By Idu Jude, Abuja
The National Youths Leader of the Labour Party, Prince Kennedy Ahanotu, has blamed the failure of the Nigerian youth Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contribution to the economy on the poor youths’ progression plan in the country.
Ahanotu in this interview with Sunday Sun highlighted numerous reasons bordering on youths’ negative contributions to the economy, stressing that the failure of the youth is the failure of the government.
He said that leaders over the years have failed to prioritize succession plans through the transfer of leadership, provision of quality education, health care, ready jobs, and food security. Excerpts:
At your age, if voted to be the president of Nigeria, what would be your key policy focus?
If Prince Kennedy Ahanotu has the privilege to be announced as the elected president of Nigeria, the first thing that I will do is to give independence to institutions of government. Consequently, empowering the judiciary should be given immense priority. I will give them total autonomy; the president would not appoint a chief judge, and he won’t appoint the Attorney General. Those to fill in the leadership gap should grow from the system with a track record of contribution to the system’s development. Secondly, I will give independence to the National Assembly. Then after when I have done these two things, I will cut down the cost of governance. Not the grammatical cost of the government because the number of vehicles that are in my convoy won’t exceed 10 in number. I am not Muhammadu Buhari or Bola Tinubu, and again, I shall jettison the influence of friends and family. Budgets will be done by local government to local government budget proposals submitted to local government by local government. Each local authority should have a housing scheme championed by them and not centralize every programme in Abuja. I shall abolish student loans because there is nothing like loans for Nigerian students. I will also abolish the private school system and revitalize the government school system so there won’t be any reason for student loans. Churches and mosques will be mandated to run free education because they enjoy the offerings, and instead of using these monies for charity, they use them for building schools that even the children of the poor tithe payers cannot afford. Whereas in those days, we have the Catholic Church, Anglican, Methodist, or ECWA, all are early churches, including the Muslim mosques that build Islamic schools. So, churches and mosques can establish schools and run them in line with government academic policies, but that of individuals should cease to exist. As I said before, I shall stop public office holders from sending their kids abroad to study except on scholarships, which is evidence that must be determined. In other parts of the world, like China, Japan, Europe, and America, students do not always travel out of their country to study, but it is always so difficult to obtain a visa to study in a foreign land. Today, such policy made them remain in their country to advance it with their brains, and they celebrate technological advancement. In China, as a student, you don’t travel anyhow because they believe that you have what you need in their country to study. It was in this country where a political aid told Nigerians on live television that his child is schooling in Dubai while other people develop their country, and you catapult yours there and be raising their GDP and our GDP going down, so, if I become the president of Nigeria, the public school system will come back alive. I don’t think I would initiate any new projects. Rather, I will concentrate on building new railway projects, which is a massive infrastructural development to create employment opportunities and to revive the economy. All the roads will be under steady maintenance. We don’t believe in building coastal roads that won’t finish in 15 years to serve this generation. I believe the project was initiated as a conduit pipe.
The Nigerian youth is currently faced with multiple challenges, including poverty, unemployment, underemployment, limited educational opportunities, and health challenges, what do you think is contributory to this?
Well, the truth remains that ambition is everything, and if we can cast our minds back to history, we will find out that the foundation of our hero’s past was so solid and that was why in their time the youth between the ages of 22, 23, 24, 25, and 30 were at the helm of affairs and the likes of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Awolowo, General Yakubu Gowon, and Murtala Mohammed, were leaders that started as youth leaders and they did well. But then, comparatively, the country has missed out in terms of laying down foundational principles that help every nation consolidate and grow. What do I mean by this? For example, if it is a country where young people enjoy scholarships, and get employment opportunities immediately after they come out of school in the past and the country all these opportunities suddenly vanished and there is no longer a form of support from the government, there is no longer form of encouragement, ordinarily things would begin to happen the other way round. That is why we see a lot of the youths struggling. It has come to a point where the youths now appeal for a stable academic calendar in their own country to finish their first degree. They are no longer talking about grants or scholarships. They ask for the government to pay university lecturers for a stable academic process. The Nigerian youths can no longer connect to Nigeria by road because of the lack of road infrastructure. In the past, a student could go to school from Aba to Maiduguri, but today, you cannot tell anyone from Umuahia to go to school in Kano or Sokoto, and he listens to you because of insecurity. So, along the lines, there is this miscommunication, and the idea by the current leaders we have, and the evidence is showing when we see people that had remained in leadership for the past 25 years without mentorship, no leadership recruitment process, no form of encouragement for the upcoming generation and support for the youths. So, there is no transformation plan to transfer power to the upcoming generation, and that is why we continue to see the same faces in each dispensation. They only change goal posts and political uniforms to emerge. So, I think the failure of the government has been the reason the Nigerian youths are underperforming. As you rightly said if we compare the Nigerian youths to their counterparts around the world, the Nigeria youths are stronger, more and more intelligent, and more industrious, but there is no platform for them to succeed in their country and that is why we see a lot of people running out of this country, ‘the Japa syndrome’ we now see persons given testimony in the church that he has got a Canadian or American visa. In a country that is blessed with a whole lot of mineral resources. And when you see them travel to other countries, you see them becoming the best medical doctors, best lawyers, and so on, but in Nigeria, we produce them without industries to showcase their prowess. We produce doctors without facilities to work in comparatively, and when we produce first class, we can’t even buy them back into the system because there is no space to recruit them. So, you see that the breaking point here is that the moment you turn 18 years old, you are entitled to a housing loan, and when you turn 18, even if you do not want to live there, you still have your entitlement intact. You can live alone and attend school and also have holiday jobs as a student. People don’t beg to eat in the UK. Students have holiday jobs and most Nigerians who study abroad work. So, in Nigeria, to have a place for an industrial attachment is difficult. Take, for instance, the NYSC scheme: whenever students are posted to certain places for their primary assignments, they are rejected. So, in this regard, where will the Nigerian youths express themselves? Just tell me?
Is poor upbringing reasons for crime and juvenile delinquency, youth gangsterism, youth education, youth unemployment?
Youth unemployment and underemployment and keeping students out of schools have affected our system so badly. There is this popular saying that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. What this means is that the moment you keep children and their youthful energy for a particular place for a long time their knowledge would look for how to ventilate. That is how ‘yahoo yahoo’ started in Nigeria because people stay in their rooms and begin to think about what they do because they need money to survive. There is no support from the government, and at the same time, parents are not paid as when due, retirement gratuities are not paid as when due, and they need to survive. These are young people who are faced with technology; they need to follow the trends, and they need to buy phones, they need to buy laptops, shows, and things in vogue. So, these abnormalities, poor educational facilities, poor sporting facilities in school, and lack of encouragement by the government. Again, unemployment and underemployment are serious factors that led Nigeria to all manner of insecurity, gangsterism, and illicit activities by young Nigerians while looking for ways to succeed and survive. I am not putting it as an excuse for people to go into crime, but the question is, how has the government supported them not to go into crime? Government and governance visions get blurred. It was in Nigeria where a medical doctor on the verge of travelling to America was attacked and killed during a terrorist attack on the train from Kaduna to Abuja. So, you see how destinies are messed up in Nigeria? Just because the government is not working.
Is it right to say that the youths have failed in Nigeria?
No, the answer is that it is right to say that Nigerian youths, despite the plethora of problems caused by poor leadership, that he or she has managed to stand tall among nations. We should get one thing right here and that is the fact that failure of the youths is the failure of the government in any country. So, the leaders of this country have failed to prioritize youths succession to take over leadership. And that is why we cannot see any youth plan in the country. No proper education programming, no housing loan for the youths, no social security, no industries to work after school and whole lots of problems created by the old people who are our parents. So, how can you say that the Nigerian youth who amidst all these troubles can become best doctors in the world, best scientists, best engineers, best pilots. No, we have not failed.
What in your mind are the consequences of youths being denied leadership of this country?
The consequences of not involving the youths in governance are too numerous. The number one thing is that the insecurity we see will have to continue. The question again is will the president go out to speak to the youth engaging in criminal activities? No, but if the president of the country is a youth, it will be easy for him to mingle and speak to that demography and say come, let’s talk, and they will come and reason with him, but we have a president that no one can access. You won’t see him at the train station, you won’t see him at the airport, you won’t see him and his cabinet members anywhere. So, there is a gap between the leaders and those being led. So, this is one of the key problems causing the insecurity and another issue is that there won’t be sustainable leadership because you see people that have been governor since 1999. They again become senators for another eight years, and after that, they become Secretary to the Government of the Federation, they become Ministers, and after that, they go for ambassadorial appointments, and some of them even aspire to go back to the states to collect Commissioner appointments. So, with these, you see, there won’t be sustainable leadership because Nigeria will find it difficult to comply with international protocols. I feel ashamed when I see our leaders travel for international events and have handshakes with youths of 35 and 40 years old, and you see them playing with them. This is a president of France and Senegal who are both 40 and 41, and as president of Nigeria, you are 78 years old. And you are playing, trying to have handshakes with your grandchildren. Just take a look at the gap. So, it is a shame and the consequences are too numerous because there won’t be any sustainability in leadership, there won’t be mentorship and the youths will always lose out because there is no necessary leadership recruitment process as far as these old men remain in power and I keep saying this, that any man who has a child of about 20 or 25 years and that child cannot drive him and his wife to Church or Mosque that such man has failed as a father. What this means is that the leaders we have in Nigeria, don’t care about their nomenclature and have failed as fathers and leaders because they have not mentored anybody. Despite how President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been in Nigerian politics, his name is ringing a bell. He couldn’t mentor somebody who could take up the number one position in Nigeria if not himself, it means that he has failed like a father. Take a look at the Senate President, Sen. Akpabio, telling the Nigerian youths that if they want to protest, they can protest while those of them in government will be enjoying. Is that not a shame of a leader? It was in this country that a president could not pass ABU Zaria Samaru road to Sheka because students blocked him from sharing chicken for meals, and students revolted, and the President had to use a chopper. The same youths in the 21st Century were mocking, telling them to go and protest with hunger while he and his members enjoyed it. Remember, it is the same Akpabio that is not supposed to be in the Senate, all things being equal if the judiciary is working.
Another consequence is that there will be a hijack of the system of truth. I foresee a serious hijack of the system. The judiciary will be hijacked, the National Assembly will be hijacked and go and check the meaning of parliament. It is a place where people come to speak for the people, a place where people speak against the anomalies of government, for example, ‘my people say they don’t want you to buy an aircraft or others will say we don’t want the coastal roads and we want Abuja/Kaduna, Abuja/Lokoja road and you listen to them.’ Today we have a parliament that does not talk. Look at what the Speaker did while trying to criminalize those who failed to sign the National Anthem, while he could not criminalize those who passed the law on the new National Anthem without contributions from the people. This is an instrument of patriotism that was passed without carrying the people along. I think I can recite the new National Anthem because I have a lot of things on my head, a lot of challenges, and he wants me to start cramming the National Anthem at this age. Is it the most important thing that Nigerians need now? So, you see, there will be a hijack of the judiciary, which is no longer free now because one professor said that if anyone wants to win the election, he would get the INEC, get the judiciary, carry the ballot paper, and go and announce the result and you have won an election. And that is exactly the hijack that I am talking about, and then they should be shutting out the youths who have the potential to lead. At that time, you cannot see a Nigerian president who cannot run struggling to be the president. Sometime in the past, when I ran for the House of Representatives, I contested with someone who walked on clutches, not on the ground of disability; I have many PWDs who are in wheelchairs and have the capacity and capability to preside over this country. but my opponent contested on the grounds of old age and doesn’t have the capacity anymore to contribute meaningfully.
What are these programmes lined up by LP leadership to harvest youths’ talents?
Well, let me start with the performance of the Labour Party in the 2023 general elections. if you look at the entire elections, it is on record that the Labour Party has the youth demography in the National Assembly, and we have a larger number of people who were elected as youths in the last general elections. Go and check the records. People who are above 60 years are not up to 10 out of 35 of them. Others are within 55 and below. That is a labour party for you. The party also presented the youngest presidential candidate among three established contenders. Labor Party is the only political party that encourages women’s participation in electioneering, and the mobilization is purely from the youth by the youths and for the youths. That is the reason you saw the overwhelming performance of the Labour Party in the last general elections, and that is why, till today, it remains a mystery why the party was not declared the winner of the 2023 presidential election. It is still a mystery why today INEC could not explain the meaning of a technical glitch. This can happen because we know how to use words in Nigeria. We have a nation where someone steals public money and indulges in plea bargains as a soft landing. When such people steal money, they forfeit 20 per cent and withhold 80 per cent. It is only in Nigeria where election umpire muddles national election results and blames technical glitches. Come to talk of it, what is a glitch? Even if there was any, something must lead to the server having technical issues, the question is, who switched off the server?
So, the Labour Party is mobilizing, we are preparing for 2027, and our strategy is simple because the youths want to use this platform to express themselves again. They have exploited the Labour Party platform in 2023, but there is going to be a more forceful approach because the system has used us to take over what belongs to Nigerians so there is going to be a level of committed efforts in terms of putting things on the ground to ensure that there won’t be a repeat of what happened in 2023. And they know that is why the party is having a lot of issues which we all know are not ordinary, but externally generated. That is why you see crises here and there that the party is trying to battle. These are part of the hijack I was talking about; they want to hijack all the political parties in Nigeria so that nobody will speak up and nobody will challenge them.
In the Labour Party, what instruments and measures are on the ground for youth orientation beyond ballot snatching and political gangsterism?
As I said earlier, there is a structure we have established in the Labour Party; I can tell you that the office of the national leader has started identifying with those who are aspiring to be in one position or the other in 2027. We want to groom people to compete in elections in 2027, and we want to make sure that we have all the 774 local government Houses of Assembly candidates for the Labour Party in the next general elections, and among them, there must be credible people in all the local government areas.
So, we have started recruiting and engaging them, and when we engage four or five, then those can now begin to engage House of Assembly prospects, House of Representatives, Senatorial candidates, and those who may wish to run for gubernatorial positions within the local governments. You see campaign strategy is not what one opens up for public consumption and it happened during the 2023 political campaign where our candidate said that he was going to remove petroleum subsidy and others thought that was all and rushed to remove it. So, in practice, there are so many things one has to put together to achieve the required result. So, it is not now that I will begin to expose what we have, but what I can say is that we are trying to consolidate our structure. We have a lot of entrances to the party. People are joining the party from all walks of life, so, we are consolidating by trying to rebrand, trying to reorganize, trying to become stronger at the polling units and various wards across the country.
During the last elections, poor voters’ education and lack of party agents worked against the Labour Party at various polling booths; how do you solve this problem?
Yes, if you can remember, there was a committee already in place. It is the committee on electoral reform and voter education. The electoral reform will follow the case of INEC not following their guidelines and make sure that the National Assembly passes that bill to become an act. Not that they would tell us that results will be collated virtually only for you to shift the goal post in the middle of the game. We have people pushing that, and again, on voter education, the committee has already started engaging with the people. What affected the Labour Party in 2023 was because the party was not in power, we had only two House of Representatives members and one House of Assembly member. So, we don’t have that national appeal, and you know that Nigeria is a country seemingly of a two-party system, the ruling party and the second in control. Those two parties are known, so anytime you invite people to other upcoming political parties due to the hunger in the land, people wish to go where they share money instead of staying where nobody offers them anything. So, funding majorly affected the Labour Party in the 2023 elections, and also, we got a presidential candidate just six months before the elections, so we started late; we had just a few months to do what we did. Out of 150-something thousand polling units, we were able to capture 130-something polling units monitored by our agents, and that was because of timing, and there was lots of pressure coupled with the fear of insincere people. We have so many people who failed to do what they pledged they would do and while trying to organize within six months we know that the presidential election is not a joke and that is an area I gave our presidential candidate kudos because he was almost funding it all alone, but now we have a lot of people that have seen that he would have been a better candidate. We know that a lot of people who have seen this would now join hands with us to pursue this cause in 2027.
Which among other strategies do you think the youths must adopt to muscle power from the grandfathers apart from a revolution?
Well, taking to the street, the Nigerian youths have seen that they will be faced with lots of forces because Nigeria seems a country where citizens do not matter and the people that matter are those leaders. I saw in the UK where people protested without a single bullet shot. In Nigeria, I saw police officers with AK 47 facing innocent protesters. So, the street might not help, but what will help is for the Nigerian youths to denounce all their attachments with any corrupt politicians that want to use them in 2027. They will reject not to be their PAs and SAs; they should refuse to collect money for voting, and even when they collect the money, use it wisely, do the right thing, and vote their conscience. I think the approach now is for us to wait for that war on the polling units and again prepare to hold on to our results. There are no two ways about it. We have to protect it, count it, and give the results by ourselves.
Do you subscribe to certain age limit for public and political office holders in Nigeria?
I think, in civil service, there is a retirement age, and it is only in Nigeria that such is bastardized. They will find a way to shun you, and they are still in government, they are still in office, they are still in government. I feel that the minimum wage should be cut across both civil servants and political office holders. It should be across the board irrespective of where the person is working, and if all of us are under minimum wage, our brains will function better, so the same age limit for directors to retire should be commended for political officeholders. I don’t think that anybody who is above 65 or even 70 has the mental capacity to give directives in the developing world. If you take a look, you will find out that most of them do not know they have a phone, so they work on the phone. these political aids should be given employment in the civil service to work. It would be a situation where someone works for just three years as political aid and makes the huge amount that a civil servant cannot make in 35 years of his career. Such a situation is like in animal farm, where some animals seem to be bigger than others.
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