•Emmanuela Arikpo
Ahead of the national youth conference scheduled to be held in the first quarter of 2025, a policy researcher, Emmanuella Arikpo, has challenged young people not to attend the confab with a business-as-usual mindset.
Arikpo lamented that youths often attend conferences not to talk about the real issues confronting them but because of the handouts they would get from the government.
She challenged youths who would be handpicked to attend the confab to table the challenges of security of lives, job insecurity, policy somersault, and lots more before the President Bola Tinubu administration.
The policy researcher was a guest on today’s edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.
In August 2024, displeased youths led the #EndBadGovernance nationwide protests principally against hunger and high living costs. Other demands by thousands of young people who marched for 10 consecutive days across the country were the reduction in governance costs, reversal of petrol subsidy removal and generally, demand for good governance across all tiers of government.
In what appeared a response to the agitation of young people, Tinubu, in his Independence Day Broadcast on October 1, 2024, announced that a youth confab would be organised to address the grievances of young people.
Later in his 2025 New Year Address on January 1, 2025, the ex-Lagos governor said the confab would hold in the first quarter of 2025 and tasked the youth ministry on figuring out the modalities for the 30-day confab.
Arikpo said dialogue is good but young people should not attend the conference with a corrupt mindset, and with a focus on what they would get into their pockets rather than discuss the challenges confronting them in the country.
She said, “Dialogue is good. Conversations are okay. I was part of the Youths Summit that the 10th Assembly had. Yes, it was a good conversation. Not to be a dampener but the thing is: oftentimes when people go to conversations like this, they are corrupt. We learn from the best, so we go to these places, and we are expecting the packages after; we are not there to speak about what we want because we don’t want to offend these people.
“This, I say without any bias. If young people want Nigeria to work for us. If old people want Nigeria to work before they go and leave the country in our hands; if they don’t want a repeat where they get on their deathbed and say, ‘Oh, I wish I had done this better’, that particular conversation should not be business as usual.
“If we are going there to talk about what young people want, if we are going there to talk about security, let us talk about security in the right sense, let us talk about reforming the police, reforming every arm of the Armed Forces – – not in the sense that we are changing their uniforms or the names of their units, let’s talk ending bad governance not in the sense of collapsing MDAs (ministries, departments and agencies) or merging ministries but how do we make this work perfectly, how do we remove people in the civil service who are not making things work?
“That conversation should be targeted at security, employment, minimum wage implementation.
“Young people, this is me speaking not just as a guest on this show but I am asking: if you are invited to the conference in 2025, and you are coming to speak to the president, do not go there and think about the N50, 000 you are going to get at the end of the show because it is going to be a show.
“What you should desire is a country that works for you. Come to the conference, speak from your hearts. Don’t come there and antagonise people. Let it be that the things that you are addressing are employment, security and a place for entrepreneurship to thrive.”
