The Vice President, Yemi
Osinbajo, has said Nigerian youths have excelled in every sphere of the economy
they have been involved.
He stated this when he received a
delegation of Not-Too-Young-To-Run Movement which visited him in Abuja on
Thursday barely 24 hrs after President Muhammadu Buhari said that most Nigerian
youths want everything free without doing anything.
Osinbajo, however, challenged
youths in the country to strive to acquire experience before seeking to occupy
political offices in the years ahead.
“It is true that young people are
participating in every sphere of the economy and they are doing well, but they
ended up there through one process of training or the other,” he said.
The Vice President, who pointed
out that leadership positions were not automatic, recalled that he served as a
special adviser at the age of 30 and had been involved in pressure group
activities before he became an Attorney-General and then, Vice President.
He added that Nigeria did not
need people who will just muzzle their way into positions.
The Vice President said that
issues of governance needed to be planned deliberately as making women to
participate in politics and issues of girl-child needed to be taken seriously
and addressed.
According to him, this is because
half of the women that should be participating in politics did not have the
know-how.
He added that there was also
supposed to be plans for education to make the young people stand and grow
politically.
He said: “Just like you have to
train before you can become a pilot, so it is for politics.
“I think that whatever age a
person chooses to run should not matter; what should matter is the preparedness
of the person because elective positions require some skills.
“Most times people train to
acquire other skills but not politics; that’s the way of democracy.’’
Osinbajo said that there was need
for youths to move up the ladder of leadership to prepare themselves for
politics.
Osinbajo decried the fact that
democracy and elective offices in Nigeria were based on people that had the
resources “so corrupt people kept coming into office because they have the
resources’’.
“These are the kind of people we
have in elective offices; so, we need to raise the bar so as to get performance
and competence.’’ he said.
He urged youths to challenge
themselves with the big issues bedevilling the nation, and said that one
critical issue to address was corruption.
The vice president said that people
stole the nation’s money with impunity and short-changed citizens.
“Our budget is N7 trillion and if
someone steals N1trillion, how do we quantify it? If we don’t have serious
advocacy around corruption, we are always going to be short-changed in the
nation.’’
He said that in a developing
economy like Nigeria, there was need to set the bar about competence and that
the onus lay with the Not-Too-Young-To-Run Movement.
He urged the youths to join
political parties, be involved in politics and pressure groups so that the
nation could achieve development through youth’s collaboration.
Osinbajo said “that way, youths
will be able to carry the cause and address the bigger issues that affect the
country’’.
Earlier, leader of the
delegation, Mr Samson Itodo, said that the campaign for the youths was a
movement led by young people that would like to contribute to national
development.
Itodo, who is one of the
conveners of the Not-Too-Young-To-Run Movement, said that one of the reasons
for the movement was inclusion of youths in governance, because democracy lost
its vitality without inclusion.
He said that there was also need
for inter-generational dialogue between the youths and the elders to create a
platform where young people could interface with elders.
Itodo called for enhancement of
quality of the electoral process so as to increase competition among all
strata.
“Today we have been able to
inspire some young people to run for elective positions; over the world, there
is a clamour for young rulers.
“What we do is not to clamour for
elders to leave but that we have faith in our democracy and it has to be
inclusive because youths have the capacity, competence and integrity to hold
offices,’’ he said.
He called for an open political
system that would accommodate young people, adding that it was a good thing
that the National Assembly passed the Not-Too-Young-To-Run Bill.
Itodo appealed to the vice
president to support the bill and expressed optimism that President Mohammadu
Buhari would ascent to the bill when transmitted to him.
He urged youths to join political
parties and be ready for the political process leading to 2019, stressing that
“political power is not given, but taken’’.
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