‘A Recipe for Disaster’ —Hon Ntim Fordjour Backs Oppong Nkrumah’s Alarm on Youth Unemployment, Warns of National Security Threat

Assin South MP Hon. Rev. John Ntim Fordjour has thrown his weight behind concerns raised in Parliament over Ghana’s youth unemployment crisis, calling it a “national security threat” that demands urgent skills investment.

Hon Fordjour was contributing to a statement made on the floor by Ofoase Ayirebi MP, Hon. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, on youth unemployment in Ghana.

Describing the situation as “very dangerous,” Ntim Fordjour pointed to high jobless rates and the number of young people outside education and employment.

Hon. Rev. John Ntim Fodjour said it’s very dangerous for every country, any country who has who has unemployment rate of the regions of thirty-two percent. It is very dangerous to have the youth between fifteen and twenty-four about two million of them who are neither in school or who are neither in employment. That is very dangerous. That is a recipe for disaster.

The Assin South MP warned that youth unemployment fuels vulnerability to extremism.

“It is for this reason. Mr Speaker that youth unemployment has become one of the biggest national security threats we have on our hands in this country. The vulnerable groups who can easily lend themselves to radicalization, to extremism are all stemming from unemployment.”

Ntim Fordjour criticized what he called a cycle of unfulfilled campaign pledges.

“And the time has come that we do not pay lip service to political promises that offered jobs to the youth when it's time for campaign but when power is won we sit and just do little that will solve this employment. Um unemployment problems.”

He disclosed that, across the world in twenty twenty-one the letting generation proceeded a report and indicated that if nothing changes in the way that education is done across the world by twenty thirty nearly eight hundred and seventy-five million people will reach adulthood without the skills needed to thrive, without the skills that will make them productive and that must cause us as Ghana to look at our figures one more time.

Ntim Fordjour called for a complete rethink of Ghana’s education and skills strategy.