By Alabi Williams 14 October 2024 | 3:50 am
The offer by President Bola Tinubu to address the diverse challenges and opportunities confronting young people via a national conference is thought-provoking. In his October 1, 2024 presidential address, Tinubu said the conference will provoke meaningful dialogue and empower young people in the task of nation-building. He claimed that “by ensuring that their voices are heard in shaping the policies that impact their lives, we are creating a pathway for a brighter tomorrow.”
So, for 30 days, youths will gather to discuss the problems facing education, innovation, employment, security and justice. According to the President, delegates’ selection process will be designed in consultation with the youth representatives.
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As desirable as the conference is, being a platform to ventilate on serious state matters, particularly for young people who are known to constitute around 65 per cent of the entire population and are the future of the country, the assumption that only a segment of the country has need for a national conversation is dishonest. Not long ago, the Patriots overcame the urgency to convoke a national dialogue for the purpose of re-articulating Nigeria. The country is not doing well, they correctly observed.
The Patriots, which has Chief Emeka Anyaoku as chairman, noted that the economy is underperforming and that insecurity of life and property is at all time-high. They cited the unprecedented mass poverty, absence of quality infrastructure and the pervasive corruption as immediate reasons to reset the country.
More critically, the Patriots lamented the growing culture of divisiveness and hate, which has undermined the sense of national unity. They observed that the Constitution (1999) is not sensitive to address the diverse challenges bedeviling the country.
The Patriots noted: “The 1960/63 Constitution gave the country more viable federating units (regions) that mostly took care of their internal security and economic development that focused on productivity. Without increase in productivity, the national economy can never improve. The 1960/63 Constitution enabled each federating region to give appreciable focus on education, provision of health facilities, infrastructural development, and on a healthy competition in socio-economic development, which encouraged the growth of a sense of national unity…”
The Patriots met with President Tinubu in August 2024, to convince him to prioritise national dialogue to forge a new democratic people’s constitution. But the President announced that convoking a national dialogue was not his priority and that retooling the economy for sustainable growth and development is his major concern.
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Hear Tinubu: “I am currently preoccupied with economic reform. That is my first priority. Once this is in place, as soon as possible, I will look at other options, including constitutional review as recommended by you and other options.”
It is therefore strange, that the President who does not prioritise a national dialogue as a means to resolving decades-old challenges that impinge on the national economy, has suddenly voted for a 30-day conference, solely for young Nigerians. Hopefully, some thinking young Nigerians, particularly those who have ventured to make their voices heard through street protests will take a hard look at the proposal, so they are not distracted.
Young people have been articulating their demands since the#EndSARSmovement of October 2020. They stepped it up with the #EndHunger/BadGovernance protests in August 2024, which claimed the lives of 21 youths in the hands of state security operatives, according to Amnesty International (AI). Youths also came out on October 1, 2024, with the #FearlessInOctober protests, to further articulate and present their demands to government.
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In all, young people are asking government to cut down the cost of governance, which is too high and unsustainable. To do that, they want the scrapping of one chamber in the National Assembly as well as allow law-making to be a part-time engagement, no longer fulltime. They’re asking for nothing less than N250,000 as monthly Minimum Wage. They want government to invest heavily in education and give students grants, not loans, and the aggressive provision of free and compulsory education for all children. They’re demanding the re-nationalisation of public-owned enterprises that were sold fraudulently to officials of government and their cronies.
In case Mr. President does not know, the youths are also asking for a replacement of the 1999 Constitution, to be achieved through a Sovereign National Conference and a National Referendum to allow Nigerians decide their fate in the Union. So, at the end of the day, what Tinubu is afraid of in the suggestion by the Patriots, he might confront in the hands of clear-headed and uncompromising youths whenever he convokes their conference.
The idea of a conference for young Nigerians is just escapist. The Constitution of the Federal Republic (1999) is explicit on what the Nigerian State owes young Nigerians. In Chapter 11 (Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy), the Constitution specified the political, economic, social and educational objectives of the Nigerian State.
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A further breakdown, for instance provides for free, compulsory and universal primary education; free university education as well as free adult literacy programme. Section 18-(1) directs government to ensure equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels. But this does not happen because people in government misappropriate more resources to procure costly education for their children outside the public system. They also pay for jobs in choice public organisations for their children.
If you ask, one would advise government to take a patriotic look at the Constitution (1999) and summon courage to work by the provisions. If that were done, Tinubu may not need to waste money summoning youths across the country to a national conference. All that the youths have articulated in their various demands are extracted from the Constitution.
A President who lacks the political will to obey the Constitution cannot obey recommendations from a youth conference. The idea appears dubious and must be interrogated.
The issues that bedevil Nigeria are far larger than what one man can informally adumbrate for future political advantage. With hindsight, we remember that Tinubu snubbed the 2013 National Confab of Goodluck Jonathan and branded it a jamboree and fruitless exercise.
With 2027 in view, a smart Tinubu will not touch the Patriot’s national dialogue because it is not popular among certain voters who see calls to restructure the country as a threat to their survival. But a youth conference sometime in 2025 will be a good place to ‘mentor’ foot soldiers.
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This particular government has worked very hard to divide the youths, the reason #FearlessInOctober was feeble. Government propaganda and high-handedness sowed ethnic conspiracies among youths. Some think they are obligated to protect this government because of ethnic/economic affiliations. Some have not recovered from the harassment they suffered during the last elections and are demanding a realistic and up-to-date re-definition of the State before they make life-threatening decisions, such as going out on protests. These are fundamental challenges youth conferences cannot address.
If there must be a national conference of youths, some have canvased ICT-driven remote meetings to be coordinated by youth leaders without government’s physical interference. Apart from saving costs of accommodation, feeding and other house-keeping expenses, hundreds of youths can sit in their homes and set agenda free of government’s meddling. If the government means well, they could involve telcos in partnerships to make the exercise seamless and profitable.
A virtual meeting will also save government the complexities of delegates’ selection, drawing positive examples from the deft coordination that yielded #EndSARS. There are vibrant and patriotic civil society groups that can provide technical assistance in this regard, to give it credibility. The President said the selection will be done in close consultation through Youth representatives. There are many youth representatives who are self-serving and are working for government. They cannot be trusted to do a fair job.
As stated, the demands of youths are already known. One may just add a few. Young people may need to ask this government to introduce a policy that will compel politically exposed persons (PEP), who have more than one property (housing or business investment) in other countries, whose taxes are not paid to the Nigerian government to keep one and surrender the rest for use by government. They are to be sold and the proceeds repatriated to boost the ailing economy.
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The youths should demand an end to foreign education by children of public servants, unless the sources of funding are known to be legitimate earnings. The youths should demand an end to health tourism by public officials, especially presidents. They should be content with the health facilities taxpayers have provided. Presidents should do their vacations at home, unless they want to use their private resources to travel abroad.
Our youths should be disturbed that the major foreign exchange earner has remained crude oil and the more government exploits those resources, the more it mortgages the future of young people. That means there is an urgency to diversify the economy. Light industries and Agric-related SMEs must be encouraged urgently with verifiable funding and tracking.
Young technopreneurs should be funded to develop alternatives to imported ICT consumables; that was how China and India started. They began by encouraging their manufacturers to develop local capacities. Nigeria once adopted the same template but it was abandoned.
The Youths must demand an end to importation of luxury vehicles for use by governments. They must patronise the domestic automobile industry. They must demand a timeline for Nigeria to become food secure. Let the vast arable land be put to use, with youths being the drivers of a renewed drive for self-sufficiency in the critical sectors. Youths must demand an immediate end to offshore borrowings and compel government to pay up what they owe before 2027.
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If our young people allow this moment to pass them by, because of parochial and geo-political sentiments of tribe and religion, that will be most unfair to their heritage. Let young people exploit this government, instead of allowing themselves to be cheaply used and dumped!
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