Senate asks FG to establish Unemployment Support Fund 

Senate on Wednesday urged the Federal Government to set up an Unemployment Support Fund with a view to cushing the effects of high rate of unemployment in the country.

The upper legislative chamber also advocated a policy to establish one factory per local government all over Nigeria, to create employment opportunities, towards tackling the vices emanating from the social problem.

These were parts of its resolutions following a motion by Senator Chukwuka Utazi, PDP-Enugu North entitled: “Bridging the gap between the haves and the have-not in Nigeria to nip in the bud the seeds of a looming violent revolution”.

The Senate urged the government to declare an emergency on unemployment in Nigeria, create more pro-poor social safety nets, dedicate 20% of recovered loots to fund same, and take other urgent measures to stimulate production and other economic activities to engage young citizens of the country.

Similarly, it called for increase in the budgets to education by allocating and effectively implementing 26% of their yearly budget to education beginning from the next budget cycle in 2020 and enjoin states to do same.

Leading the debate on the motion, Utazi noted that “there was a huge gap between the haves and the have-not in Nigeria, a situation he said that was slowly triggering a quiet but certain revolution, championed by the down-trodden”.

He lamented the various insecurity vices afflicting different zones of the country, noting that the North West states of Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Kano and Sokoto are under the grip of armed militias and bandits.

The lawmaker also expressed worries that in the North East, terrorism and insurgency had assumed a full blown war and the armed forces and other security services of the country are having a hard time containing all the points of gruesome activities of the insurgents.

On the North Central, the legislator noted that “in the North-Central, armed gangs and murderous herdsmen kill without any considerations, forcing farmers off the farms, razing down whole villages and settlements, and imposing an imminence of famine”.

“Alarmed that in the South-West, kidnappers and ritual killers are having a field day. In the South-South, the nightmare continues as long stretches of roads, like the East-West road, are declared too dangerous to ply and the Police have officially placed an advisory of danger over the road. Gang payoffs have become the new normal.

“In the South-East, it is the unrestrained wave of marauding herdsmen who devastate farmlands, kill people, rape women, and of kidnappers and ritual killers executing with precision their nefarious activities”, the lawmaker catalogued.

In their various contributions, the senators described the motion as a wake-up call to government and Nigerians in general, to rise from slumber and fashion out enduring solutions that could navigate the country out of the debilitating problem.

In his remarks, the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, stressed the need to separate maintenance of law and order from the issue of poverty.

He said that poverty would never be accepted as an excuse for committing crimes in the society, stressing that, no matter how bad the economy is, there must be maintenance of law and order.

“We have all contributed but there is need for us to separate the maintenance of law and order from the issue of poverty. It cannot be an excuse. So, as a nation, no matter how bad it is we must be able to maintain law and order.

“That is why it is important that we as a Parliament must give all the support necessary to all the security agencies and all government policies on security, to see that they maintain law and order. And those who are responsible to maintain law and order must ensure that there cannot be excuses to do otherwise”, he stated.