President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, said that Nigeria was the only country where the youths of Nigeria have hope. He continued by saying that Nigerians need to make their nation a desirable place to live rather than a destination to flee.
Speaking at the occasion in Lagos, on Wednesday, the former Minister of Agriculture, who received the 2023 Obafemi Awolowo Prize for Leadership Award, said, “I refuse to believe that the future of Nigeria’s and Africa’s youths lie in Europe, North America, Asia, or anywhere else. I believe that their future must lie in Africa, growing well, robustly, able to create quality jobs and decent earnings for our young people.
“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.
Mr. Adesina criticised Nigerians for emigrating, particularly young people, saying that this does not promote sustainability. He went on to say that the AfDB has introduced a $614 million initiative to help Nigeria’s creative and digital industries generate N6.4 billion in new revenue and 6.3 million new employment.
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“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.
“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.”
“I always say to myself, how can we have 477 million people under the age of 35 and there are no financial institution? 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.”
Previous recipients of the esteemed honour include lawyer Aare Afe Babalola, former South African President Thabo Mbeki, and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka.