Africa-Press – Namibia. The Presidency has leapt to the defence of President Hage Geingob over comments made during a youth engagement at State House last week, where the Head of State implored young people to create jobs instead of waiting for government.
Geingob was quoted as saying young people should start using their qualifications to innovate and create jobs, rather than depending on the government for employment. In a statement issued yesterday, the Presidency said Geingob has placed a huge premium on the plight of young people, while claiming the media deliberately ignored these facts in their reporting of the engagement.
“President Geingob has made a stern commitment to young people by appointing a young person as the presidential advisor on youth and enterprise development in the Presidency,” the statement reads. “This decision, one of the first by an African president, was done to enhance youth engagement at the highest level of government.
Empowering young people, giving them key responsibilities, has always been a hallmark of the leadership style of President Geingob, encouraging all citizens, including the youth, to always live by the adage of asking what we can do for our country and not necessarily what our country could do for us.”
The Presidency also lashed out at some media houses, which it accused of preferring “to mire successes into needless, if not mindless, public controversy as a means of driving a wedge between government and the youth of our country.
Once again, we are witnessing the familiar attempts by opinion journalists to divert attention away from the successes of President Geingob, who has governed Namibia deftly during the most difficult period in its 31-year history. What the opinion journalists and activist journalists would never share with the public is the context in which we find ourselves, occasioned by external intervening variables, successive droughts, commodity crises and for the past two years, Covid-19.
Without context, they analyse and speak as if these things don’t exist or never happened,” the Presidency continued to vent. During last week’s engagement, presidential youth advisor Daisry Mathias noted that the Geingob administration had prioritised funding and supported initiatives aimed at empowering the youth.
This includes funding towards basic education in the current national budget to the tune of N$13.8 billion, higher education (N$3.2 billion), the University of Namibia (N$851 million), Namibia University of Science and Technology (N$488 million) and the Namibia Students Financial Assistance Fund (N$1.2 billion).
“The Presidency, and the Government of the Republic of Namibia, will never be deterred by this small minority whose aim and objective is to stir up emotional enmity to cause disunity, which will eventually translate into a balkanised, weak and fragmented Namibian House,” State House added.
“President Geingob will continue to build with the majority of willing and patriotic Namibians, regardless of their tribe, age, religion and economic or political standing on the noble objective of an inclusive Namibian House, where economic opportunities are not only available to the entire youth, but to all Namibians.
The youth engagement on 2 December fulfilled an important objective, that of consultation, hand-holding, cohesion and finding solutions that speak to the scale of the challenges we face.”
For More News And Analysis About Namibia Follow Africa-Press
