Tony Osauzo, Benin
Worried by mismanagement of the country’s wealth, former Senate Chief Whip, Roland Owie, yesterday, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to provide adequate qualitative education and employment opportunities for young Nigerians to take the country from among the poorest nations of the world.
Owie, who spoke shortly after he was inducted a member of the Chorister of St Albert Catholic Church, in the Ugbowo campus of the University of Benin, Benin City, also urged youths to shun drugs and cultism which, he said, would ruin them and their families.
Said Owie: “I have to appeal to these children that, the ultimate danger and destruction for cultism and drugs is that the life of the child would no longer be okay. So, the best bet is that they shouldn’t destroy the life that God has given to them, they should avoid cultism, they should avoid drugs.
“Buhari now has the opportunity, the last four years, for him to ensure that these stop. Nigeria is now rated the 92nd poorest nation in the world. He should empower the youths because once the youths are empowered, they won’t be outside looking for trouble.
“By 1979 to 80s, students will just graduate from the university and you just go there and take car loans and be working. The UPN government between 1979 and 1983 here in Bendel now Edo and Delta states ensured that even teacher training students were paid N4,000 a month, there was free education, there was free health and these were done properly but today only God will help us but certainly all of us, everybody that is at the corridor of power should know that whatever they don’t do well, they will answer before their creator,” Senator Owie said.