In a subtle, yet cynical doomsday prediction, former President Olusegun Obasanjo has warned President Goodluck Jonathan that the inability of his administration to elaborate a comprehensive policy to address the challenges of youth unemployment is a disaster waiting to happen as the country as sitting on “a keg of gun-powder”.
“We are sitting on the keg of gun-powder in this country due to the problems of unemployment of our youths. We have almost 150 universities now in the country turning out these young Nigerians but without job opportunities for them,” Obasanjo warned in his keynote lecture at the Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute (ARMTI) in Ilorin, yesterday.
Obasanjo, renowned for his frank and bland talk said if care was not taken, the high rate of youth unemployment in Nigeria would soon trigger a serious socio-economic and political cataclysm. Although Baba made no direct reference to Jonathan, he left no one in doubt as whose responsibility it was to check the prevailing crisis of joblessness and poverty which is already causing significant security challenges with the Boko Haram menace, largely attributed to widespread poverty in the North.
Underscoring the need to develop commercial agriculture to check the galloping joblessness, Obasanjo lamented how the little gains his administration made in 1979 were almost eroded due to bad policies on agriculture until his return to power in 1999. Hear him: “We are not saying agriculture will make you a billionaire, in fact if you want to be one, don’t go into agric. Nevertheless, if we practise agriculture well, it will make you comfortable.”
Obasanjo who spoke on the topic “Managing Agriculture as a Business: A Practitioner’s Perspective,” cautioned Nigerian farmers and other stakeholders in the agribusiness to stop seeing agriculture as a peasant venture or part-time undertaken requiring little or no business management skills. He recalled that after relinquishing power to a democratically-elected government in 1979, he had to enroll at Moore Plantation Ibadan to learn modern techniques in agriculture before venturing into large-scale farming. “After 1979, when almost all gains in agriculture progress in Nigeria seemed to have been destroyed through indiscriminate importation and dumping into Nigeria, I was skeptical if we could ever make it in the area of agriculture,” he said.
“We started being self-sufficient again in vegetable oil and increased our production of rice, maize and sorghum substantially. Then the successor administration put things in reverse gear. A start-stop policy does not help agribusiness. It is heartening that the present administration has put the gear back to forward movement in a number of essential commodities. For agribusiness to be embraced and upheld, a consistent and predictable policy is needed from government, in addition to clear support in all areas of the value chain.”
The Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, who also spoke at the event, described Obasanjo as a visionary who practised what he preached in the field of agriculture. He added: “We have oil in commercial quantities but nobody drinks oil. Obasanjo added glamour to agric sector and the government of Goodluck Jonathan took it up from there. “He made agric a commercial venture and placed the nation on a good pedestal in the global market especially in the area of cassava. We are the largest producer of cassava today in the world. We used to spend N654 billion every year importing wheat flour. But today, we save N254 billion by using cassava flour.”
Also, experts from critical arms of African Union Commission (AUC), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and their developing partners dissected the state of industrialisation in Africa and other emerging economies. They suggested that it was only through critical investment in manufacturing that unemployment, unequalled growth and poverty could be tackled and the key objectives of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) achieved.
According to the AUC experts who spoke on Wednesday at a capacity-building workshop for journalists attending the ongoing yearly meetings of the AU Conference of Ministers of Economy and Finance and ECA Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, the continent cannot continue to depend on mere agriculture, exporting raw materials and commodities for the end use of industries in Western and Asian economies in the face of socio-political problems confronting the continent, especially the youth.
They said that emerging global innovation and development were tied to the industrial sector hence, African countries like Nigeria and others would be relegated to the background without the required leadership creating the right tone, image, strategic policies, investment in the industrial and energy sectors.
The experts included Director of Micro-economic Division of UNECA, Emmanuel Nnadozie; Director of Economic Affairs, AUC, Prof. Renee Kouassi; Regional Adviser and officer-in-charge, Information and Communication Services (ICS), UNECA, Yinka Adeyemi; Director of Information and Communication, AU, Mrs. Habiba Mejri-Cheikh; Jay Gribble and Deborah Mesce of Population Research Bureau (PRB); publishers and communication experts, Jenerali Ulmwengu and Tunde Fagbenle and others.
