By Teodros Kiros
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has accused a little known Muslim extremist group of staging a wave of church burnings to provoke communal tensions in the Horn of Africa country. Meles expressed concern about regional instability, but dismissed the possibility of a North African-style popular uprising in Ethiopia. Meles says he is aware of attempts to end the ruling party’s nearly 20 years in power, both from within and without. But in a meeting with reporters, he rejected suggestions of a people’s revolution similar to those confronting entrenched authoritarian governments in North Africa and the Middle East. “It’s simply not possible. The circumstances for it do not exist. That does not mean some people will not try.’ “ – Peter Heinlein (VOA)
The Prime Minister is indeed blind to the lives of most Ethiopians who are swimming in the murky waters of poverty, political darkness and civil boredom. The Ethiopian youth are marred in a vicious cycle of poverty, which the “revolutionary democracy” of EPRDF twenty years ago promised to eradicate; and ten years ago revolutionary democracy devolved in to the living nightmare of tyranny/oligarchy framed by ethnocracy. The promise of eradicating poverty is now replaced by acceptable levels of unemployment of Ethiopian youth.
The naked reality, which glares to the Prime Minister’s palace in, clearly summarized below:
Over half of Ethiopia’s population consists of young people between the ages of 15-24 years. Many of the youth face diverse problems and live with constant life challenges. Especially in urban centers of the country, the number of delinquent juveniles is increasing. In Addis Ababa alone it is believed that there are over 100,000 people living on the streets, and more than half of these are young people. This number is increasing every day due to poverty and migration of people from the rural to urban areas in search of a better life. It is also due to children losing parents to AIDS and other causes. These young people are often involved in socially undesirable practices, such as frequenting brothels and drug and alcohol abuse. Many youth commit crimes such as robbery and other offenses. According to police reports, more than half of all the arrested criminals are young people. Other available evidence also indicates that young people commit most criminal offenses including drug abuse and other harmful practices in Ethiopia.
Alcohol and drug abuse among teens is on the rise, underscoring the need for more teen rehabilitation programs and centers to deal with this growing problem.
The mushrooming of foreign videocassettes and films in the country is also believed to negatively affect the personality of today’s youth in particular. Being left with low or no access to recreational centers or to leisure time activities, a number of youths are flooding to video shows most of which are full of violent, immoral and pornographic acts. What is still worse is that these films make the youths develop negative attitude towards their own culture, country and people. These young people seem to know nothing good about their homeland except that they despise it by comparing it with that of affluent societies. As a result it is not uncommon to observe immoral acts they often emulate from the film-shows. Since they spend much of their time watching films and practicing other socially undesirable activities, they fail to regularly attend their classes and acquire proper knowledge, which determines their future.
One of the major factors that seriously aggravate the problems of the youth is the absence of sufficient employment opportunities. A lot of school dropouts and those who complete high school education but with no opportunity to join higher learning institutes could not but remain dependent on their parents or guardians’ meager resources. Unfortunately, a considerable number of them spend almost half of their time in such a state. As a result, those youths who particularly come from low income parents often become hopeless and involved in prostitution and end up contracting HIV/AIDS. Frustrated by the challenges of getting reliable means of subsistence, some young people seem to have lost faith and a vision of tomorrow’s world. The situation calls for an immediate attention to assist in curbing the present trend of the young in Ethiopia. It is with this understanding and a sense of responsibility to serve God and people that Youth Impact came to existence.” – Youth Impact Ethiopia
This is the reality in the ground, which will soon wake up the Prime Minister from the slumbers of his deep sleep. The time bomb is ticking. Is the regime is still sleeping long hours, thinking that the intimidated Ethiopian poor are going to resign to their deplorable condition?