A group of young advocates, under the Umbrella body of Meaningful Adolescent and Youth Engagement (MAYE), have called on the new political leaders to prioritise health, education and employment for the youth population.
The steering committee of MAYE Working Group in Nigeria, hosted by the Africa Health Budget Network (AHBN), who made the call in Abuja, outlined the challenges and solutions for building a healthier, productive and empowered youth population.
MAYE Chairman, Olympus Ade-Banjo, and Co-Chair, Adams Taibat Onize, presented a Youth Health and Development Agenda which mapped out areas requiring urgent interventions such as increasing the health budget to 15 per cent of the national budget and recognising adolescents and youth as part of the vulnerable population for social health insurance.
The agenda include expanding basic education from mine to 12 years, passing the Student Bill of Rights, creating meaningful occupational counselling structures and reducing the age of access to HIV testing to 14.
The group therefore, called on all new political leaders to pay attention to the issues and low-hanging fruit solutions enshrined in the agenda, as it also appealed to other young people in the country to join their efforts and contribute their voices and skills to the development of the country.
“Young people are not only the leaders of tomorrow but also the partners of today.”
The chairmen concluded by reiterating the group’s commitment to work with the new government and other stakeholders to ensure that young people’s rights, needs and aspirations are met, charging all political office holders to respect their oaths of service and the constitution of Nigeria, to govern fairly, equitably and with prudence.
In his remark, former lawmaker and chairman, National Advocate for Health (NA4H) Hon. Mohammed Usman called for an improvement in budgetary release for the health sector.
“For instance, family planning budget in the last 2 years has never been released, at the expense of our mothers in Nigeria who are not getting and necessary education to save lives,” he said.
Usman also urged the new lawmakers to ensure that budgetary allocations are appropriately utilised.
“We want a situation whereby the new administration particularly the new lawmakers who are coming on board will take the issue of oversight which all seriousness that is required.
“When you oversight as a lawmaker you will be able to follow and monitor the budget and allocation made to find out whether it is effectively utilised or not” Usamn added.
On her part, the convener, Nigerian-MAYE, Oyeyemi Pitan, called for multi stakeholder collaboration in establishing RMNCAEH+ N across national and sub national levels.
“it affects everybody, so it is everyone’s health” Pitan said.
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