Oby Ezekwesili Archives - Naija Premium Gist

Oby Ezekwesili faults Sheikh Gumi’s call of amnesty for bandits

February 23, 2021 No Comments

Former Education Minister and co-convener of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) movement, Oby Ezekwesili, has faulted the calls by renowned Islamic scholar, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi and some northern leaders that the Nigerian government should give a blanket amnesty to bandits and other criminal elements.

In the past few days, Sheikh Gumi, Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed and his Zamfara counterpart, Babagana Zulum, have been clamouring for amnesty for bandits and criminal herdsmen who have been kidnapping Nigerians and students from their schools.

Gumi has been in the forefront of these demands and has, on more than one occasion, visited the heavily armed bandits in their hideouts and have been telling government to negotiate with them instead of trying to force them to lay down their weapons.

On Monday, while appearing on a Channels Television programme, ‘Politics Today’, Gumi said the bandits are misunderstood as they are only engaging in an ethnic battle.

“What people consider as banditry is actually an ethnic war by nomadic Fulanis who feel that the existence of their ethnic group is being threatened by other tribes such as Yorubas, Igbos, Hausas and others.

“One can, in fact, address them as militants. Their mission is not to kill. They want money having lost their sources of livelihood to cow rustlers. Where there are killings, they are mostly ethnic revenge because one or some of their kinsmen had been killed by people of other ethnic groups.”

However, Ezekwesili is not in support of the likes of Gumi, Mohammed and Zulum, whom she describes as insensitive and beating the drums of war.

Taking to her verified Twitter handle @obyezeks on Tuesday, Ezekwesili wrote:

“Something is noxiously off around here.

“What is with all this ratcheting up of choruses asking traumatized citizens to “show love and sing Kumbaya” for rebranded terrorists now called ‘bandits’ by their sympathizers?

“Please stop insulting our sensibilities. Please stop it!”

In another tweet, she wrote”

I wonder what country all these fellows that are already beating the drums of 2023 Presidential race are planning to govern?

“Our currently wobbly Nigeria? I have an advice for all of you.

“Better use that energy to work toward a National Conversation on Nigeria’s Future.”

Only 10% of young Nigerians in labour market have real jobs — Oby Ezekwesili

November 24, 2020 No Comments

Only a tenth of the 2.5 to three million young Nigerian who enter the labour market annually find anything that meets the International Labour Organization’s definition of a decent job, Oby Ezekwesili has said.

The former minister and presidential aspirant spoke on Monday at the 26th edition of the Nigerian Economic Summit.

She said deregulation of the economy is the solution to unemployment and underemployment and not a social investment programme.

Speaking as one of the panelists discussing the country’s path to recovery, she said the telecom sector was not contributing to the nation’s GDP until it was liberalized and deregulated.

“Only 10 percent of the young people who enter the labour market of the nearly two and a half to three million of them would find anything that the International Labour Organization defines as a decent job.

“We should say to ourselves, where are the rest? What are they doing? A lot of the time, public officials don’t like deregulation. I remember when we did the one for the telecom sector, the then minister hated the economic team because it was the end of an era.

“Government officials, across Africa love where they can make the decisions because the decision point is the point of control and opportunity but to the detriment of the rest of society,” Mrs Ezekwesili said.

She said the oil and gas sector would have contributed much more to the economy if it was liberalized and deregulated and not sat on by the president.

She noted that during the two recessions the country has had, when other sectors of the economy were going in the negative direction of contribution to growth, the unregularized telecom sector is holding the economy up.

“So imagine what would happen if we had decided on a massive agenda of deregulation of the economy?”

She also said the federal government’s plan to invest in the national carrier when it had barely recovered from the investment it made on it is basically punishing the poor.

“When you go investing in sectors that private money would find interesting and engage inefficiently as we saw in telecom, you are basically punishing your poor. Your poor need the slim resources that you have got, the resources should go to pro-poor investments. These investment matters because that is what leads people to the place where they can engage in economic activities,” she said.