Nigeria Not Utilizing Her Population Effectively – Peter Obi

Former presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has said Nigeria was yet to utilize her population effectively.

Peter Obi said the World Population Day marked on Thursday provides opportunity for Nigerian leaders to address issues affecting harnessing the gains of the country’s population.

Obi said federal and state governments must invest in education, health and fighting poverty to ensure Nigeria’s population would be maximized.

“It is a day that reminds us all of the need to address very germane issues of harnessing our population to engender development in the nation.

“As the most populous country in Africa and the 6th most populous country in the world, Nigeria remains blessed in human resources, which when fully explored through investments in the 3 most critical areas of human development: health, education and fighting poverty, the country will experience tremendous transformation and development,” Obi said.

The former governor of Anambra State added that Nigeria has a sizeable youthful population that remain important to any country’s economic growth.

He, however, bemoaned that leadership failure has affected the youthful population of Nigeria.

Obi called for support to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, employment and fight against corruption.

“In Nigeria today, with more than half of the population falling within the productive age bracket of 15 to 64 years, we are reported to have the highest youth population in the world.

“However, challenges of leadership failure have continued to keep our teeming youthful population unproductive, thereby slowing our journey from consumption to production.

“Because we the leaders have not shown commitment to investing in health, education and supporting MSMEs, poverty, crime, unemployment, and inflation, have all remained on the increase while life expectancy, literacy rate, and per capita income have remained on the decrease,” he said.

He continued, “This day, therefore, provides us with the opportunity to review our population issues about development and see how to leverage our huge population, especially the youths, to drive development throughout the nation.

“This we can do by prioritizing their health, and education and supporting their small businesses. By so doing, we will not just have a huge population, but we will take pride in our productive population contributing, in many ways, to the development of the nation.”