President Muhammadu Buhari said some months back that ‘Many Nigerian Youths though uneducated like free things based on the notion that Nigeria is an oil – rich nation’ (While speaking at the common wealth business forum in Westminster)

Mr. President, in your speech you noted that 60 percent of the population is below 30 years of age and a lot of them have not been to school, My question is; who was responsible for training them? Were they supposed to train themselves while growing up? I do not support youths being idle or dependent on the government, (well there is no government to depend on).

But if our parents (which happen to be in your generation) trained their children, then we would not have such alarming number of illiterates in our country.
The few people, who are able to go to school, graduate and can hardly find a good job to do. Before you talk about ‘unemployability’ let us look at the genesis of this problem.

Most of the people in civil service are old men and women that have refused to retire and they continually alter their ages every year. They say that the youths are the leaders of tomorrow, but they do not even give us a chance to learn on the job.

We have professors who taught us in school and yet they hardly have tangible sustainable innovations that can be reckoned with worldwide. The School curriculums are outdated and some of the lecturers are old and frail, yet they hardly give the opportunity for the younger generation to take over.

You pump a lot of money into the health sector, yet you go abroad for treatment, who are you deceiving? Let us not even talk about the money people in your ‘hardworking’ generation have looted from this country, money meant for social and economic development.

Before you talk about how we want free housing, ask your cabinet members how many houses they have gotten illegally, and I would love to know who owns those houses with ‘KEEP OFF – EFCC’ marked boldly with red.

You complain we want to depend solely on oil, when we were still babies when your generation left agriculture to focus on oil. You want the youths to be proactive and good, yet we do not even know the vision of this great country. Please Sir, What is the Nigerian Dream? Will you willingly step down for a younger person to lead? Who are the youths you are mentoring? Have you invested enough into the youths, before looking for a return on your investment?

Finally, you are fighting corruption, I am glad to inform you that it is your ‘hard-working’ generation that you are actually fighting. You have people to look up to as the fore- fathers of our country, people like Chief MKO Abiola (1973-1998), Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (1912-1966), Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904-1996), Sir Ahmadu Bello (1910-1996), Chief Obafemi Awolowo (1909-1987) and a host of others. I wonder who we would turn to when the time comes.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. Enjoy your stay in London!

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