Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Wednesday urged youths in the country
to join political parties ahead of the 2019 elections to enable them to
be voted into political offices.
Mr. Osinbajo, who was represented by Babafemi Ojudu, Special Adviser
to the President on Political Affairs, made the call at the Emerging
Political Leaders Summit in Abuja.
He said that it was not enough for youth to always complain about bad
leaders, but that they needed to break the status quo by taking the
chance to be elected and create the transformation they needed for a
change.
“Youth have a challenge in their hands for the future of our country;
so, I advise you not to sit down and fold your hands and be lamenting
over bad leadership or politicians.
“Get down to business, organise and do something to become elected
political youth; after all, Enahoro became a leader in this country at
the age of 23 and later moved a motion for the nation’s independence at
the age of 27.
“The leaders there today will vacate the place tomorrow. So if you
the youth don’t start preparing today by getting mentored and learning
the ropes, there is no way you will perform very well if the mantle of
leadership falls on you tomorrow. So there is need for you to go in
there and participate,’’ he said.
Mr. Osinbajo, however, advised youth not to expect that from the day
they start participating in politics they would become the president of
Nigeria.
He said that it was not realistic and could not happen, but that they
needed to start gradually from the ward level and move up to local
government level and to state “before the presidency’’.
Kingsley Moghalu, former Deputy Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria
(CBN), said that youth had the power to change their destiny to a better
future by participating in politics from the grassroots.
Mr. Moghalu said that what the country needed was a democratic
revolution at the polling units, adding that for it to happen the
citizens should recognise that they had the power to change and improve
governance.
“If they don’t exercise that power, if they keep selling their votes
for N2, 000 so that they will eat today, their children will have no
jobs in the future.
“It is high time Nigerians stopped seeking immediate gratification;
they always love what they can get now and that is killing us as a
nation.
“If this continues, then the citizens are just as irresponsible as the leadership they condemn,’’ he said.
Mr. Moghalu said that the next line of action lay with the citizens,
adding that “we have talked enough, the politicians don’t listen, they
keep carrying on in their old ways.
“We have had enough but if that is true, then we must act like we
have had enough and take up the challenge to change the status quo.’’
The convener of the summit, Wale Ajani, said the event was organised
to brainstorm ahead of the 2019 elections towards problem-solving both
economically and politically for country’s development.
Mr. Ajani said that the summit became imperative at this auspicious
moment in the nation’s history because Nigeria had remained a country of
enormous potentials for several decades but unable to perform better in
human development and economic indices.
“Leadership failure is largely at the heart of the current woes
bedevilling Nigeria, with little being done to build a new crop of
leaders.
“The nation seems fixated; the citizens have come to have very low
expectations of their leaders. The summit provides a platform for
qualitative conversations and discourse about Nigeria.”
He said that it was time for Nigeria to have a paradigm shift as an
alternative to the current system where there already existed a
disconnection between citizens’ expectations and service delivery by
politicians.
(NAN)