Opinion II Today August 12 is, Int'l Youth Day

ENGAGING THE YOUTH IN POLITICS AS WE MARK INTERNATIONAL YOUTH DAY      
         

The last time I painstakingly checked, 12^th of August every year remained the International Youth Day. This implies that today, Saturday August 12, the 2017 anniversary of the said event is globally being commemorated. This year’s theme is ‘Youth building peace’.

         

The International Youth Day is annually held on August 12 to celebrate the achievements of the world’s youth and to encourage their participation in enhancing global society. It also aims to promote ways to engage them in becoming more actively involved in making positive contributions in their respective communities.

         

The idea for International Youth Day was proposed in 1991 by young people who were gathered in Vienna, Austria for the first session of the United Nations (UN) World Youth Forum. The forum recommended that an International Youth Day should be declared, especially for fund-raising and promotional purposes to support the United Nations Youth Fund in partnership with various youth organizations.     

         

In 1998, a resolution proclaiming August 12 as International Youth Day was adopted during the World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth Affairs. That recommendation was later endorsed in 1999 by the UN General Assembly. The International Youth Day was first observed in the year 2000; one of the highlights of the event was the presentation of the United Nations’ World Youth Awards to the eight Latin American and Caribbean youth and youth-related organizations in Panama City. It’s therefore needless to state that this year’s commemoration represents the eighteenth edition of the worthwhile event.

       

It is generally noted that the youth is the main productive class of any nation, and Nigeria is not an exception. In the same vein, anyone in a youthful stage sees himself as one of the major parts of the engine room of any society he belongs; this perception is not unconnected with the teachings of nature, which is obviously ubiquitous.

         

It suffices to say that any existing society that cannot boast of meaningful youths is not unlike a tree that is being deprived of its major root. This is the reason any country that has lost its youths to social vices lives like a blind man as well as invariably sleeps with both eyes open.

         

Though the definition of the youth regarding the age bracket varies from one school of thought to another; but in a nutshell, it could be defined as a group of young people who are in their adulthood stage. Thus, a youth is simply an adult or a fully grown person that is young.

        

Considering the above definition, you would agree to the fact that the youth is indeed the engine room of any existing society. To this end, it is pathetic and devastating, to assert the least, to see a society comprising irrational youths, or a group of young people that do not know their left from their right.  

        

It is not anymore news that presently, about eighty percent (80%) of the overall youths in most countries in the world, particularly developing nations, have intensely derailed thereby constituting series of inconsequential cacophonies as well as societal menace in all nooks and crannies.  An average member of such a misled group keeps believing – albeit ignorantly – that he/she is being manipulated by a certain set of individuals, without knowing that his future lies in his bare hand. 

         

In Nigeria, for instance, during the post-colonial era and thereabouts, virtually all the political positions in the country were fully occupied by the youth who were mostly in their twenties ranging from Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, Chief Tafawa Balewa, Generals Murtala Mohammed, Theophilus Danjuma, Ibrahim Babagida, Sani Abacha, Shehu Musa Yar’adua, Aguiyi Ironsi, Chukwuemeka Odumegu-Ojukwu, Olusegun Obasanjo, and Mohammadu Buhari, among many others too numerous to mention.

         

But today, the reverse is totally the case. You would hardly see a youth in his thirties becoming a commissioner in his/her home state, let alone occupying a ministerial position. Unequivocally, the ongoing profound apathy coupled with complete loss of vision among most of the new generational youths who occupy about one-third of the country’s population, calls for an outcry.

          

As Nigeria joins the global community to mark the 2017 International Youth Day, I’m soliciting for awareness-raising campaigns to ensure that all the youths are fully sensitized in order to revive the ongoing alarming rate of moral decadence, docility, laxity, and mediocrity found among them.

         

Against this backdrop, I call on the governments, non-governmental bodies, religious institutions, the civil society, the mass media, and what have you, to join hands in this enticing crusade so that in no distant time Nigeria can boast of a society filled with only resourceful and conscience-driven youths. Our youths must be meant to realize that it is indeed high time power is taken from this set of ‘old’ people currently occupying the seat of power in various jurisdictions.

         

We can contribute our respective quotas by initiating or sponsoring both social and academic activities such as youth seminars cum conferences on education and empowerment, concerts promoting the youth both home and in the Diaspora as well as various sporting events, parades and mobile exhibitions that will showcase young people’s accomplishments with a view to thoroughly sensitizing the mindset of the said group on their civic responsibilities, rights and privileges.

          

As the next electioneering era is fast approaching, it is not needful to reiterate that the overall Nigerian youths are bound to arise at such a critical time like this. We can’t continue to procrastinate because a stitch in time, they say, saves nine. Think about it!

Comrade FDN Nwaozor

Executive Director, Docfred Resource Hub - Owerri

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Opinion II How Nigerian Electors Raped Democracy

HOW NIGERIAN ELECTORS RAPED DEMOCRACY

         

Democracy is simply a rule or leadership that involves the majority. In a wider description, it is a system of government in which the citizens exercise power directly or elect representatives among themselves to form a governing body such as a parliament. Another school of thought, particularly Political Science, describes it as ‘a government of the people, by the people and for the people’.

        

The above definitions indicate that democracy is characterized by the people. It’s equally worth noting that election is peculiar to democracy. In other words, any democratic system is required to embrace an electoral process. It is through an electoral procedure, or elections, that the needed leaders emerge.

         

Elections are means of making political choice by voting. They are used in the selection of a leader and in the determination of issue. This conception implies that voters or electors are presented with alternatives that they can choose among a number of proposals designed to settle an issue of public concern. It is thus not needful to assert that, in elections, electors are expected to act as kingmakers.

           

Elections are central to the existence stability and development of democracy. The encyclopaedia of social science defines election as ‘the process of selecting the officers or representatives of an organization by the vote of its qualified members’. It could be defined in a technical sense as the process by which an office is assigned to a person by an act of voting needing the simultaneous expression of opinion by many people. On the other hand, in a social sense, election is the process by which a person is liked to an office with due provision for the participation of the people meant to be under the awaited victor.

          

On December 28, 1978, the leaders of the then Nigeria’s five political parties issued a unanimous pledge to the nation, to keep election free and fair. The leaders in question promised that their leadership to the country would curb excesses in speech and behaviour by their party members.

         

They further stated that they would restrain their members from engaging in political thuggery and ensure that nothing was done to disrupt the peace of any community where election is to be conducted or upset the unity of the nationhood. Above all, they disclosed that they would accept the verdict of the electorate in the elections which they would help to make peaceful, free and fair.

          

Recalling the recent Nigerian electioneering eras, even the blind could attest that several things are no longer at ease as against what it used to be. The assertion that things have fallen apart is not unconnected with the fact that practices to include thuggery and election rigging are now the key attributes of most elections. It becomes pathetic when realized that the supposed kingmakers (electors) are the primary cause of the ongoing unfortunate situation.

         

If the above perception is anything to go by, then a sane person would wonder the reason a ‘kingmaker’ would partake in any act targeted at rigging a scheduled election let alone indulging in such dirty act as thuggery. It’s more baffling to acknowledge that those electors – particularly the youth – who sell their birthright would stand to gain nothing, not even reasonable cash.

         

Even those who would not want to associate themselves with activities that could lead to election rigging would prefer to act like mere onlookers as long as the election lasts. Funnily enough, most of them would be present at the polling unit just to engage in frivolous interactions like issues bordering on sports, relationship or what have you, and not to cast their votes; when scrutinized further, you would observed that majority could not even boast of voters’ card.

         

Owing to the acknowledgement that electors are ostensibly the kingmakers, the constitution of most countries across the globe, which Nigeria’s isn’t exceptional, captioned a clause that relates to ‘Vote of no-confidence’. The aforementioned term is a constitutional matter that empowers the electorate, or the governed, to recall any elected officer if found wanting.

          

In such case, the concerned electors are required to act as a body by collectively endorsing a written document, stating that they no longer have confidence in a particular elected officer thus ordering him/her to return home. This tool shows that the electors are meant to be in charge, both in the pre and post– election eras.

          

It is as well worthy of note that the teeming Nigerian electors have equally abused such a lofty democratic tool. They are often marred by apathy when expected to act as one indivisible body, thereby allowing themselves to be cajoled into a state of mockery by the elected officers who they have chosen to worship. Of course there is no tangible reason a legislator, for instance, who does not have a befitting constituency office would not be recalled by his/her constituents.

         

It is not anymore news that most of the present lawmakers cannot boast of a constituency office in their various constituencies let alone observing ‘Constituency briefing’ as a priority. Some don’t even know the ward chairmen of their respective political parties; they are invariably interested in acquiring such information when elections are by the corner. Worse still, the affected electors would claim ignorance of the injury they have incurred in the process.

         

This trending unwarranted and mind-boggling attitude of most Nigerian electors has succeeded in raping the God-sent democracy. The gravity of the rape is arguably colossal. It is therefore needless to state categorically that there’s a compelling need to carry out an all-inclusive sensitization among these individuals before the worst is witnessed. Think about it!

Comrade FDN Nwaozor

Executive Director, Docfred Resource Hub (DRH) - Owerri

________________________________

Twitter: @mediambassador

http://facebook.com/TheMediaAmbassador        

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