Varsity don chides FG’s indifference to high rate of unemployment

A University don, Prof. Emmanuel Chike Onwuka of the Edo State University, has chided the federal government for its weak ideology to unemployment high rate, saying that its increasing level stands at 29.6 percent while the poverty rate stands at 70 percent thereby posing serious threat to the social economic stability of the people and by extension the political stability of the country.

Professor Onwuka who spoke to journalists on Sunday in Asaba during a lecture he delivered on ‘Poverty and The Crisis it Portends,’ said that both put together will be market fundamentalism, holds the Nigerian people hostage as the struggle to improve their standard of living.

He said that government at all levels in Nigeria must concentrate on the developing policies and programmes that will encourage investment in sectors that will help decrease the alarming poverty level in the Country and also discourage the threat to Nigeria’s stability that poverty currently poses.

While lamenting that Nigeria is one of the most endowed Countries in the world, Professor Onwuka disclosed that poverty and its devastating imparts were deepening at a swift speed in the country at present. On the way forward, the Professor of Economics said “for poverty to go away development must occur through the restitution of investment in poverty laden sector through small scales industrialization, the oil industry also needs to be managed transparently in order to unleash the strength of the industry on the poverty reductions endeavours in the country.”

Professor Onwuka therefore said that the challenges created by poverty can create opportunities for a change of direction in the political economy, adding that the leaders should seek for industrialization and not just economic growth. Meanwhile the Committee for Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) has said that restructuring is the only alternative solution to Nigeria nation at this present challenging period of economic recession under the All Progressive Congress lead administration.

The national President of the group, Mr. Malaki Ugwummadu who spoke to journalists in Asaba yesterday at a 2-day national strategy leadership conference said too much power at the central have been the bane of under-development of the country.

While explaining that it is only restructuring that can bring out the numerous challenges that the country has been faced over the years, the CDHR President said that the too many powers at the central has been traced as the root cause of bad leadership in the country.

He however reiterated that the strategy leadership conference was put up as a means to reigniting the driving force and repositioning the mind of its members on some of the problem they were encountering in the course of fighting or defending the oppressed.