graduation, Tobenna joined the teeming army of university graduates across Nigeria who search for white collar jobs and find none. This experience awakened him to the need to explore the environment around him and take the lead in initiating income-generating solutions for himself and his classmates before social vices would take their inevitable claim on the frustrated and depressed.