THE Director-General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, Dame Julie Okah-Donli, has said that the provision of a conducive environment for direct foreign investment into Nigeria remains the panacea for the mass unemployment problem in Nigeria.
She spoke in Benin City, the Edo State capital, while delivering a lecture at the University of Benin as part of activities marking the 60th birthday ceremony of businessman and philanthropist, Captain (Dr) Idahosa Wells Okunbo.
She spoke on the topic: Youth Migration, Deportation and
Rehabilitation: The Way Forward, under the theme: Youth Migration, Consequences and Current Realities.
Some of the issues she identified as being capable of making the environment conducive for foreign direct investments include development and maintenance of infrastructure, security, strengthening the economy and provision of social security.
She, however, stressed that these could not be left for the Federal Government alone as the states and local governments must play their own parts adequately.
She explained that such investments were capable of opening up the Nigerian economy and providing the elusive mass employment for the teeming youths and thereby, discouraging unnecessary migration of Nigerians to other parts of the world in search of greener pastures.
The NAPTIP boss also called for a national orientation and re-orientation programmes across the country to change the psyche of the Nigerian youth who believed that they could only survive by leaving the country for other places.
She said: “there is need for government at all levels to come up with transformation programmes and a national orientation and reorientation programme that will change people’s attitude to migration.
“Without this, an attitude crisis will be another major driving force for illegal migration. Something fundamental must be done to control and contain the illegal movement of people out of the countries.
“A crucial step forward is to help to re-orient and re-educate the average Nigerian youth to make them realise that they can actualise their potential and dreams at home and that they are not necessarily poorer than their contemporaries abroad or in the country they migrate to”.
Dame Okah-Donli, while stating that migration was as old as mankind, added that it had, however, increased over the years as a result of many factors including globalisation, shrinking borders and easier means of transportation.
She stated that such situations had also created problems for both source and destination countries with the attendant effects on the migrants.