• ‘We have all it takes to lead our country’
• They should vote him out in 2019, say Fayose, PDP
• President’s comment misconstrued, aide claims
• Osinbajo backs young citizens for elective positions
A statement credited to President Muhammadu Buhari to the effect that Nigerian youths are lazy has elicited angry reactions from eminent citizens and groups across the country.During a business conference in London, the United Kingdom on Wednesday, Buhari was quoted to have said that the youths “do nothing” and want everything for “free” in the oil-rich country.
“A lot of them (Nigerian youths) 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,” Buhari allegedly said.
In reaction, Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose called on the youths to show Buhari that they were not lazy and uneducated by voting against him in 2019. He said it was painful that the president could describe youths in Nigeria that were daily struggling to make a living under a harsh economy as lazy people.
Fayose, who spoke through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, 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.”
The governor noted that “At 19, Buhari left secondary school to join the army. At 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 the defunct North Eastern State, minister of petroleum, chairman of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and head of state. Where can our youths get such opportunities today?
“On 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.” He told the president to stop de-marketing Nigeria and its people in foreign lands, reminding Nigerians how he (Buhari) said in an interview with the 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 had made life impossible for the youths, asked: “As military governor of the North Eastern State, what difference did Buhari make in the lives of youths in the North?”He described Buhari as an analogue president. “There is no connection between him and the youths because I doubt if he can even use a 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.”
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in a statement by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, yesterday, stated that Nigerian youths, by their demonstrated industry, could not in any way be described by anybody as lazy.
“Nigerians find it extremely shocking that President Buhari could make such a false, derogatory and unpatriotic comment against our citizens at a time the nation was looking up to him to properly present our potential to the global business community.”
The party lamented that “it is alarming that at every international event, the president makes it a favorite past time to de-market, paint and denigrate our dear nation and her citizens in very negative light, an indication that he has stopped believing in Nigeria.”About 100 youths who are aspiring to different political offices ahead of 2019 elections yesterday said they had all it takes to lead the country.
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