NOT ALL NIGERIAN YOUTHS ARE CORRUPT: WE ARE KEY PLAYERS IN NATION BUILDING

Posted on October 7, 2015

Audu Ogbeh is an honest and detribalised Nigerian. He is a nationalist in the rank of Hubert Macaulay and Nnamdi Azikiwe. His non-violent approach to politics is remarkable. I have tremendous respect for him. We know him as a good man because he was given an opportunity to serve at a young age.

The problem I have with these old men is their unwillingness to leave the stage for the younger generation. He was minister in the second republic at the age of 35. Sometimes I ask myself whether these old people think we are not intelligent enough to do what they did at that age. My support for Buhari was not for him to carry files from one office to another in name of serving Nigeria. As he rightly said in South Africa: “I cannot do much at my age”.

I supported him because there was an urgent need for a president to salvage the falling state of our Nation. And the key qualities needed was integrity and experience. We needed an honest president who will put an end to impunity and executive recklessness ‘shikena’. So he should not assume the role of a technocrat. What I expect Buhari to do is to appoint intelligent and honest young men and women to do the job rather than resuscitating some old folks.

The fact that we have a lot of dishonest people in the society should not take away the fact that we have alot of honest young men and women with passion to contribute to nation building. As far as I am concerned, this government do not believe in the youths. They only see the youths as footsoldiers needed to acquire power. And please let no one come here with that sycophantic notion of ” we have about 6000 appointments yet to be made”. I am also waiting for that person that will come with the fallacious statement of hasty generalisation that some youths failed when they were given opportunity. Some youths failed because they were not selected by merit. The were appointed either because of their father’s past glory or as compensation to a political godfather.

And to Buhari, there is a difference between working hard and working intelligently. These old men acquired training through manual paraphernalia so they cannot perform better than 21st century youths who are trained with modern technological paraphernalia. The sad side of it is that these old men will still employ a lot of young men to do the work while they sit and watch as mere figure heads.

Let me ask Mr. President some questions:

• How old were you when OBJ appointed you Federal Commissioner (Minister) for Petroleum?
• Were there no honest old wise men around when you were appointed?
• Are you saying that people like Ismaeel Ahmed, Jasper Azuatalam, Bucky Hassan, Stephen Akuma etc are not honest, Intelligent and matured enough to serve as ministers?

I leave you to your conscience and I wish you best of luck.