Festus Keyamo, the Minister of State for Labour, said President Muhammadu Buhari is not to blame for the high rate of out-of-school children in the country.
The minister said it is not the role of the federal government alone to make provision for jobs but to enable the conducive environment for the creation of job.
The spokesperson for the Presidential Campaign Council of the All Progressives Congress, APC made this revelation during a television session on Thursday.
The minister revealed that the state governments should rather be blamed for the high rate in the number of out-of-primary and secondary school children, since the state governments are in charge of primary and secondary school educations.
Keyamo said, “primary and secondary school is not within the purview of the federal government. Let us get that clear. So when you roll out that statistics you’re talking about the PDP government at the state levels, you’re talking about the APGA government in Anambra, you’re talking about the APC government in different states too.
“So it is not the burden of the federal government that children are out of school at the primary school level, and secondary school level. That is a state responsibility.
“We only intervene sometimes in terms of funding and some kind of support we give to the state government. So the state government should take responsibility for this, and they should encourage students at those levels to go to school.
“While acknowledging that the unemployment rate is high minister said ” go and look at the statistics from the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics and look at the state by state level of unemployment; it’s not that of the federal government alone.
“Some of the opposition party states has the highest number of unemployed persons. It is the responsibility of state and local government to employ people, not the responsibility of the federal government alone.
“What the federal government does is to provide the enabling environment and policies that can make people get employment”.
