The founder of the Barrister Sam Otoboeze Foundation has said that the major cause of insecurity in the country is the heightened rate of unemployment.
Otoboeze stated this after he returned his nomination form for the seat of the House of Representatives, Uzo-Uwani/Igbo-Etiti Federal Constituency of Enugu State, under the platform of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP.
Speaking to newsmen shortly after he returned his nomination form at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja, he decried the level of unemployment in the country, adding that when the issue of unemployment is addressed, the country would be safer.
He said: “What we’re lacking in the country, is alternative ways to deal with crime. If we depend on prison, depend on police, depend on detention camps, we’re not going to get there. Because you know what? The population of youths is growing astronomically.
“A hungry man is an angry man and anyone can become a criminal, depending on the situation. So what am I coming to do? I am coming to bring a new paradigm to managing the situation. The security situation in the country. As professional insecurity, I have knowledge of security. What I have done in our NGO, is going to give us a new lease on life.
“So what I’m going do is, what else can I do differently in addition to what we’ve been doing to engage the youths, that’s just one of it, the other one is the growth of insecurity, which I know that by the time we get the youth problems treated, budget for acquisition of weapons will begin to drop.”
He lamented the amount of money budgeted for the acquisition of weapons and ammunition, stressing that money spent on armoury can change the lives of one million youths.
He stated, “The money that is spent on buying ammunition will be enough to change 1 million youths. What everybody wants is a good life. You can imagine somebody has gone to school, and at the end of the day, he has got nothing to do; look at our educational institutions.
“A graduate may not even know how to handle a computer why? Because the school does not teach him how to handle computers. So then why do you give somebody a certificate without some competencies attached? And that’s where we’re getting it wrong. I want to pursue legislation on changing our educational system to ensure that it becomes skill-oriented, rather than certificate oriented. Because the certificate does not go anywhere.
“That’s what I want to be doing. I want to get in such a situation where people begin to see themselves as potentially successful people not dependent. Our society has created an army of beggars. I want to see how we can come up with quality legislation that can help the youth to begin to see themselves as potentially successful and begin to be less dependent on people.
“We’re trying to see why we are failing. If we begin to do things differently, the country will begin to move forward, I want to see how we can change things.”
