Dr. Akinwumi Adesina,the President of African Development Bank has on Wednesday said the future of Nigerian youths does not lie in any country of the world but in Nigeria, West Africa.
He made this known in Lagos during the 2023 Obafemi Awolowo Prize for Leadership where he was awarded the 2023 Obafemi Awolowo Prize for Leadership Award.
Speaking further during the event, Adesina added that Nigerians must make the country a viable place for people to stay and not a place to run away from.
Adesina who said he refused to believe that the future of Nigeria’s and Africa’s youths lies in Europe, North America, Asia, or anywhere else added that he believes that their future must lie in Africa, growing well, robustly, able to create quality jobs and decent earnings for our young people.
In his words, “There is absolutely no reason in the world how we have a demographic asset that then becomes a global negative externality. Let’s take pride in ourselves and let’s make our demographic asset our economic asset globally. I firmly believe that their future lies right here in Nigeria,” he said.
“Nations that develop do all they can to keep their best human capital at home and additional resource skills elsewhere, with flexible immigration and labour policies,” the former Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture added, decrying the migration to other countries by Nigerians, especially youths, as according to him, does not develop sustainability.
According to Adesina, “While one might argue that our growing diaspora is good as they send back billions of dollars, higher than the oil revenue that we have, this is not the way to develop sustainably”.
He said AfDB unveiled a $614m programme to support Nigeria’s digital and creative enterprise to create 6.3 million jobs and add N6.4bn to the economy. “I always say to myself, how can we have 477 million people under the age of 35 and there are no financial institutions? That means we have missing institution and market failure problems and that is why the African Development Bank decided that we will create what we call Youths Entrepreneurship Investment Bank,” Adesina added.
Former heads of state, state governors, royal fathers and other distinguished Nigerians graced the event.
Past winners of the prestigious award are Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka; former South African President, Thabo Mbeki; and lawyer, Aare Afe Babalola.
“The choice of Dr Akinwumi Adesina can only be described as having been very well done. He represents the best of Nigeria, hardworking, diligent, brilliant, forward-looking, and deeply patriotic,” Gowon stated.
