THE President, Living Faith Church (worldwide), aka Winners’ Chapel, Bishop David Oyedepo on Friday deplored the youth unemployment in Nigeria, declaring that about 50 million Nigerian youth are unemployed.
He quoted the Global Hunger Index report of 2014, saying, “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.”
Oyedepo who is the chancellor of Landmark University, Omu-Aran, Irepodun local government area of Kwara state spoke at the second convocation ceremony of the university.
573 students graduated; comprising 59 First Class, 226 Second Class upper, 276 second class Lower degree graduands while 12 were in the Third Class category.
The cleric painted a gloomy state of the nation, regretting that poverty level in the country is on the increase with an estimated 70 percent of the population, mostly rural dwellers living on less than $1.25 per day.
He said, “Nigeria is blessed with abundant natural resources that she 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 total labour force and contributing 40 percent 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 percent of the population live below poverty line.”
Oyedepo explained that it is high time Nigeria charted “a pathway 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 her resources ended up as a way of getting fund to agriculture projects without significant contribution to its development”, he said.
