Youth unemployment gave rise to terrorism, kidnapping in Nigeria, says Uduaghan

By Austin Ogwuda, Asaba
DELTA State governor, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan has attributed the spate of terrorism and other violent crimes in the country including kidnapping largely to the problem of youth unemployment, which he said, had been neglected over the years.
The governor who made the remark while speaking at the launching of the State’s Micro Insurance Scheme (DMIS) in Asaba, yesterday noted that the problem might not be solved overnight because lack of employment over the years created a pool of youths who are being recruited for insurgency and other nefarious activities.
His words, “over the years, we have ignored poverty. We have not paid attention to the people at the lower rung of the society. The youths have become a pool of people being recruited to become kidnappers, armed robbers, terrorists and assassins. It is not a problem we can solve in one day, but we can start from somewhere.
“The terrorism we are having in Nigeria today is as a result of poverty, we have neglected poverty for so long and in Delta State, we are committed to this micro-credit scheme which has helped us to empower our youths and remove them from this pool of poor persons”, he said.
Uduaghan described the insurance scheme as the first of its kind in the country observed that many farmers and beneficiaries of the micro-credit scheme incurred incalculable losses as a result of the flood which ravaged Delta State in 2012 because their business were not insured, noting that his administration devised micro-credit scheme which has empowered a lot of Deltans and has made them to be employers of labour, pointing out that the the insurance scheme was therefore put in place to forestall such experiences in the future.
Source: Vanguard