Former Vice President and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, has advocated the creation of more employment as a solution to incessant migration of Nigerian youths to other countries, with all the dangers involved.
He also recommended what he called ‘inclusive government’ that does not engender crisis which he said will stem the ill-fated migration of Nigerians.
Atiku Abubakar made the recommendation today, Sunday, to mark the United Nations International Migrants Day.
The PDP chieftain said, in a statement by his media office in Abuja, that the major driver of migration, which at times are ill-fated like in the case of Libya, is the search of better life and opportunity.
Atiku laments the current situation in the country where three million jobs, according to the NBS, are being lost annually in the last two years, adding that such situation had complicated the already bad unemployment.
“Millions of our youths have been rendered jobless and, with no prospects of opportunities, they are compelled to take the suicidal flight.
Atiku, who holds the traditional title of Waziri Adamawa, advised governments at all levels to create the enabling environment that will attract and sustain investments that will create jobs for the army of unemployed.
“The chances of a young person with a job and opportunity at home taken a suicidal flight in search of a better life will become an exception and not the rule.”
He emphasised that migration is caused by poverty and insecurity in the original countries of the migrants, stressing that governments in Africa, including Nigeria to create an environment conducive for economic progress and employment generation.
According to Atiku, a fair and inclusive government would spread available opportunity to all citizens and encourage those with entrepreneurial inclination to start businesses and factories to absorb the teeming population of the unemployed, thus making unbridled migration unnecessary.
The former Vice President, however, appealed that “migrants should be treated with decency because they are humans, in apparent reference to the harrowing experience and stereotype which migrants are being subjected to all over the World over.
He said that migrants do not usually choose to migrate if it were not unpleasant social, economic and political conditions in many countries that forcefully uproot them and turn them into such condition.
These are the people, he said, that are seeking new homes, security, employment and a better future.
Atiku called on all stakeholders to find ways of dealing squarely and in a humane manner, with the challenges thrown up by the reality of migration in the contemporary World, even as he regretted that one of the worst forms of maltreatment, which a migrant can experience, is the large-scale enslavement of young and helpless Nigerian and African migrants in Libya which recently drew global attention.[myad]