lawyer and politician, Oba Mekunu Salis, has urged youths to unite and take their destiny into their hands to champion their cause.
Speaking ahead of the 30-day National Youth Conference proposed by President Bola Tinubu, he enjoined them to emulate the heroic precedent in Kenya in which Miss Cynthia Muge, and Paul Nwiringim, in their 20s, contested as independent candidates and defeated well established high heeled politicians.
Delving into history, he said The Nigerian Youth Movement, formed in the 1930s, comprised Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Sir Kofo Abayomi, Ernest Ikoli, Dr. Akinola Maja, H.O. Davies, J.C. Vaughan, Samuel Akintola, Samuel Akinsanya, later Odemo of Ishara, among others, who championed the cause for Independence, and played roles in the life of their nation after Independence.
“Emmanuel Macron, in his late 30s, also became the youngest president in French history, just like Sebastian Kurz, born in August 1986, became Chancellor of Germany at 31 years” said the Polar tourist, who made history as the first black African to travel to the North and South Pole.
“I am saying this because as youths, the future belongs to you, considering your status as leaders of tomorrow.
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‘‘More over, you have not only the youthful energy, but also the numerical superiority which if better harnessed, make you irrepressible and unstoppable, only if you could jettison the primordial sentiment of tribe, religion and sex and forge a united front in the bid to lift your fatherland to higher frontiers”, he said.
“This is certainly not an imWhat you rather need is to equip yourselves with the intellectual, spiritual and moral fibre that make you a factor to reckon with in the political equation and the general scheme of things.”
“This in other words is to urge you to believe in yourself and rather jettison the deep-seated inferiority complex,prompting you to believe that you can be nothing better than area boys and errand boys,to the dominant political overlords and inferior, under-rated second class members of the dominant political parrties .
Don’t allow political power to be thrust on your lap by the existing political class, because such may be an illusion in futility.
Rather,one expects you to inspire a peaceful, non-violent revolution which will eventually see you at the commanding height of politics and decision-making in the affairs of your fatherland,so that this favourable dispensation,once accomplished,would effectively enable you to influence decisions of immensely seminal proportion for the beneficial advantage of the youths.
He however called on the president to embark without delay,and with renewed vigor,on the daunting burden of problems confronting the youths adding that the youths are so frustrated to the extent that it wouldn’t be proper to treat their case with levity lest the nation risk the frightening prospect of violent uprisings and insurrections,the end of which no one could fore-tell. While applauding the plan for a national conference as a move in the right direction,Salis implored the president not to wait for the convening of a confab in order to know what to do about the increasingly worsening plight of the youth “I’m saying this because the problems confronting the youths are readily well known just as they are extremely very critical that they cry for an urgent solution.
Hunger is at an all-time high,as recently indicated by a national newspaper,which featured on the front page that a greater proportion of Nigerians have since resorted to begging for survival.
Same with the ever increasing number of youths dropping out of school,just as a lot of sick ones are dying daily as a result of lack of money to afford the cost of medication “If we remember that heinous crimes like kidnapping,rape,armed robbery,cult gangsterism, ritual killings,high wire frauds terrorism and incessant violence which transpire daily in the nation are mostly committed by the increasingly frustrated youths,then will we realize that the increasingly alarming state of insecurity we experience on a continuous basis is a function of the abject neglect and abysmal failure of past leaders to address the crucial interest of the youth with the spirited zeal and fervency it deserves”,said the notable social critic and public affairs commentator. “
I’m always almost moved to shedding tears seeing young Nigerians drowning daily in the Mediterranean in their desperate attempt to escape the hardship at home for a greener pasture in the U.S.
And for some who eventually make it,they turn out aimless wanderers living at the mercy of fellow Nigerian good Samaritans;that is if they are ever lucky to find one.”
“Those of us who feel the pinch particularly at this prevailing period of economic impasse at home in Nigeria,are often too short of words to narrate the tale of woes.”,said the youth mentor, life coach,motivational speaker and popularly acclaimed philanthropist.