Libya Slavery Crisis Signals Impending Revolution in Nigeria, Olanipekun Warns

A Senior Lawyer, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), has warned that the reported cases of Nigerian being sold into slavery in Libya confirmed that the country may suffer serious political revolution in

the future if the government fails to empathise with the teeming unemployed youths.

Olanipekun said the rate of unemployment in the country has reached alarming rate and that Nigerians experiencing slavery in other nations

may become a recurrent decimal unless youth population are empowered

and made to be economically viable.

He spoke in Ikere Ekiti on Monday while commenting on the selling of some Nigerians into slave trade in the North Africa country.

The lawyer said repatriation of the victims may be mere cosmetic approach in solving the crisis, saying the nefarious issue of illegal migration can be tackled via youth employment and empowerment.

“When I was in the University of Lagos in the 70’s, I had over six offers as a fresh graduate who had not attended the law school. But today, nobody sympathised or empathised with the youths, they are abandoned in their own fates.

“After graduation, no unemployment, nobody attends to them and they think they have to take the tortuous, winding and dangerous  routes to where the greener pasture is. They were going there because they thing they will get the golden fleece.

“And most of us who are successful are not helping matters, we are wicked. We don’t tell the government the truth. What is in Libya that our youths are going for? This is a shame on all of us.

"Libya has just been rescued from a major crisis, they have no human rights protection mechanism, no freedom,  because they have always been in military dictatorship.

“The main reason why we are not faring better is that government is muzzling the private sector. They didn’t allow it to grow. A private body can only plan based on budgetary provision and policies of the federal government, that is why it is difficult to classify our economic system, it was so narrowed and monolithic in nature.

“But let me say this, if Nigeria fails to take care of its youths by creating tomorrow for them, we are inadvertently planting a revolution and threat  for the future,” Olanipekun warned.

Olanipekun insisted that  his country home at Ikere, as the second

largest city in Ekiti State after the state capital, is ripe to produce the governor 22 years after the creation of the state in 2018.