"50m youths are jobless in Nigeria" - Oyedepo

Presiding Bishop of Living Faith Church Worldwide (Winners’ Chapel) David Oyedepo said yesterday that about 50 million Nigerian youths were jobless.

He added that poverty level in the country was soaring with an estimated 70 per cent of the population, mostly rural dwellers, living on less than $1.25 per day.

Quoting from the Global Hunger Index report of 2014, Bishop Oyedepo said: “Nigeria is among the countries in the world faced with a high level of hunger threat despite its efforts at reducing hunger in the last 25 years.”

The cleric, who is the chancellor of Landmark University, Omu-Aran, Irepodun Local Government Area, Kwara State, spoke at the institution’s second convocation ceremony.

“Nigeria is blessed with abundant natural resources that it has not been able to successfully harness to the benefit of its teeming population.

“Agriculture is the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy, employing approximately two-thirds of the country’s total labour force and contributing 40 per cent to gross domestic product (GDP). Nigeria was ranked 40th out of 79 on the GHI and 156 out of 187 on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2011 human index development.

“According to the data from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), 2012, poverty is widespread in the rural areas, where 80 per cent of the population live below poverty line,” Bishop Oyedepo said.

He said Nigeria’s poverty level could lead to micronutrient deficiency, erosion of citizens’ well-being and development, reduce productivity and immunity level as well as increase sickness and disease.

He urged Nigerians to “wake up to the reality of charting a path for strengthening the reins of our economy via productive and creative engagements in entrenching agro-enterprise”.

“Governments over the years had proffered policy solutions to agricultural development challenges and indeed implemented a number of them. Our dilemma is that the policies have not seemed to have addressed the food security challenge.

“A number of efforts of government or statutory responsibilities considered effective for attaining agricultural development have not really been effective.

“For example, the Nigerian Agriculture Development Bank is today moribund despite several years of operation and several billions of Naira of invested fund. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) agricultural credit scheme with such lofty objective in which the nation had invested billions of its resources ended up as a way of getting fund to agriculture projects without significant contribution to its development,” the cleric said.