80% of Nigerian youths are unemployed – CBN
Category: Nigerian National News
The Central Bank of Nigeria has said 80 per cent of Nigerian youths are still unemployed.
This is despite the repeated release of
figures by the National Bureau of Statistics showing that the Nigerian
economy had been creating millions of jobs in recent years.
Only last week, the NBS announced that the economy created about 1.2 million jobs in the 2013 fiscal year.
But the Special Assistant on Sustainable
Banking, CBN, Dr. Aisha Mahmood, on Thursday disclosed that
unemployment was still a severe threat to Nigeria’s economy.
Mahmood spoke while delivering a paper
on ‘Nigerian Sustainable Banking Principle’ during the 2014 World
Environment Day programme organised by the Federal Ministry of
Environment in Abuja.
She said, “As the population is growing,
the resources that we all depend on, the food, energy, water, is
declining. The demand for these resources will rise exponentially by the
year 2030, with the world needing about 50 per cent more food, 45 per
cent more energy and 30 per cent more water.
“In Nigeria, there is the issue of youth
and employment. 70 per cent of the 80 million youths in Nigeria are
either unemployed or underemployed. We are all witnesses to what
happened recently during the immigration recruitment exercise and this
is simply because 80 per cent of the Nigerian youth are unemployed.”
Although Mahmood noted that Nigeria’s
economy remained the largest in Africa, she said that the country was
using fossil fuel to achieve the growth trajectory.
She stated that the country’s economic
growth was as a result of its abundant oil reserves, and warned that the
flaring of gas from oil may negatively affect the citizens if not
properly managed.
She said, “Nigeria has been flaring gas
since the discovery of oil in the 1950s. We produce and burn about 20
billion cubic meters of gas annually and this is enough to meet our
energy needs. Remember we said we didn’t have electricity, whereas we
can provide electricity with this gas that we flare.
“Also, when we burn this gas, we produce
green house gases that affect our livelihood and the livelihood of
people that live around that area.”
Mahmood also lamented the high number of
persons living below the poverty line in the country as well as the
about 120 million persons in the country that lack access to
electricity.
She said the above problems were major
reasons why stakeholders in the financial sector came together to
develop and adopt the Nigerian Sustainable Banking Principle.
In her remarks, the Minister of
Environment, Mrs. Laurentia Mallam, explained that the 2014 WED was
aimed at addressing climate change and the impact of the rising sea
level on the environment.
She said, “In Nigeria, the impacts of
climate change manifest in erosion and landslides in the East, drought
and desertification in the North, rising sea levels in the coastal areas
and flooding across the nation.
“The transformation agenda of Mr.
President in the environment sector is aimed at addressing all forms of
land degradation through specialised projects.”
Source: Punch
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