According to Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s (LP) presidential candidate, the North-East region’s high rate of youth unemployment is the main cause of insecurity there because thousands of young people there begin each day without access to food or housing.
This was said by Obi on Monday during a meeting in Abuja with several North-East stakeholders.
He claims that the North-East has the capacity to both feed the nation and produce enough cash crops for export, in addition to having a vast amount of arable land. If he wins the presidential election the following year, he promised that his administration will make that a reality.
When idle youth engage in legal activities, such as agriculture and commerce, he claimed, insecurity will be a thing of the past and the nation will move from consumption to production.
Obi said, “Youth unemployment is nearing 50 per cent, so you have millions of youth in their productive age doing nothing, not knowing where the next meal will come from. With that situation, you are going to have crises; crisis of insecurity, crisis of banditry, crisis of kidnapping.
“What I and Datti (Baba-Ahmed) are promising you is number one; that we have the best combination, the best experience to start tackling issue of security and I will say this, hold us responsible. Let nobody tell you we cannot solve issue of insecurity in Nigeria, it can be stopped and done very quickly.
“We want to unite Nigeria, we want to see Nigerians being proud of their country again. We want to remove Nigeria from where it is today, from consumption to production, and when you do that, you start pulling people out of poverty.”
