A humanitarian health worker, Fati Abubakar, has called for equal access to health and education in order to overcome the challenge of unemployment among Nigerian youth.

Abubakar spoke in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on the sidelines of a live conversation programme entitled: “Investing in the People of Nigeria“.

The conversation was organised by BudgIT, a civic organisation driven to make the Nigerian budget and public data more understandable and accessible across every literacy span.

Abubakar said that investment in people, especially youths would address the social inequality and ensure that everyone has access to education and healthcare.

According to her, lack of investment in education for young people gives room for radicalism.

“Lots of young people were left idle. This can force them to use violent ways to express their anger; that is what we are seeing in the North-East.

“I think from the way our society is structured, it gives room for inequality.

“If you are wealthy, you have access to a lot of things like education and healthcare.

“Even, your standards of living will be different,“ she said.

Abubakar also called for an informal structure of learning to harness the talents of individuals through skill acquisition programmes rather than making everyone to go through a structured education.

She said harnessing talents of children early in life would ensure that they have fulfilled and sustainable careers, while fulfilling their passions.

“There are lots of people in Nigeria that are very talented, but they are being forced to go to school to study Engineering, Law and Medicine.

“They end up getting degrees only to discover that they have other talents like painting, sculpting, fashion designing and makeup artists.

“Then, they end up being successful in fields they did not study for,” she said. (NAN)

– Apr. 2, 2018 @ 15:35 GMT