‘Half of Nigerian youths remain unemployed, underemployed’

The Action Aid Nigeria (AAN) has said 50 percent of Nigerian youths are either unemployed or underemployed.

The humanitarian and resilience manager of AAN, David Habba, in a briefing in Lafia, Nasarawa State, on the agency’s role said, “Due to this level of unemployment or underemployment, Nigeria currently is ranked the fifth nation in the world for number of citizens migrating to Europe in search of better living conditions or in the effort to escape poverty and conflicts.”

He noted that there are many people living in poverty in Nigeria as at March 2019 with the World Economic Forum (WEF) estimating 90 million Nigerians living in poverty.

“AAN believes that poverty is manmade, but that poverty can be eradicated once there is commitment and will. When people’s access to livelihoods opportunities are denied, when there is no investment in education or agriculture, when there is no people’s capacity to respond and adapt to stresses such as climate change, there is only one result – poverty,” he explained.

The AAN official acknowledged government’s steps to tackle poverty but called for improvement based on the resources available and capacity of Nigeria.

He noted that government programmes like the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) was well conceived, but that the challenges in implementation such as alleged corruption in the system, low capacity among other things should be addressed.