A former Minister of Informarion, Prince Tony Momoh, has said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s owes no one any apology over his reported ‘lazy Nigerian youths’ comment.
Momoh said the President was right for saying a lot of Nigerian youths are sitting at home doing nothing.
Momoh, a leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, said this when he spoke with the Independent on Monday.
President Buhari, while delivering a keynote address at the Commonwealth Business Forum in London yesterday, was quoted to have said that most Nigerian youths want everything free without doing anything.
Momoh said Buhari was never afraid of speaking the truth unlike other professional politicians who only said things they want the people to hear.
He said, “That the President should apologise. Apologise for what? Are many Nigerian youths not staying at home doing nothing? Why should he apologise for saying the truth? Is it not true that many of our youths are sitting at home doing anything because of lack of opportunities?”
“If he is going to apologise, it will be because the government is trying to create opportunities for youths. To apologise for saying a lot of Nigerian youths are staying at home is unnecessary.
“The population of Nigerian youths that are jobless, is it high or low? If it is high, then one can rightly say that most of them don’t work. The fact is President Buhari is a very highly focused man. He says what is on his mind and is never afraid of doing so.
“If you want to analyse the issue, you will discover that he is just speaking his mind unlike the professional politicians who are used to lying. Having discovered that many Nigerian youths stay at home and have no work to do, it is his responsibility to create avenue for them to work.
“If Shell is going to invest $15b or more in Nigeria, is it not a way of creating avenues for the youths who stay at home doing nothing? A lot of Nigerians are focusing on unimportant things, playing politics with important issues by distorting what the president said.
“If I were to look at the issue, I will focus on the fact that Shell is going to invest $15b in Nigeria and create avenues for unemployed youths to work. He never used the word lazy in describing Nigerian youths, it is mischief makers who twisted his words and claim he described youths as lazy but the fact is that youths.”
