The student wing of the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) has been charged to resist temptation and use their number to decide their desired change.
The former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Professor Usman Yusuf, stated this at the 19th edition of the Maitama Sule Leadership Lecture Series organized by the Students Wing of the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) at the College of Education Sokoto,
Prof Yusuf reminded the youth that they have the number to sufficiently bring about change.
He warned that the youth cannot afford to sit back and expect things to come to them, noting that life does not come with remote control.
“You have to stand up and change things by yourselves. Nations all across the world are built by youths. You have what it takes; what it takes is a number that you must use constructively in 2023 to change things. You cannot seat down and lament while people who have revolved power among themselves for too long continue to use and exploit you,” he said.
He charged the students to reject the tradition of lining up to receive handouts to abandon their future and choose instead to install leadership that will make them more secure and provide them with a productive future.
“Work to replace leaders who think power is an end in itself; who mobilize our people only during elections, sowing seeds of division and leaving everyone poorer and more insecure than they were,” he charged.
The paper presenter, Prof Abdullahi Abubakar of the Department of Political Science, Usman Danfodio University, Sokoto, dwelled on the linkages between social inequality, poverty and armed banditry in northern Nigeria while blaming the youths for not being able to effectively articulate their priorities.
The professor argued that social inequality, poverty and armed banditry can collectively be connected to the failure of the state resulting from the inability of leadership to deliver good and quality governance.
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“The generation of leadership we have today, has failed us, and there is, therefore, the need for us to urgently do something to put the nation on the right course,” he said.
Noting that conflict or insecurity is among the major development challenges that accompanied Nigeria’s democratization process in the last two decades, the professor revealed that between 1999 and 2007 alone, over 500 different forms of conflicts or insurgencies were recorded across Nigeria before it was shifted to the northern part of the country.
In his remarks, Nastura Ashir Shariff, the Board of Trustees Chairman of the CNG lashed at the managers of the nation’s petroleum industry and oil marketers on the current hardships resulting from an artificial fuel scarcity which he said, is deliberately aimed at paving the way for the increment of pump prices.
He said the aim of the scarcity is to finally hike the prices of fuel and impose maximum suffering on the population in the face of the current multiple and pervasive challenges around security and the economy.
“The civil society must mobilize the citizenry to defend our collective interests by challenging and firmly resisting this new antic by those who are mercilessly bent on subjecting us to perpetual slavery in our own country for their selfish, capitalist interests,” he said.
Capping the event, CNG’s Spokesperson, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, advised the students to familiarise themselves with the values of the CNG.
“As students who have shown a commitment to the goals and ideals of the CNG, I will start by advising you to familiarize yourselves with its goals and accept to live with them.
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