Former Director General of the defunct National Sports Commission (NSC) Otunba Gbenga Elegbeleye has described as outrageous the statement made by the lawmaker representing Amuwo Odofin constituency 1 of Lagos State, Mojisola Alli-Macaulay that “most Nigerian youths are high on drugs all the time.”
Alli-Macaulay said this during a plenary at the Lagos State House of Assembly on the looting and pandemonium in the wake of the #EndSARS protest that was hijacked by hoodlums.
According to her, “The National Orientation Agency needs to get to work. We need to begin to orientate our young people. They need people who can talk to them from time to time. They are high on drugs all the time, most of them. They go to social media and so all sorts of things. I’m even scared to give my young children phones because I am scared of what they may see on social media. It is that bad.”
Alli-Macaulay said unemployment should not be an excuse for looting, adding that unemployment was not exclusive to Nigeria.
“I schooled in the UK and I saw a lot of young people who were not employed but they didn’t become hoodlums. Why can’t we look inwards and look for solutions to our problems?” she asked
But Elegbeleye has disagreed with her on her opinion and said she should have applied caution before making those comments.
“It was outrageous of a statement from a law maker to say that most Nigeran youths are high on drugs. Even if there are some that are high on drugs it’s purely out of frustration of lack of something tangible to do.
“When you see these youths graduate out of Universities and four to ten years there are no jobs for them to do and you are saying that they should go and learn a trade how would they get a start up capital when most of them are from poor homes. You must have funds to start the trade you learned. Since most of them are from poor homes for t will be very difficult for them to raise the funds to start what they learned.
“The Lawmaker also said that they (the youths) are high on drugs, I want to say here that an idle mind is the workshop of the devil. When these youths are jobless so many things will come to their minds out of frustration.
“It was an outrageous statement from a law maker to say that Nigerian youths are high on drugs. She said that she schooled in the United Kingdom but the Nigerian youths that are protesting have no capacity to go to the U.K and school there because their parents are poor. Most of these youths cannot go abroad to study but they studied here in Nigetian universities, they graduated from these universities and are still jobless.
“Instead of the (Lagos) parliament to look for a way out to get them engaged, talk to them, address the issue on ground as regards what is affecting their wellbeing, that I s what the Lagos Lawmakers should address not the allegation of being high on drugs”, Elegbeleye argued.
