At the risk of sounding like a “Wailing Wailer”, I write this article for Mr President’s attention because I believe that a stitch in time saves nine. The youths are a creative force and dynamic source of innovations, indeed youth are the fulcrum of every society. The unending deprivation of youth participation in governance since 1999 after the return of democracy in Nigeria is threatening to continue in this ‘change’ era that we struggled to realized in 2015. The youth are the most active, ought to be the most productive, and also on other hand are the most vulnerable, and the most volatile in every given society.

Nigeria with an estimated 170 million people have youth between the age bracket of 18 to 35 years forming more than 60 percent of the population. Nigerian youth are no doubt energetic, vibrant, resourceful and intelligent and therefore needs to play a cardinal role in the development of the country, this important position of youth necessitates the need to have a clear plan from governments at all levels to address our peculiar needs in order to be more productive and to serve as catalysts of human, social and economic development of the country.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s emergence as President of Nigeria last year ushered in an unprecedented hope for Nigeria’s teeming youth, the youths in particular played a massive role in ensuring the electoral success of Mr President, but more than 8 months since his emergence as President, our dear President seem to be deficient in appreciating the cardinal position of youth in Nigeria, there seem to be no clear cut policy direction to address the yearnings of youth which include massive unemployment, lack of policies/enabling environment to harness and develope our entrepreneurial innovations, access to education etc and the youths were sidelined in forming the cabinet even after several promises during electioneering.

I will commend Mr President though for his  promise to employ five hundred thousand graduates to teach in schools in the 2016 Appropriation Bill, but even at that there is still no plan on how it is to be implemented and whether the teaching job is permanent or as casual workers.

For all its shortcomings, the previous administration have some laudable initiatives that should not be scrapped for political reasons, I believe the YouWin and the SURE P can be made better, the YouWin in particular encouraged youth to seek to be financially independent, to be creative and innovative, so many youth applied, while others were successful others could not scale through the rigours of the application process, many youth whom I know personally succeeded in getting capital to start up their businesses. I believe entrepreneurship should play an important role in tackling the menace of unemployment  and the government especially with the express approval of the President can do more in that regard, many youth have business plans in agriculture, services, trade etc but don’t have the seed fund to start up and create wealth.

I believe Mr President needs to interact and engage the youth more, at present the general feeling is that the president is far detached from the youths which makes it difficult for youth to interact directly with him or his team so that he could understand our feelings, youth are frustrated and angry with the system that does not recognize their value. When Mr President appointed ministers, the youths were disappointed at their exclusion, even the Minister of Youth and Sports is above 50 years of age, but Mr President can still right that wrong by employing the services of younger people to form the majority  of his advisers. The general consensus among commentators is that there is need to have more advisers at the presidency even though the government wants to cut down on the cost of governance, but looking at the so many blunders that come out of the presidency, especially as regard the shameful shenanigans discovered in the budget submitted to the National Assembly, lack of vibrant, intelligent and energetic advisers to the president was partly blamed for that, by appointing young and energetic advisers that directly communicate and carry orders from the President most of those bloated figures could be fish out.

We need to know what the president and his team have in store for our youth, what they want to achieve in the years to come and how they are going to be implemented, the youths should also be given opportunity to participate actively in coming up or implementing our youth agenda.

In my book, the youth are presently not contributing to the decision making process at the presidency, looking at the faces of the people at the presidency I feel alienated, I don’t feel represented. I don’t see people who think along the same line with me, I see aged and tired faces all around Mr President, that needs to change as we certainly have intelligent and younger hands that could be the face and airs of Mr President among our youth, that will give us a sense of belonging. There is need to create programs that will harness and build the capacity of our youth, our education curriculum must be revamped to meet up with the challenges of 21st century in order to rub shoulders with other young people from around the world.

I was about completing this article when news filtered in that Mr President has appointed some young people as his assistants, the appointments of Personal Assistant on New Media, Special Assistant on Youth and Students Affairs and that of Broadcast Media from the youth circle is not enough for Nigerian youths but it is still commendable and I hope more will come. I challenge the new appointees to identify with some of the issues I raised herein and advise Mr President appropriately. We cannot afford to fail this time around, all hands must be on deck to ensure the success of this government, Nigerian youth in particular have suffered enough deprivation.

Rabiu Shamma
Chairman, Kano Youth Coalition for Advocacy and Development (KAYCAD).
Rabiu Shamma.
Kano Youth Coalition for Advocacy and Development-KAYCAD
www.rabiushamma.blogspot.com
+2347035504982, +2348050238616.