Former President of Nigeria Chief Olusegun Obasanjo said that the growing youth unemployment on the continent of Africa was a time-bomb that would burst into uncontrollable violence if not tackled now.
Obasanjo, who spoke while playing host to the newly appointed president of ECOWAS Commission, Marcel Alain de Souza, in his residence in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital, was vehement on the need for urgent actions to redress the predicament
The former president said, “On the issue of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, I have maintained that all of us in West Africa, in our different countries and indeed in Africa, we are sitting on a keg of gun powder for as long as we do not pay adequate attention to youth unemployment. A situation where more than 50% of our youths are unemployed is extremely dangerous. We now have a situation in part of West Africa where people now are dying of starvation.
“Is it that we are not producing enough food or if we are producing what we produced evenly, whatever it is it is shameful, it has led us to be begging international community for supply of food to any part of West Africa, it is not right?”
Souza led a four-man delegation Obasanjo, who is currently a special envoy of ECOWAS to Guinea-Bissau.
Obasanjo said expectations from the sub-regional body when it was established 41 years ago were yet to be met.
According to him, “So the attention that we should have paid to the original objectives which is economic integration, economic development, socio economic, economic progress, we have been diverted. Of course peace and security is the foundation of any socio-economic development and growth. Of necessity we have to pay attention to base on security.
“My involvement in Guinea-Bissau was an enduring involvement. I have been in that development when I was in government as President of Nigeria and Nigeria and ECOWAS appointing me as special envoy that kept my involvement and my interest. I want to say this that most of these conflicts, most of these causes of insecurity or breach of insecurity were because adequate attention had not been paid to what I will call inclusiveness, inclusiveness in terms of political, economic and social development of all our countries, inclusiveness gender wise, inclusiveness social wise, inclusiveness religious wise, inclusiveness ethnic wise and we must appeal to our leaders in our sub region to take these issue of inclusion seriously.”
In Nigeria, with its diverse ethnic nationalities, the issue of inclusive governance has remained perennial as most leaders try to pander to the pressures from their own ethnic nations. This has resulted in many ethnic groups championing and fighting for their own ethnic groups to cut a greater share of the national cake.
