A former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has lambasted President Muhammadu Buhari over the Federal Government’s youth empowerment scheme, otherwise known as N-Power.
Speaking to Thisday, Atiku noted that with National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealation that 7.9 million Nigerians had lost their jobs in the last 21 months, giving people “handouts” through N-Power would not solve unemployment.
The Wazirin Adamawa also mocked Buhari’s choice of appointees, saying they can’t achieve anything because they were not successful business owners.
He said: “The current government cannot create jobs because it is headed and peopled by men and women who have never run successful businesses. They even ran their own private businesses down.
“So, how can you expect them to run the public’s business up? What I am assuring Nigerians is that if they elect me, I promise them that everyone who wants to work will be given opportunities.
“Even this thing they are doing, called N-Power, is a product of their poverty mindset. Nigerians do not need handout. Nigerians need a leg up! Our people are not lazy.
“Quote me anywhere; Nigerians are the most intelligent people on God’s planet. The reason our people are living in poverty today is that our current leaders have a poverty mentality.”
On restructuring, Atiku lamented that Buhari had given the northern region a bad name for insisting he would not restructure Nigeria.
His words: “There is support for restructuring nationwide and there is resistance to it countrywide. Let us not make northerners a convenient scapegoat just because Buhari, who does not want restructuring, is a northerner.”
