What will you do about graduate unemployment, ending insurgency, and protecting votes from rigging?

The planned exit of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) from Nigeria after more than five decades of doing business in Nigeria underscores how horrific the environment has become for both local and foreign businesses. Sadly, many international firms have, in recent times, sold their assets and bid farewell to Nigeria after several years of operating in our country. These exits have led to further loss of jobs in an environment that is already bleeding jobs. We need to do a lot more not only to encourage investors to make Nigeria their preferred destination but also to encourage companies already operating in our land not to "japa." To this end, we must revamp our infrastructure, endeavour to enthrone a sustainable regime of energy security and retool our fiscal and monetary policy. -AA The planned exit of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) from Nigeria after more than five decades of doing business in Nigeria underscores how horrific the environment has become for both local and foreign businesses. Sadly, many international firms have, in recent times, sold their assets and bid farewell to Nigeria after several years of operating in our country.

Nigeria is not working: One year of Tinubu is a cocktail of trial-and-error economic policies. On May 29, 2023, President Bola Tinubu raised the hopes of Nigerians with his pledge to “remodel our economy to bring about growth and development through job creation, food security and an end of extreme poverty.” Since then, Tinubu has also spoken about growing the economy at double-digit rates to US$1 trillion in six years, ending misery, and bringing immediate relief to Nigeria’s cost-of-living crisis. On listening to this, Nigerians must have breathed a sigh of relief after their experience with ex-President Buhari’s 8 years of economic misadventure. Tinubu laid out no plans for the ‘remodeling’ of the economy but soon embarked on a cocktail of policies to achieve it. In May 2023, he eliminated PMS subsidies, and a month later, the CBN implemented a new foreign exchange policy that unified the multiple official FX windows into a single official market. More policies followed in rapid succession: the tightening of monetary policy to reduce Naira liquidity, a hike in monetary policy rates, the introduction of cost-reflective electricity tariff, and a cybersecurity tax.

Go back to your markets. Become ambassadors of hope. Become educators. Become organisers. Become guardians of democracy. Help every eligible young Nigerian obtain a Permanent Voter Card. Help first-time voters understand why every vote matters. Encourage peaceful participation. Reject violence. Reject intimidation. Reject vote buying. Reject every attempt to make democracy a marketplace where votes are purchased instead of earned. Our democracy deserves better. And so do you. My dear young Nigerians, Do not allow anyone to tell you that you are too young to lead. History disagrees. Across the world, nations have been transformed by young people who refused to accept failure as their destiny. Innovation has always belonged to the young. Great discoveries have always belonged to the courageous. Every generation inherits two things: The country it receives. And the country it leaves behind.

I have therefore not come here simply to speak about your frustrations. You know those frustrations better than I do because you live with them every day. I have come to offer you a partnership to change the conditions that created them and to ask you to become active participants in building the Nigeria you deserve. THE NIGERIA YOUR GENERATION KNOWS Let us speak plainly. The Nigeria many young people experience today is very different from the Nigeria they were promised. You were taught that if you worked hard, obtained an education, obeyed the law and applied yourselves diligently, opportunity would follow. Many of you did exactly that. You studied through strikes and blackouts, only to graduate into an economy where a university degree does not guarantee a job and where even those fortunate enough to find work increasingly struggle to afford food, transportation and rent. You have watched talented friends and classmates - doctors, engineers, accountants, software developers and other professionals - pack their bags for Canada, the United Kingdom, America and elsewhere in search of opportunities their own country should be capable of providing.

Nigeria cannot continue asking competent young people to wait outside the room while their future is being decided inside it. MY COVENANT WITH YOU Our partnership must also mean something practical in the lives of young Nigerians. It begins with jobs and enterprise. Nigeria has millions of young people with ideas, energy and ambition, but too many cannot access the capital required to turn those ideas into businesses. We will expand transparent access to finance for young entrepreneurs, artisans, farmers, technology founders and people working in the creative economy. Your surname, political connection or ability to find a godfather should not determine whether a good idea receives an opportunity to succeed. Education must also change. We cannot continue educating young Nigerians for an economy that no longer exists. Our schools must place greater emphasis on science, technology, vocational education, agriculture, digital skills, critical thinking and entrepreneurship. And no brilliant Nigerian child should be denied tertiary education simply because his or her parents are poor.

I have the experience to lead this country, and that is what Nigeria needs now. I have done this work before. Nigerians elected me Vice President twice, in 1999 and 2003, and in government I led the reforms that returned loss-making government companies to private hands and opened our economy to private investment. I served Nigeria in the Customs Service from 1969 to 1986, and I have built businesses that today employ thousands of Nigerians, so I know how jobs are created. The two issues Nigerians care about most are restoring vitality to our economy and securing the country. My plan is clear: end insecurity, bring down the cost of living, create opportunities for every Nigerian, and uphold the rule of law. Nigeria has given me so many opportunities to be who I am today. If the presidents we have had offered better leadership, I would have retired my ambition. But I cannot, in good conscience, do that when I know I have better ideas to offer. The constitution allows a four-year term, and a second term is not an automatic entitlement. I am in this race to serve.