Existentialism and the Nigerian Experience: Alienation, Authenticity, and Identity Crisis Among Urban Youth

This study applies existentialist philosophy to the experience of urban Nigerian youth, examining how conditions of poverty, unemployment, and social displacement generate existential crises of alienation and identity among young people in Port Harcourt, located in Nigeria's South South geopolitical zone. Existentialist philosophy, through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Frantz Fanon, provides powerful conceptual tools for understanding the subjective dimensions of social marginalisation, yet these frameworks have been insufficiently applied to the Nigerian urban context. Using a descriptive philosophical and qualitative design, the study conducted phenomenological interviews with 30 unemployed urban youth between the ages of 18 and 30 in Port Harcourt, supplemented by secondary existentialist and African philosophical literature published between 2020 and 2024. The study applies Sartre's concept of bad faith, Camus's notion of the absurd, and Fanon's analysis of colonial alienation to the narratives collected. Findings reveal that many respondents exhibit patterns of existential bad faith, adopting socially scripted identities, including criminal or religious extremist roles, as escapes from the anxiety of authentic self-definition in conditions of structural constraint. The study argues that Fanon's decolonial existentialism provides the most contextually appropriate framework for understanding Nigerian urban youth alienation. Keywords: existentialism, Nigerian youth, alienation, authenticity, Fanon.