It said Nigerians find it extremely shocking that President Buhari could make such comment and described it as false, derogatory and unpatriotic comment against Nigerian citizens at a time the nation was looking up to him to properly present its potential to the global business community.
President Buhari had while speaking during a panel discussion at the Commonwealth Business Forum in Westminster in London on Wednesday, described many Nigerian youths as lazy and not ready to work.
Rather, he said they were after what he called freebies.
But the main opposition party in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan in Abuja, on Thursday, described the President’s outburst as alarming and shocking.
He said it was unfortunate that the President uses every opportunity of his international engagements to demarket the country.
Ologbondiyan said, “It is alarming that at every international event, the President makes it a favourite past time to de-market, paint and denigrate our dear nation and her citizens in very negative light, an indication that he has stopped believing in Nigeria.
“Mr. President’s latest salvo is totally unacceptable and must be condemned by all right-thinking people to avoid further verbal assault against our country, particularly at international fora.
“How can President Buhari describe Nigerian youths as lazy, when they have proven, without doubt, to be one of the most industrious sets of individuals across the world?
“Here is a President, whose administration has in its three years of governance, contributed nothing towards providing opportunities for our youths and who has not initiated or implemented any development project or set up any industry to provide jobs for our aspiring youths.
“Here is a President under whose watch, factories and businesses have shut down resulting in over 24 million job losses and under whom no meaningful foreign direct investment has been attracted to the country.”
Ologbondiyan added that the President has been watching Nigeria youths struggling all over the country without doing anything to ameliorate their plight.
According to him, “Here is a President who daily watches Nigerian youths sweating on menial jobs under very strenuous conditions on the streets of Abuja, Jos, Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, Kaduna, Maiduguri, Bauchi, Calabar, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Onitsha and other major cities, yet he unsympathetically described them as lazy.
“These are the same set of Nigerians who, upon being afforded the right opportunities in other countries of the world, are known to have excelled in various fields of endeavour.
“Nigerians can now see that when the PDP accused President Buhari of de-marketing our nation, we were not playing politics.
“It is however saddening that after de-marketing his own generation, President Buhari is set to destroy the future of younger Nigerians.”
He said since the President has gone ahead to denigrate Nigerian youths, who he claimed form the bulk of the nation ’s workforce as lazy and lovers of freebies, how could he expect any foreign investor to bring in investment into the country.
He said it was disheartening that these same youths were the same young persons who formed the highest demography of voters that put their confidence in the President in 2015.
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