http://roadmapnigeria.com/news/?p=711
Gov. Sule Lamido (l) of Jigawa, receiving the former military president Ibrahim Babangida at Karnaya village of Dutse local government area of Jigawa, when he visited the state yesterday

Youth group criticizes Northern leadership
63 million youths would get new orientation

Timbyen Amos Dashe and TerhembaDzomon, Lafia



As he bestrideshis first one hundred days in office, the minister for Youth development, Barrister InuwaAbdulkadir has lashed out at those who contaminate youth organizations with adult interference and refuse to allow the youths to run their affairs vowing that by the time he is through with the office the youths of Nigeria would run on a different mindset than the one they have imbibed over time.

The Youth Development Minister made this promise just as a youth group, the National Youths Assembly of Nigeria (NYAN) has called the northern part of Nigerian the architect of its own downfall and its own enemy.

The minister spoke exclusively to TheROAD newspapers in his office.

He criticized those whom he said made a vacation out of running youth groups and warned them to desist, as the youth groups in the country were being reorganized and repositioned to meet global best practices and bring them at par with youths around the world.

Barrister InuwaAbdulkadir who himself is youthful pleaded with the youths of this country to purge themselves of the bad lessons that were infused in them by the old brigade of Nigerian leaders, saying his ministry shall “rebuild their orientation in order to make the country a worthwhile place for the yet unborn Nigerian generation.”

TheROAD newspaper reported last week that about sixty-three million youths are either unemployed or under-employed thus giving room for the younger generation of Nigerians to engage in anti-social or downright criminal behavior.

Brimming with confidence after a meeting with officials of the National Youth Council of Nigeria and later the Director General of the National Youth service Corps, the minister admitted that government cannot provide jobs for all the unemployed people in the country but also said that the youths themselves must strive to be self-employed as that is the trend among youths all over the world.

He said, “a lot of efforts have been made in terms of empowerment, skills acquisition etc, and young men and women who are ready to participate in all, need to be encouraged but for one reason or the other a number of them do not understand the importance of sound and formal education and enlightenment.”

He added that “althoughsome graduates are trained in entrepreneurshipand skill acquisition, in agriculture and other sectors the problem ariseswhen these youths are trained, given some grants to help facilitate their employment but at the end of the day, most of them blow off the grants because of a preconceived mindset, which tells them that government money is a largesse.”

“So some of them participate in these programs,” he continues,“because they have nowhere to go in the morning to call their offices or places of work; even for those of them who are employed, they are, in most cases, underemployed; they are not in positions that match their qualifications.”

As a solution, Abdulkadir says,“there is an innovation that the ministry is working on; the ministry is trying to ensure that these young men and women attend a preliminary program which may last for a week, where issues of citizenship and leadership would be discussed, and the participants accept and digest for personal benefit and the nation at large, to also remind the youths that they have an obligation to themselves to work harder than they are currently doing to improve on themselves and be able to render help to the needy in cash and kind, which makes more sense”.

Sounding more optimistic than most Nigerians would rather be, the minister hoped that “by the time a group of them are mobilized that are so willing to participate in either entrepreneurship or any other programs the cash prize, would no longer be the motivation so much that such an individual who gets the grant, would be rest assured that he would not be going for something else contrary to what he was meant for”.

“When you train these youths and make them understand the reason and objective of them attending such programs, by the time the program is set to begin, they already know what they are expected to do”, InuwaAbdulkadir concluded.

Meanwhile, a youth group, theNational Youths Assembly of Nigeria (NYAN) has called the northern part of Nigerian the architect of its own downfall and its own enemy.

The National Youths Assembly of Nigeria (NYAN) described the political style of leadership by northern elements as lacking development vision when politicians of the region are opportune to lead Nigeria. The youth group therefore said the region has over the years, become a victim of its style of politics.

National Youths Assembly of Nigeria (NYAN) in a statement by KassimMuh’dKassim, Dandoka Gaya Santos and Gostime Samuel, Speaker, Clerk and Deputy Speaker, respectively of the group, blamed the turbulent wave of crises in most parts of the country to a seed sown by the northern political style of leadership in a discourse by the group.

The statement which traced the history of Nigeria from independence also stressed that Nigeria’s post- independence era has been governed on most occasions by northerners. The statement continued that, under the present democratic dispensation in the country, the North has produced the Vice President of the country, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Group General Manager of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Inspector General of Police, Comptroller General of Nigerian Custom Service, the National Chairman of the PDP, Ministers of Defence, Information, Interior and others on top of the President’s Special Adviser on Political Affairs, among others.

“What then does the north want; what has the north lacked. Why are there crisis here and there, and being blamed on unemployment and inequality? What again would the north get that will make the northern part of the country satisfied?”, were some of the questions the group sought to find answers to.

The statement then enjoined northern elements to tender apologies to President Goodluck Jonathan, who the youth group claimed, has done much for the north, and yet has received bashings from elites of the North for not considering the region as part of the country, which is often said to be the reason for widespread violence in the region.

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Oga Youth Minister, start with Almajiris in the North. Forget the Youth, you can't change them now, it's a tad too late. Target the children. Go house to house, and make parent sent their children/ward to go school. That was how the South send their children/ward to formal school. Many parents were forced to send children/ward and many children were also forced to go to formal school! Almajiri educational system is poison chalice!

lol