Youth empowerment will reduce insecurity in Nigeria ― Senator Oseni

Senator Yakubu Oseni has said that conscious efforts must be made by all concerned to reverse the national budget from its high slant in favour of recurrent expenditure base to low capital base orientation.

The Senator representing Kogi central said the spate of insecurity which has posed a serious challenge to the country can be arrested by boosting incentives to young entrepreneur to enable them to become gainfully engaged and distracted from electing to crime.

Oceni said this in Abuja while speaking on the legislative direction of the Ninth Assembly which promised to make Nigeria a better economy and country for the citizens.

According to him, the present slant of 70 per cent of the budget on recurrent expenditure to 30 per cent capital expenditure must be reversed because it will continue to undermine national development.

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Senator representing Kogi Central Senator Yakubu Oceni who said this in Abuja stressed that the economy of a nation is strongly supported by the level of economic activities at the micro and macro levels, therefore the government should promote business incentives for small and medium scale entrepreneur.

According to Oceni, when the economy becomes stable it will engage more young persons and take their mind off insecurity because of human capital development and engagement by society.

He said any youth empowerment programme by the government should factor agriculture and efficient power supply to serve the investors in the sector.

‘We have to look into ways by which the youths can be empowered through job creation because the perpetrators of the insecurity we are talking about they are mostly youths.

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“It means that as economists we have to develop the scale of preference and prioritise where you want to fund like Agriculture and particularly power if you touch power today and power is good it means Nigeria is good because it touches all the economy.

“I look at agriculture and you touch it sincerely it means you have touched everywhere in the economy.

“Nigeria should sincerely look into this. By next month now we are talking about budgeting.

“Are we budgeting the money to all the MDAs equally or the normal way that we have been doing it. I don’t think we will achieve any result that will be different from what we have been getting.

“There is what we call MSME, many countries that have grown today are very particular about MSME. They seriously ensured guided MSME, not by giving out money without training For an economy to grow, it relies on the activities of individuals that growing economy, not Government, Oceni stated.