Recently, young Nigerians were graced with cheering news of the emergence of a Nigerian who won a seat at the United Kingdom Parliament at the age of 27 years old; even our Leaders were quick to acknowledge the young man and two others (also Nigerians) who won in the same election.

Unknown to us, they were busy cooking a plan that will see them restricting the participation of young Nigerians in the legislative arm of governance. Let me crave your indulgence to the recent development at the National Assembly. Recently, the house under the disguise of constitution amendment moved to place a barrier on young people from contesting seats at the National Assembly. As it stands, an amendment is currently being considered by the National Assembly to increase the age for individuals contesting for seats at the Federal House of Representatives and the Senate from 30 years and 35 years to 35years and 40 years respectively.

Let me remind us that our current Speaker, Hon. Dimeji Bankole was elected into the Federal House of Representatives in the year 2003 at the age of 34 years old and was later elected as the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives. If under his nose he has watched the current move by the house to scale through, then we really feel that this is a calculated attempt to prove our General right after all and subsequently to limit younger people from contesting seats given that more young people are now conscious than ever of the political situation in the country.

The current state of this amendment is the fact that the amendment has been considered at both house (lower and upper) and it has been passed on to the State Houses of Assembly for ratification. If we fail to act fast, this amendment will go through and many young persons who are gearing up for various seats at the National Assembly will be barred from contesting. Who knows, the National Assembly might move to scale up the age again through amendment in another four years if we fail to act.

This is a call to action. There is so much you can do to reverse this orchestrated plan to marginalize us. Let me remind you that the phrase “youths are the leaders of tomorrow” is a gimmick to continually relegate us to the background so that ‘they’ can continue to recycle themselves in government offices and make themselves relevant for as long as they want. We are leaders of today, the affairs of today lies in our hands and we must begin to take our place in the affairs of the nation. We salute the courage of the young persons preparing to contest in the forth coming elections in 2011 and we will do all we can within the frame of the law to support them.

To this end, we are planning a series of action towards this move by the National Assembly. While we put together this plan, we would suggest that we all find our principal State House of Assembly actors’ phone numbers and begin to send them text messages of our distaste for the aforementioned amendment. The more of these messages you send, the more mandate we would be able to achieve; also copy media organizations on these messages for accountability and legitimacy sake.

There is no time to waste my dear friends, we can make it happen, power belongs to the people. They are representing us and not the other way round; in essence they are our employee and if they are not listening to us before they take actions which we have sent them to do then, they are on their own. The voice of the people is the voice of God.

If you will like to find out more about this amendment or will like to support our plan towards this action, kindly send a mail to editorkay@gmail.com or popoolaio@yahoo.com. Or rather send text messages to the following numbers: 08090614663 or 08032249398.

This move is sponsored by members of the Make Your Votes Count (www.makeyourvotescount.org) campaign.