Insecurity threatens human capital development - Aremu

Aremu

Organized labour has said that the worsening insecurity in the country is fast depleting the country’s limited human capital through what it called “avoidable killings of innocent working people, workers, journalists, farmers and herders”. Comrade Issa Aremu, NLC NEC member and General Secretary  Textile Workers Union, raised this alarm in Zaria on Tuesday while on a condolence visit to the family of Precious Owolabi a youth corper  with the Channels Television who died following a gunshot wound he sustained at the scene of the  clash between the police and protesting members of Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) on Monday in Abuja. 

The labour leader observed that insecurity related problems have  wider negative impact for  human capital development if unchecked. He said while significant  progress has been made to train human resources  in a number of educational institutions, Nigeria is depleting it’s skilled hands through violent conflicts. He regretted that an enthusiastic energetic intern journalist like Precious Owolabi a youth corper “could be casually wasted in an avoidable conflict between the police and members of shite movement adding that it took almost 15 years and enormous resources to train a university graduate”. 

Comrade Aremu who is also a member of National Institute recalled that the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has lost as many as 1000 teachers to incessant killings and abduction of school officials by armed bandits in Zamfara state and other parts of the North east. 

“For a country in which millions of children are out of schools, serial murder of trained ones like teachers and journalists like Precious Owolabi  further depletes  the country’s critical human capital”  he noted.

He lamented that insecurity at work has been daily woes of the majority of Nigerian workers calling on security forces and employers to protect workers in the areas of conflicts including journalists. According to him notwithstanding the national hysteria about rampant kidnappings, robberies, rural banditry and terror attacks, the mass insecurity victims are the poor defenceless working people.

“In most cases, mass victims are poor working people in the farms, traders in towns and teachers in schools, and now working journalists like Precious.” “Security” he said “must be inclusive for all.” Comrade Aremu observed that there should be a recognition of what he called “the class character” of violent conflicts adding that most victims are the poor who he alleged are treated with indifference compared to the alarm the insecurity of the rich and politically protected generate in the media”.

Comrade Aremu prayed that God grants the parents of the deceased corper journalist the fortitude to bear the grief of the death of Precious Owolabi.