The Presidency has described as mischievous and unconscionable, reports quoting President Muhammadu Buhari as saying all Nigerian youths as lazy.
Presidential spokesman Mr Femi Adesina, in a statement yesterday, clarified that Buhari, while responding to a question at the Commonwealth Business Forum in London on Wednesday, said a lot of Nigerian youths, not all, have not gone to school but want to get everything.
Adesina said in responding to a question, Buhari talked about some Nigerian youths thus: “We have a very young population; our population is estimated conservatively to be 180 million.
“More than 60 per cent of the population is below the age of 30. A lot of them have not been to school and they are claiming that Nigeria has been an oil producing country, therefore they should sit and do nothing and get housing, healthcare and education free.”
Adesina said typical of ‘their stock in trade,’ ‘manipulators’ and ‘twisters’ of Buhari’s statements “Who lie in wait to make mischief” interpreted the comment to mean that the President had taken all Nigerian youths to the cleaners. But elementary English recognizes a wide gulf between “a lot of” and the word “all.”
The presidential spoken quizzed: “How can ‘a lot of them’ suddenly transmogrify to mean ‘all of them? Mischievous and unconscionable!”
Adesina stated: “There is no way President Buhari, father of the Nigerian nation in every sense of the word, who equally has biological children of his own in the youths age bracket, pass a vote of no confidence on all youths. It can only exist in the imagination of those who play what the President has described as ‘irresponsible politics’ with everything.
“President Buhari has always applauded and celebrated Nigerian youths who excel in different areas of endeavour, from sports, to academia, and other realms. And he will continue to do so, because he values the youths, and knows that they are the fulcrum on which the future of the country rests.
“Indeed, every country has its share of idle population, and it is the bounden duty of government at all levels, to create an enabling environment for them to actualize their potentials.”
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