The Minister of Youths and Sports
Development, Sunday Dare, has said Olusegun Obasanjo failed to develop a
“sustainable model” that tackles unemployment during and after his tenure as
president.
The minister stated this while
reacting to a comment credited to Obasanjo, in an interview with FRIDAY OLOKOR.
Obasanjo had said described the
rising youth unemployment in the country as a time bomb.
However, Sunday Dare, in his response, queried Obasanjo’s performance towards tackling unemployment.
“What did President Obasanjo do
to address youth unemployment when he was in power for eight years?” the
minister asked.
Sunday Dare added that “If he
(Obasanjo) had built and laid down a sustainable model, subsequent governments
would have followed through because it is not enough to say it is a time bomb.”
The minister, however, defended
President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
He said the present
administration has tried to change the fundamentals of youth engagement, away
from just getting a job in a government agency.
Sunday Dare said: “The Buhari
government is doing something different. Youth unemployment and general unemployment
have been with us for a long time, it didn’t start just six years ago; it
didn’t start on this President’s watch. You must also link it with the
international economic trajectory. Even before COVID-19, you saw economies
struggle from North America to Europe and the rest of the world. Revenues were
dwindling, nations were running into massive debts, including America, and then
you saw what happened with the COVID-19 pandemic; negative (economic) growth
all over. The data are there, it is a global village, Nigeria is not an island,
Nigeria is not insulated from these global shocks and what happened eventually.
You saw the level of poverty rising, people losing their employment, more
people becoming underemployed, some unemployed. So, I am just giving you a
realistic perspective.
“Yes, it is worrisome that we
have increasing unemployment among the youth but it also cuts across. And more
needs to be done by both private and public sectors. Therefore, I want to focus
on what this administration has been doing consciously and deliberately. We
have seen in six years an administration that has tried to change the
fundamentals of youth engagement, away from just getting a job in a government
agency, laying emphasis on training and entrepreneurship, we have seen how
about 35 to 40 youth-focused programmes were created and youths have benefited
from them. We have seen deliberate efforts to frontally attack youth employment
through multi-faceted approaches, by trying to restart the economy, providing
necessary infrastructures. So, when you look at it, there is no tailor-made
solution to youth unemployment and the challenge every government has is to
find a way to bring down youth unemployment.
“As a ministry, we have also
found out that it is not just about offering letters of employment, we can turn
our youths to wealth creators, entrepreneurs through SMEs and we have seen
quite a number of programmes, we have the GEEP, the BoI giving out various
types of loans, we have seen the Nigerian Youth Investment Forum programme; we
have seen SMEDAN, we have the Ministry of Trade and Investment doing several
programmes and when you look at the whole gamut of these programmes, they are
all aimed at helping youths that are unemployed get employed, providing the
necessary capital and access to credit that they need to become self-starters
and entrepreneurs.
“Also, let us look at government
policies, some of them deliberate, to restart and energise the industries and
other sectors of the economy that can take them (youths) in.”
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