By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor

WHatever made the Minister of Youth Development, Alhaji Inuwa Abdulkadir, to absent himself from what was arguably one of the most significant events of his ministry in the year was couched in bureaucratic syntax.

The chubby looks of the new minister may have accommodated him at the commemoration of the International Youth Day in Abuja last Thursday.

It is, however, doubtful if any measure of tolerance could have been extended to Alhaji Garba Chiza, the celebrated National Youth Leader of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, who has been severally estimated to be in his 60s.

Indeed, the jokes were on the PDP’s youth leader at the event as many youths openly complained how positions and spaces earmarked for youths have been permanently taken over by the elders. “If a 60-year old is a youth, then a 40-year old is a child and a 30-year old must be a baby,” one of the speakers at the event said.

The ceremony was facilitated by the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, through its Democratic Governance for Development, DGD, project.

Guests at the event cut across political stakeholders, representatives of youth groups and civic society groups among others.

Gender advocates
Prominent among those who graced the occasion were one of the country’s leading gender advocates and member of the House of Representatives, Rep. Nkoyo Toyo; Director General of the National Orientation Agency, NOA, Mr. Mike Omeri; National Secretary of the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, Alhaji Buba Galadima; UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria, Mr. Daouda Toure; and Country Director of ActionAid, Dr. Ussain Abdu, National Youth Leader of Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) Mr. Miriki Ebikibina, among others.

L-R: Nat’l Secretary, CPC, Engr. Buba Galadima; Mr. David Ross of CIDA, Mallam Aminu, representing the Minister of Youth, Hon, Nkoyo Toyo, Ms. Ade Lekoetje, UNDP Country Director and Dr. Hussani Abdu of ActionAid

Reading the message of the United Nation’s Secretary General, in his own welcome address, the UNDP representative, Mr. Toure, who is also the UN Resident Coordinator said the commemoration of the day was meant to highlight “the many ways the United Nations, Member States, the private sector and other stakeholders can partner with, and for the youth.”

In his remarks at the event Mr. Omeri disclosed how the agency is presently engaged in promoting a Citizens Responsibility Volunteer Scheme as a way of tying Nigerians to their responsibilities to their fatherland.

Noting the urgency of promoting patriotism education, he said, “it is better to promote patriotism education than civic education because if you are patriotic you will perform your civic responsibility.”

Whatever Omeri said, received some form of heart searching as Galadima gave his own remarks. “How do you become a leader of tomorrow if you are not part of the gang of today?” Galadima asked.

Noting how what he referred to as bad governance had reduced the space for the youths to express themselves, he said: “What we ask from the authorities is for them to provide a level playing field so that the youths can have the opportunity to develop themselves.”

“There is enough to make everybody in Nigeria to be happy,” he said in reference to reports of Nigerian government officials accumulating billions of naira in ill-gotten wealth at the expense of the citizenry.

Ebikibina, the National Youth Leader of the ACN in his own submission summarized the predicament of the youths thus:
“The Nigerian youths have come a long way from being in the vanguard for Nigeria political development to a present state of near hopelessness and helplessness; a state where matters of Nigerian development are routinely decided without the youth in mind.”

The country director of ActionAid, Dr. Abdu in his keynote address with the theme, ‘Walking the Talk: Youth Inclusion in Nigerian Politics’ noted how youths have been strategically excluded from the political fray despite much talk about their inclusion.

Significant in the exclusion of the young and youths from mainstream politics in the view of Dr. Abdu is the imprecision on who is a youth.

“Defining a youth is vague and that is one of the problems and this has led to a situation where a 60-year old man is the national youth leader of a political party and when you complain they say that their constitution did not define who a youth is.”

Remarkably, he decried the danger facing the youths in their bid for self-actualisation saying that the space available to them had been significantly narrowed.

Noting constitutional provisions on entry into political offices, he observed that whereas entry points have been raised life expectancy has at the same lowered reducing the time frame for Nigerians to actualize themselves politically.

Civil society movement
Currently, the minimum ages for qualification for the office of President, Senator and member of the House of Representatives are 40, 35 and 30 years respectively.

Expectations that the lamentations of the youths would receive some form of sympathy from Rep. Toyo, herself a veteran in the country’s civil society movement, was immediately cast aside once she got the opportunity to speak.

“There is no wholesome condemnation or commendation because there is no society that is wholly good or wholly bad,” the member of the House said as she derided the attitude of lumping everyone together in the political space.

“If you want to change that situation, you have to come in there and change it,” she submitted. If we do not have a dominant counter force in the system, the system will continue to support its own, it will continue to define itself in the way it is defined. The beneficiaries of the system will continue to benefit from the system.”

Toyo, however, did not drop the microphone without throwing back the taunts against her party’s National Youth Leader, saying: “The older people in the ACN are worse that the older people in the PDP. Am I wrong,” she asked to a muted applause.