{"id":9803,"date":"2016-07-05T09:50:45","date_gmt":"2016-07-05T09:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=9803"},"modified":"2016-07-05T12:50:37","modified_gmt":"2016-07-05T12:50:37","slug":"obasanjo-warns-african-leaders-youth-unemployment-is-a-time-bomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=9803","title":{"rendered":"Obasanjo warns African leaders: &#8220;Youth unemployment is a time bomb&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\" async=\"\"><\/script><br \/>\n <!-- www.deltanewsroom.com --><br \/>\n <ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-2163942495525027\" data-ad-slot=\"1411897411\" data-ad-format=\"auto\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Former president Obasanjo has appealed to African leaders to find a lasting solution to youth unemployment in their regions. <a href=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Obasanjo.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9804\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9804\" src=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Obasanjo.jpg\" alt=\"Obasanjo\" width=\"259\" height=\"194\" \/><\/a><span id=\"more-7188\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>According to Obasanjo, should the African countries not address the issue of unemployment, there might be an outburst of violence. Obasanjo made this known when he played host to the newly appointed president of ECOWAS Commission, Marcel Alain de Souza, who led a four-man delegation to his residence in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital.<\/p>\n<p><code><!-- BEGIN JUMIA --><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/marketing.net.jumia.com.ng\/ts\/i3556158\/tsc?amc=aff.jumia.44339.52450.53881&amp;tst=!!TIMESTAMP!!\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/marketing.net.jumia.com.ng\/ts\/i3556158\/tsv?amc=aff.jumia.44339.52450.53881&amp;tst=!!TIMESTAMP!!\" alt=\"NG-[C:G.Comp,B:Hp,Wk:2716,Dim:336X280]:Laptops\" width=\"336\" height=\"280\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a><\/code><\/p>\n<p><!-- END JUMIA --><a href=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Alayo-2.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9619\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-9619\" src=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Alayo-2-300x250.jpg\" alt=\"Alayo 2\" width=\"300\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Alayo-2-300x250.jpg 300w, http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Alayo-2.jpg 559w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>He said: \u201cOn the issue of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, I have maintained that all of us in West Africa, in our different countries and indeed in Africa, we are sitting on a keg of gun powder for as long as we do not pay adequate attention to youth unemployment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA situation where more than 50% of our youths are unemployed is extremely dangerous. We now have a situation in part of West Africa where people now are dying of starvation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs it that we are not producing enough food or if we are producing what we produced evenly, whatever it is it is shameful, it has led us to be begging international community for supply of food to any part of West Africa, it is not right\u200e?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to Obasanjo, who is currently a special envoy of ECOWAS to Guinea-Bissau, the expectations from the sub-regional body when it was established 41 years ago were yet to be met.<\/p>\n<p>He said: \u201cSo the attention that we should have paid to the original objectives which is economic integration, economic development, socio economic, economic progress, we have been diverted. \u201cOf course peace and security is the foundation of any socio-economic development and growth. Of necessity we have to pay attention to base on security.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy involvement in Guinea-Bissau was an enduring involvement. \u201cI have been in that development when I was in government as President of Nigeria and Nigeria and ECOWAS appointing me as special envoy that kept my involvement and my interest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to say this that most of these conflicts, most of these causes of insecurity or breach of insecurity were because adequate attention had not been paid to what I will call inclusiveness, inclusiveness in terms of political, economic and social development of all our countries, inclusiveness gender wise, inclusiveness social wise, inclusiveness religious wise, inclusiveness ethnic wise and we must appeal to our leaders in our sub region to take these issue of inclusion seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Obasanjo had on Tuesday, June 21 rued that the 774 local government areas across the country have been rendered \u201cimpotent\u201dand almost \u201cbastardized,\u201d following the massive encroachment into their affairs by the state governors.<\/p>\n<p>He said the glaring injustices and overbearing influence of the governors which they hand down routinely to the LGAs are such that they cannot tolerate it should the Federal Government elect to treat them the same way<\/p>\n<p><code><script src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\" async=\"\"><\/script><br \/>\n <!-- www.deltanewsroom.com --><br \/>\n <ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-2163942495525027\" data-ad-slot=\"1411897411\" data-ad-format=\"auto\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/code><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former president Obasanjo has appealed to African leaders to find a lasting solution to youth unemployment in their regions. According to Obasanjo, should the African countries not address the issue of unemployment, there might be an outburst of violence. Obasanjo made this known when he played host to the newly appointed president of ECOWAS Commission, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Obasanjo.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-2y7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9803"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9807,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9803\/revisions\/9807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}