Stakeholders and leaders have charged politicians to shun Keke, Motorcycle, Generator and Fridge empowerment to Nigerian youths rather they should channel such to skill acquisition trainings and technical education.
The charged was made at a public lecture series to mark the 10th anniversary of Advocate Newspaper with the them:Youth Empowerment and Leadership Evolution: Rethinking Nigeria’s Leadership Recruitment Process, held at Wetland Hotel, Ughelli, Delta State.
Speaking at the event, the Guest of Honor, Olorogun Fred Majemite, a prominent lawyer and former commissioner in Delta state said, ” We must all join hands to build our nation because this country is going down.
“Empowerment of our youths should go beyond buying of Keke, Sewing machines and motorcycles because as you present to the beneficiaries, buyers are at the stand by to buy from them at a very low rate.
“Politicians should continue to reorient our youths to fall back to technical education and skill acquisition which is the best empowerment.”
The keynote speaker in her address at the event, Prof Enajite Eseoghene Ojaruega disclosed that the Nigerian youths have been cheated, marginalized and left behind to be given crumbs during electioneering period.
According to the Professor of African Literature at the Department of English and Literally Studies, Delta state University Abraka, “Our youths are innovative but they are not allowed to utilized their potentials and during elections they are given crumbs.
“This foundational failure of Nigeria’s leadership recruitment processes has led to social stratification, alienation, and marginalization, particularly among the youth.”
“All over Nigeria today, the youths are the innovator of technology, they are the best brand in promoting Nigeria image inspire of the circumstances.”
The panel of discussion which was anchored by the former editor of the Guardian Newspaper, Mr. Abraham Ogodo dealt on the solution to the menace of leadership in Nigeria.
Barr Ejiro Etaghene at the discussion challenged the Nigeria youth to acquire knowledge if they must succeed in their various endeavors.
“Don’t wait to be empowered, empower yourself, go and acquire knowledge, read books and start from the little beginning.
Mr. Abraham Ogodo who anchored the discussion session said, “The Advocate lecture is the beginning of series in journalism and I want to commend the publisher for his defacto reporting.”
On his part the publisher of Advocate Newspaper, Mr. Shedrack Onitsha, Anipr said, “Though the past 10 years has been challenging but my joy is that, Advocate has become a platform that has given a lot of people a starting point.
“Some of them who started yesterday, are now renowned journalists with and outside Nigeria, that is our greatest achievement and joy that we have been able to provide platform in training young journalists.
We are re-branding from what you have seen so far, we are also rejigging our activities to be more robust, engaging, thorough in our work and Nigeria and Africa will hear from us.”
On what prompted the topic, Onitsha said, “If looked very well, I I don’t know if our political leaders are playing tricks on the youths, what they termed as youth empowerment cannot take us to the next bust stop.
“Are they actually empowering youths, because that is why we want to rethink this subject, youth empowerment and leadership re-evaluation.
“We want to reevaluate what our politicians tagged empowerment and you don’t empower people without grooming them to take over from you.
“If our political class are really prepared and sincere about youth empowerment, what they should be aiming is to groom, mentor them to ensure that they will take over.
“But what we see now is that they groom and mentor their children to take over from them rather than the larger society. You can hardly see a politician that is grooming another person’s child to take over from him.”
