Nigerian legislators say, politicians excepted of course, you should retire at 60 to make way for the young to get employment; the concept of making the old unemployed instead of the young!

Retirement is European culture, not Yoruba culture. Retirement was not what our people ever did. Old age did not stop them from farming, only infirmity did. In my day, we children were expected to accompany the old, not the young, to the farm to be taught farming-craft, and hunting for small animals. Iya, my grandmother with whom I lived, did not have to work since my parents sent her regular allowance, but she never stopped working, daily, as she had done since her youth, amongst other jobs, making akara (bean cake) to sell to passing school children every morning, and gaari (casava powder) to sell in her stall every market day.

The 5-day working week also is European culture, not Yoruba culture. European capitalists used it to squeeze every ounce of work possible for the pittance they paid their workers. In reality, Friday was the looking-forward-to-the-weekend day whilst Saturday and Sunday were no-work-at-all days. In other words, no reasonable amount of work was done Friday to Sunday. Splitting the European working week into two – Monday to Thursday, and Friday to Sunday – makes sense; it would rectify the waste of weekend days. A person would work either Monday to Thursday or Friday to Sunday. It meant we got two ‘shifts’ for each week, meaning twice as many workers as currently; not a bad solution to the ‘youth unemployment’ crisis. 

In Yoruba culture, work is synonymous with living; something the dead don’t do. Work is not the same thing as employment; employment is what you did to fill your time. In our Yoruba Nation, we must shift emphasis from ‘employment’ to ‘work’.