A former Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Buratai (rtd) and former Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar (rtd), yesterday implored Nigerian youths to work towards enthroning credible leaders in the 2023 general polls.
They spoke during a summit of APC Young Leaders at the International Conference Centre in Abuja.
Acknowledging that Nigerian youths constitute 70 percent of the country’s over 200 million population, the former service chiefs said their role, like other youths globally, is to ensure Nigeria makes meaningful progress, even they lauded the APC national youth leader, Dayo Israel, and other organisers of the summit for bringing up such an idea.
Specifically, Buratai told the youths arm themselves with knowledge of Nigeria’s history, with the country’s attending challenges, noting that by learning to respect their leaders they could as well succeed in their quest for leadership.
Going down memory lane, Buratai who is currently Nigeria’s Ambassador to Benin Republic recalled that Nigeria’s founding fathers, including Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Balewa, Ahmadu Bello and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, were youths when they assumed leadership positions, something he said the present youths can emulate.
He said, “As we enter into the 2023 campaign proper, the youths have a great role to play and in this regard, you must mobilise the electorate to ensure that they come out en-masse to vote for the right candidate, and I believe you know who I am referring to. APC, with the good support of the youth, is the party to beat”.
On his part, former Air Chief, Abubakar, noted that Nigerian youths play a key role in resolving the nation’s challenges.
Abubakar said any nation that wants to move forward must really put in place a framework that would tap the energy, creativity and innovation of the youth, which he described as an important segment of our society.
“It is important that we continue to remain focused on what needs to be done to move our society forward and I am very excited that APC, as a party, has taken this challenge of ensuring that the youths are mobilised and the youths are given a very crucial role to play in ensuring that the nation moves forward.”
For his part, the APC national youth leader, Israel, said the summit was organised to discuss the expectations from the nation’s next leaders come 2023.
He said, “We have in our population about 200 million people, with 70 percent of those 200 million under the age of 40. It’s important that we begin as young Nigerians and as young progressives to come together to engage and collaborate, educate, to discuss the pivotal roles that we want to play in the coming election,
“And that is why we have come together at this summit at the ICC in Abuja to discuss what is the Nigeria that we want. What are our expectations from the coming administration? What do we want to see in education, energy, climate change and in the environment?
“We are also engaging these young people to begin to become political stakeholders in their own community, mobilizing, doing door-to-door campaign and also various advocacy in the grassroots as foot soldiers to ensure that we deliver Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as the next president, commander-in-chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he said.
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