NAN-H-59
Fairness
By Lydia Ngwakwe
Lagos, July 3, 2017 (NAN) A youth leader, Mr Jude Adejuwon, has urged leaders of political parties in the country to create a level playing field that will accommodate young people aspiring to public offices.
Adejuwon, the National Youth Leader of KOWA Party, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Monday that the time had come for the youth to play prominent roles in the polity to prepare them for leadership roles in future.
His call is coming against the backdrop of former governor of Cross River, Donald Duke’s comment at a symposium for young and emerging leaders in Lagos in May, that “Nigerian youths behave like tenants in their own country’’.
Cue in audio (Adejuwon)
“For the millenniums like us to participate in politics and aspire into political leadership, we have to create a political platform that is conducive to the young Nigerian.
“You go to all these political parties today and you find that as a young Nigerian who has ideas, who is competent, who has aspiration, you cannot survive.
“Because they bring all your ideas and tell you that you have to bow all of them down. You cannot challenge the statuesque in these parties except for KOWA Party which I am a testament of.
“Society is shaped by people in governance, usually people that are elderly so if an average Nigerian young person thinks in a certain way, he or she has been made to think in that way.
“I can tell you that the young people of this country are already taking leadership positions, pick any industry in Nigeria start from the media, go to real estate, go to business, entertainment, oil and gas, you find out that the destructors of and the innovators in those industries are young people and that is leadership.
The issue is, having to bring the leadership qualities that we have in all these other sectors into politics that is the dilemma.’’
Cue out audio
LED/ERO/LAB/YEE
===============
Edited by Emmanuel Okara/Lydia Beshel/Emmanuel Yashim