The President of African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina, said that the future of the Nigerian youths does not lie in any country but in their country.
Adesina made this known when he bagged the prestigious 2023 Obafemi Awolowo Prize for Leadership in Lagos, on Wednesday.
The AfDB President disclosed that nations grow economically by keeping their best human capital at home and getting additional resource skills elsewhere.
He lamented the migration phenomenon known as Japa which has been popularised by Nigerian youths leaving the country in searching for greener pastures in Europe, the Americas, Asia and other parts of the world.
Adesina said: “I refuse to believe that the future of Nigeria’s and Africa’s youths lie in Europe, North America, Asia, or anywhere else. I believe that their future must lie in Africa, growing well, robustly, able to create quality jobs and decent earnings for our young people.
“There is absolutely no reason in the world how we have a demographic asset that then becomes a global negative externality. Let’s take pride in ourselves and let’s make our demographic asset our economic asset globally. I firmly believe that their future lies right here in Nigeria.”
“While one might argue that our growing diaspora is good as they send back billions of dollars, higher than the oil revenue that we have, this is not the way to develop sustainably.
“Nations that develop do all they can to keep their best human capital at home and additional resource skills elsewhere, with flexible immigration and labour policies.
“I always say to myself, how can we have 477 million people under the age of 35 and there are no financial institution? That means we have missing institution and market failure problems and that is why the African Development Bank decided that we will create what we call Youths Entrepreneurship Investment Bank.”
