CRITICISM ON PRESIDENT BUHARI'S SPEECH:
"We have a very young population; our population is estimated conservatively to be 180 million. More than 60 per cent of the population is below the age of 30. A lot of them have not been to school and they are claiming that Nigeria has been an oil producing country, therefore they should sit and do nothing and get housing, healthcare and education free.”

COMMENT
As a critic, I've taken my time to objectively study the statement of our president, and therefore, coming to the conclusion that the statement wasn't intended to hurt Nigerian youths but to correct some beliefs and orientations. This is not just a claim inspired by bias nor generated from sentiment. Rather, it's from a comprehensive study backed up with some linguistic evidence. This can't be done without some realistic cognitive references though, since language and society are inseparable and mutually inclusive.

To start with, the first sentence of the president's controversial excerpt above, graphologically, doesn't end without a semi-colon which literally suggests that the other parts of the statement is a buttress of the preceding one. "We have a very young population: .." semantically, the affirmative sentence suggests that, WE, Nigerians, have not just been populated with young people, but the intensifier (very) places it beyond the average level. Also, an affirmative statement requires a prove, and that has necessitated further explanation which logically, probably, makes the president assert some facts about the population that it is conserved that we have 180million of people, and sixty plus percentage of the whole 180million Nigerians are below the age of 30years of age. the first sentence was never in isolation, therefore, the other parts should be seen as the continuing effort to complement the preceding one.

In the same effort, the president systematically digressed to another issue under the same topic of population. And that's the last compound-complex sentence presented to accommodate the enormousity of the huge sub-topic. If objectively observed, the last statement doesn't paint the picture of a lazy people, but a picture of some set of people who, even though they av the energy to work, would not do so because of their claim (Nigeria is an oil producing country). The last controversial compound-complex sentence has two main clauses linked with a conjunct 'and', while the last part is a subordinate clause introduced by a resulting adverb "therefore". And the adverb, therefore, marks the conclusion of the statement of the president with the two other main clauses serving as the premises. In the simpler term:
Premise1: A lot of them have not been to school
Premise 2: And they are claiming that Nigeria is an oil producing country
Conclusion/claim: Therefore, They should sit and do nothing and get housing, healthcare, and education free.
Let's be cautious at this point, before I proceed to the next clarification, something is still ambiguous in the conclusion and that is the "They" Mr president refers to. Trust me, i won't go beyond what we have in the text. So, the plural pronoun "they" used in the statement is an anaphoric reference item which meaning can't be suggested in oblivion of the previous sentences. Therefore, it prompted the question of who are the "they"? And necessitated a revisit to the previous sentences. And as I've explained in the previous paragraphs, the 'they' are the MAJORITY out of the 60 per cent population of Nigerians who are under the age of thirty. Now this implies three things:
1) The 60% of 180million (108million) Nigerians are under age 30
2) A lot of 108million Nigerians are not educated and claim Nigeria is an oil producing country. NOTE: A lot could mean anything from 60% upward. And that means assumably, the 60% of 108millions (65million) Nigerians out of 180million population are the " They " we are talking about.
3) We still need to get the percentage of the children out of the 108millions before removing the 'a lot'.
My claim with the above analysis is that the president didn't refer to all Nigerian youths as being lazy. In fact, youths age ranges beyond 30years of age...and not even all under the 30 ages are concerned, it's only those who are not educated and rely on Nigeria as an oil producing country.

Now, having clarified the "they" in the conclusion, there is still a need to objectively check through the content of the claim (subordinate clause) if it depicts laziness or not. Before I leap into the analysis proper, I will like to clearly affirm the fact that considering the three major division of Nigeria tribes: Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba, the number of educated youths varies from each other, as the educational terrain of Nigeria is sloppy, abandoning some other regions at the disadvantageous part. Therefore, the fingers are not equal. So, we should begin to look at things holistically as the president is grouping the "they" as Nigerians under age thirty, part of which are not educated and claim that Nigeria is an oil producing country.

Without digressing too much, the claim of the president is that, the above described people, want to sit down, do nothing, and enjoy housing, healthcare and free education. Linguistically, the implication of the claim is not that Nigerians, "they", are lazy. Let me Make it simpler, the structure of the sentence is basically, SVOA - Subject, Verb, Object, and adverb. The analysis is:
Subject ----They
Verb: SHOULD
Object(complex): sit, do nothing and get housing, health care, and education
Adverb: Free
With this, while the subject signifies the action doer, the verb is the action, the Object is the action sufferer, and the adverb is the manner of the action. You will realise that the most important thing is the action, if you never understand the action (verb), you won't get the claim of the president. Let me do a bit of explanation concerning the verb "should".

Should is a modal auxiliary which can function as the main verb ( when alone) or auxiliary ( when supporting a main verb).
I'm not teaching grammar here, however, I'm trying to raise the importance of understanding the verb in the claim so as to know the relationship between the subject, and other parts of the sentence.

SHOULD means obligations or future action (telling what will soon happen). E.g a) "I should be here tomorrow" it doesn't mean I'm already there. b) "I should finish the food" Doesn't mean I already finished the food.

Do check the statement again, the claim is never saying that "They" (subject) are already lazy, but that "They" /are obliged to or will soon/ sit, do nothing and get housing, healthcare, and education free.

In conclusion, the controversial statement of the president could be paraphrased to have meant that some Nigerian youths who are under the age of 30years want to be lazy on the condition that Nigeria is a petroleum producing country, and these people are even uneducated. And I think this is metaphorical to some people, probably the Eastern people following their constant claim of owing Nigeria petroleum. So, Nigerians, should stop washing the back of the cup, but objectively tackle the president on the content of his speech and not on prejudice. I submit....

BY: MALOMO TUNDE EMMANUEL