The recent #EndSARS protest in Nigeria may go down in history as the loudest wake-up call for the country to be restructured since the civil war.
The President/CEO of World Stage Limited, Segun Adeleye, said this in his address at the virtual WorldStage Economic Summit 2020 with the theme, ‘New Reality: Consolidating Economic Diversification’.
At the summit top government officials including the Minister Of Transportation, Rotimi Ameachi; Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Ogbonnaya Onu and the Executive Vice Chairman/CEO, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta, joined other experts to deliberate on how to fast track the diversification of the nation’s economy.
Adeleye told participants that the youth agitation being subdued should not be construed as a failure. “It is a wake up call as things cannot continue as usual with no jobs, poor infrastructure and insensitivity on the part of the political leaders who are portrayed to be living in opulence with the lion share of the national cake.”
“Like every change, the end cannot be envisaged, the #EndSARS protest could have gone far, upstage the status quo and destroyed all what we have built over the years, for us to start all over again in pains to the unknown.” He added.
The WorldStage Summit boss repeated his call for the government to collaborate with the private sector to set up innovation hubs in all the 774 local government areas across the country. “This will help hundreds of young internet fraudsters popularly called Yahoo-Yahoo boys, to make decent living rather than being ‘proudly’ prosecuted daily by the EFCC.” He noted.
“What we have now after the #EndSARS is a fair deal, it’s a clear signal that the current structure of economic exclusion is unsustainable and dangerous. There may never be a second chance as the only sustainable way to pacify the youths and other stakeholders is to extend the boundary of opportunities to all,” Adeleye pointed out.
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