Northern Nigerian youth and students have been mobilised to prepare for future leadership responsibility by working to reclaim their destiny from what has been referred to as exploitative condescending class that has manipulated the democratic process and governance system.
The charge was made by a convergence of academics and a progressive section of the Northern leaders and elders at the Kano State edition of the Maitama Sule Leadership Lecture Series, held at the Bayero University Kano (BUK) at the weekend.
Speakers at the event, which was chaired by a former Deputy Governor of Kano State, Professor Hafiz Abubakar, unanimously agreed that Northern Nigerian students in higher institutions remain the bastion of hope for the region’s recovery.
It was observed that unless the prevailing leadership selection process was radically challenged and reformed, the system would continue to be unduly manipulated by the minority, corrupt and exploiter elite that had monopolised the total available activity in the country since independence.
The thousands of enthusiastic students at the event were thus motivated to passionately work towards about reshaping the Northern values, visions and design new strategies for dealing with issues that affect Northern interests on security, on the economy, and on the manner Northerners relate with fellow Nigerians.
The students were reminded of the major role expected of them of rescuing the region from the margins of irrelevance, impotence, inconsequence and decay in the context of a Nigerian nation that currently runs on values that the region needs to understand and modify to suit its circumstances.
Speakers lamented that those who posed as Northern leaders today were people who had strayed far away from glorious path carved for the development of the region by past leaders, many of whom had to pay the supreme price in the process.
In his opening remarks, Professor Hafiz Abubakar decried the dirty politics being played by Nigerian politicians, expressing the need for the mindset of the youths to be changed for the better.
He stressed the need to inculcate new and responsible ideas in the youths to serve as a means of bringing about change in the leadership focus of the future in the youths.
“The money politics system is bad, that is why we are here. We are playing a very wrong, very dirty and very unproductive politics.”
Another speaker, Hajiya Aisha Dankani, a lawyer and former director in the presidency, urged the youth to join politics to make the difference by participating in political party activities at all levels.
“Nigerians, particularly the youth, must organise community fora to design sustainable mechanisms for assessing the level of commitment, competence, capacity and credibility of every candidate before committing their votes,” she advised.
She warned that people should not limit their choices around the existing two major political parties but should rather begin to work for credible alternative platforms.
One of the keynote Speakers, Professor Sagagi harped on the need to harness the potentials of the youth into businesses for self – reliance, citing the movement of cattle from North to South as cogent example.
“We have so many opportunities to explore, but we are lazy and place too much reliance on government,” he said.
Also speaking, Professor Jiddere emphasised the need for youth participation in active politics to check the current system decay, pointing out that the youth are the legitimate machinery or potent agents of change.
Explaining the essence of the Maitama Sule Leadership Lecture Series, Spokesperson for the Group, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, said it represents a major step up in the activities of the CNG as part of its mobilisation strategies to involve every significant component of Northern society, by embarking on a massive campaign to make its presence felt among Northern students in higher institutions and bring them into the mainstream of its activities.
“Students, as an organised body, have had and shall expectedly continue to have considerable impact on Nigerian and the global political situations,” Suleiman pointed out.
Rounding off the event, CNG’s Board of Trustees Chairman, Nastura Ashir Shariff, reaffirmed the Northern position against the deliberate attempt by certain sections of the country to deny the region the right to field candidates for the 2023 presidency.
He said, “No amount of threat and intimidation from the South would change the minds of Northerners regarding zoning as enumerated in the CNG’s Triple C formula that the next President can come from any part of the country so long as he possesses the required competence, capacity and character.”
Responding to questions on the convergence of some business, political, civil society leaders in Lagos under the aegis of The 2022 Committee to map a new consensus for national rebirth, Shariff said the retreat smacks of a dubious agenda to mortgage the future of the country by most of those who are directly responsible for the current national decay and decadence.
“We are suspicious of the intentions of the meeting given the antecedents of the participants or many of the people involved and would soon come out with our formal position on it,” he said.