Some Nigerian politicians have reacted to President Muhammadu Buhari’s comment that Nigerian youths are lazy.
Buhari, last Wednesday, during a panel discussion at the Commonwealth Business Forum in Westminster, London, said that many Nigerian youth are uneducated, not ready to work and dependent on revenue from oil to survive.
Buhari, who declared earlier in April that he was seeking re-election in 2019, said: “A lot of them haven’t been to school and they are claiming, you know, that Nigeria has been an oil producing country, therefore, they should sit and do nothing and get housing, health care, education, free”.
The comment touched the West Africa’s largest economy, which suffers from high unemployment and lacks basic government services, including running water and electricity.
Reacting to the comment, the former Vice President and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and ex-Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, former aide to President Goodluck Jonathan, Reno Omokri, among others, have taken a swipe at President Muhammadu Buhari for labelling Nigerian youths “uneducated and lazy,” describing the comment as shameful.
Atiku, a 2019 Presidential hopeful in a status update on his Facebook wall, yesterday, described Nigerian youths as enterprising and “The backbone to our success.”
While lauding their entrepreneurial spirit, Atiku said what the youths need is support and appreciation, adding that with a little push; they could match their counterparts anywhere in the world.
“I will never refer to Nigeria’s youths as people who sit and do nothing. They are hardworking. I should know, I have thousands of youths working for me all over the country who have been the backbone to our success.
“, I have always said oil is not Nigeria’s greatest asset. Our greatest asset is our youths, who created Nollywood out of nothing and an entertainment industry that is second to none in Africa.
“Our youth are charting new frontiers; creating a huge technology industry on their own. Their entrepreneurial spirit, work ethic, and creative abilities are things of pride and should be applauded, encouraged and nurtured,” Atiku said.
On his part, Fani-Kayode questioned the rationale in the President’s remark about his own people saying, “What type of leader takes pleasure in slandering, shaming, denigrating and humiliating his own people before the world? What type (sic) of man tells foreigners that his own children are lazy and unproductive?”
Also expressing dismay at the President’s uncomplimentary remarks is Reno Omokri.
“How can you in one breath say that your country’s youths are lazy and don’t want to work and in the next, you appeal to foreign investors to come and invest in Nigeria,?” he asked, noting that the Commander-in-Chief may have jeopardized his mission of attracting foreign investors into the country”, Omokri stated.
Similarly, the Action Democratic Party (ADP) says its attention has been drawn to the comments of President Muhammadu Buhari at the CHOGM held in London where the president described Nigerian youth as lazy and those who want to sit down and do nothing because they feel that Nigeria was an oil producing nation.
The ADP Publicity Secretary in Lagos, Prince Adeoye Adelaja, speaking during the commissioning of the party’s secretariat in Alimosho, yesterday, said that he was shocked that a president of a country can make such derogatory remarks about his fellow citizens; citizens that he swore an oath to make lives better for.
He said that, “at such a stage, it was expected of the president to use the opportunity to woo investors, clearly stating that Nigerian youth were equipped with skills that can help them make the best out of their investment but instead, our president decided to take a swipe at our young and vibrant population.”
The party says that “a country is assessed not by their old men but by their youth who are the strength and the builders of the said country.”
Adelaja also pointed out that “he is a youth and has seen how his fellow youth work menial jobs, put themselves through school and create wealth for themselves in a choking business environment like that of Nigeria presently under Buhari. “
He argued that “for a man who has supervised the loss of over 10 million jobs since 2015, the comments are even more insulting.
“I have never seen any group of people anywhere in the world more determined to make it against all odds than our youths,” Adelaja said.
Another presidential hopeful Adamu Garba said Buhari was being “humorous with our national pride”.
The common-sense Senator representing Bayelsa East constituency, Ben Murray Bruce said “anyone who calls Nigerian youth lazy has not seen things correctly”.
Bruce stated, “Whoever says Nigerian youths are lazy should just buy a mirror and he or she will see the real definition of laziness! I have over 1000 Nigerian youth in my employ and not one of them is lazy.”
“The government never created anything for me, I feed from my hustle and yet they say we are lazy,” said one tweet.
Some Nigerian youth, who reacted to the comment, accused the president of passing on the blame as usual, while others gave instances of their colleagues doing well without government support.
Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party has replied President Muhammadu Buhari, stating that Nigerian youths, by their demonstrated industry, cannot in any way be described by anybody as lazy.
It said Nigerians find it extremely shocking that President Buhari could make such comment and described it as false, derogatory and unpatriotic comment against Nigerian citizens at a time the nation was looking up to him to properly present its potential to the global business community.
President Buhari had while speaking during a panel discussion at the Commonwealth Business Forum in Westminster in London last Wednesday, described many Nigerian youths as lazy and not ready to work.
Rather, he said they were after what he called freebies.
But the main opposition party in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan in Abuja, yesterday, described the President’s outburst as alarming and shocking.
He said it was unfortunate that the President uses every opportunity of his international engagements to de-market the country.
“Here is a President, whose administration has in its three years of governance, contributed nothing towards providing opportunities for our youths and who has not initiated or implemented any development project or set up any industry to provide jobs for our aspiring youths.
“Here is a President under whose watch, factories and businesses have shut down resulting in over 24 million job losses and under whom no meaningful foreign direct investment has been attracted to the country.”
Ologbondiyan added that the President has been watching Nigeria youths struggling all over the country without doing anything to ameliorate their plight.
According to him, “Here is a President who daily watches Nigerian youths sweating on menial jobs under very strenuous conditions on the streets of Abuja, Jos, Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, Kaduna, Maiduguri, Bauchi, Calabar, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Onitsha and other major cities, yet he unsympathetically described them as lazy.
“These are the same set of Nigerians who, upon being afforded the right opportunities in other countries of the world, are known to have excelled in various fields of endeavour.
“Nigerians can now see that when the PDP accused President Buhari of de-marketing our nation, we were not playing politics.
“It is however saddening that after de-marketing his own generation, President Buhari is set to destroy the future of younger Nigerians.”
He said since the President has gone ahead to denigrate Nigerian youths, who he claimed form the bulk of the nation’s workforce as lazy and lovers of freebies, how could he expect any foreign investor to bring in investment into the country.
He said it was disheartening that these same youths were the same young persons who formed the highest demography of voters that put their confidence in the President in 2015.
In another development, the Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has called on youths in Nigeria to show President Muhammadu Buhari that they are not lazy and uneducated by voting against him in 2019.
Fayose said it is painful that the President could describe youths in Nigeria that are daily struggling to make a living under a harsh economy as lazy people.
Speaking through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, the governor said: “Contrary to the morale-killing comment of the President, Nigerian youths are hardworking, intelligent and enterprising. Their future was mortgaged by past leaders like President Buhari, who had everything at their beck and call as youths. I imagine the youths of today having half of the opportunities available in the 50s and 60s.
“At 19, President Buhari left Secondary School to join the Army. At age 21 (two years in the army), he was commissioned a second lieutenant and appointed Platoon Commander of the Second Infantry Battalion in Abeokuta, Nigeria. Within his 24 years in the Army, the President was Governor of North Eastern State, Minister of Petroleum, Chairman of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and Head of State. Where can our youths get such opportunity today?
“Under his watch as Minister of Petroleum, N2.8 billion went missing from the accounts of the NNPC in Midlands Bank in the United Kingdom. That N2.8 billion as at that time is like $2.8 billion (over N1 trillion) now and here is he insulting the youths whose existence his likes mortgaged.”
While telling the President to stop de-marketing Nigeria and its people in foreign lands, Governor Fayose reminded Nigerians how he (Buhari) said in an interview with UK Telegraph in February 2016 that some Nigerians in the United Kingdom were disposed to criminality and should not be granted asylum there.
The governor, who insisted that the negative foundation the likes of President Buhari laid for Nigeria has made life impossible for the youths, asked: “As Military Governor of the North Eastern State, what difference did President Buhari make in the lives of youths in the North?”
He described Buhari as an analogue President, saying: “There is no connection between him and the youths because I doubt if he can even use common android phone. One can’t really blame the President; he does not understand what is obtainable in the country anymore. That’s the reason he was still seeing West Germany and Deutschmark in 2015.”
Urging the youths to use their votes to send President Buhari out of office in 2019, Governor Fayose said: “I did say before now that majority of the youths that voted for President Buhari in 2015 never knew who they were voting for because they did not experience him (Buhari) as a Military ruler.