Youths charged on financial education

By Adetunji Adeleye 19.03.2008

THE President of AIESEC, an international non-governmental organisation for young people, Mr. Siyanbade Taiwo, has charged Nigerian youths on the need to acquire financial education in order to be self-dependent in a hard economic climate like Nigeria.

He said this while addressing participants at a youth financial empowerment seminar organised for students at the University of Ibadan in Ibadan, on Tuesday.

Taiwo said Nigerian youths suffer from financial hardship because they lacked financial education on wealth creation strategies, saying this was “missing from our school curricula.”

He said knowledge of business financing and opportunities were needed for entrepreneurial development among the youth.

He urged young Nigerians to invest their energy and time to seek for additional knowledge in finance and investment in order to be able to take advantage of the emerging opportunities in Nigerian capital market.

This, he said, would enable them to knock out poverty and be financially independent.

While speaking at the seminar, Principal Economist, Research Department, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Lawrence Akinboyo, said Vision 2020 of the Federal Government was meant to reinvent the Nigerian economy and make it one of the best 20 economies by year 2020.

Akinboyo said youths “must understand where we are coming from as a nation, where we are and where we are going in order for the Vision 2020 to become a reality.”

According to him, “youths are vital part of nation building and their understanding of how policy works would further make them cooperate with the government as active participants in nation building.”