50 Million Nigerian Youths Are Without Employment — Cleric

 

President, Living Faith Church (Worldwide), aka Winners’ Chapel, Bishop David Oyedepo on Friday deplored the rate of youth unemployment in Nigeria, declaring that about 50 million Nigerian youths are unemployed.

 

Quoting the 2014 Global Hunger Index report, the cleric said “Nigeria is among the countries in the world faced with a high level of hunger threat despite its efforts at reducing hunger in the last 25 years.”

 

Oyedepo, who is the chancellor of Landmark University, Omu-Aran, Irepodun local government area of Kwara State, spoke at the institution’s second convocation ceremony, where 573 students graduated – 59 with first class, 226 with second class upper and 276 second class lower degrees, while 12 were in the third class category.

 

The cleric painted a gloomy picture of the nation, regretting that the poverty level in the country was on the increase with an estimated 70 percent of the population, mostly rural dwellers, living on less than $1.25 per day.

 

“Nigeria is blessed with abundant natural resources that she has not been able to successfully harness to the benefit of its teeming population,” he said.

 

Oyedepo explained that it was high time Nigeria charted “a pathway for strengthening the reins of our economy via productive and creative engagements in entrenching agro-enterprise.”

 

The cleric added that: “Governments over the years had proffered policy solutions to agricultural development challenges and indeed implemented a number of them; our dilemma is that the policies have not seemed to have addressed the food security challenge. A number of efforts of government or statutory responsibilities considered effective for attaining agricultural development have not really been effective.”

 

Credits: Dailytrust.com.ng