Opening Remarks By Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, Chairman, Maitama Sule Leadership Lecture Series Organised By The Kwara State Chapter Of The Students’ Wing Of Coalition Of Northern Groups (CNG) At Ilorin On 6th December, 2021.

I want to begin by thanking the Students Wing of the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) and the authorities of the state College of Education for hosting this edition of the Maitama Sule Leadership Lecture Series that holds much promise in keeping our youth focused and disciplined in the pursuit of edifying goals and living with values that define the Northern character.

I particularly want to thank the Provost of the College, Mr .. for his inspiring presence at this event as a mark of his untiring efforts to keep the flames of our dedication to the interests of the people of the North and Nigeria alive.

The theme of today’s lecture is ‘ and I am absolutely sure our keynote speaker, the main paper presenter and other speakers would competently deal with that, so I will not venture there.

Meanwhile, the initiative for the Maitama Sule Leadership Lecture Series represents a major step up in the activities of the CNG as part of its mobilization 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 organized body, have had and shall expectedly continue to have considerable impact on Nigerian and the global political situations.

They have influenced policies and alliances and have acted as pressure groups that often time shape the direction of governments’ political agenda and policies.

It is essential to indicate here that you, the students, hold a position in the society that is non-exclusive. That is, you are a student, also a son, a daughter, a sister, a brother, mother, father and perhaps even a grandmother or grandfather.

Likewise, the student is also a member of a community or several communities that include communities within his or her school such as his faculty, dormitory, student groups or unions.

He/she also belongs to several other communities outside the school such as where he or she lives or resides, his maternal or paternal home town or village.

This occupation of several positions in society means that the student has a multiplicity of roles and responsibilities, one of which is the role of an activist.

But you cannot do this successfully unless you move to revive the belief that it is your historical responsibility to resist oppression, misrule and bad governance. You must see yourselves as part of the articulate few, and the conscience of the nation.

These roles perceptions dispose you towards radical orientations and directions, which in many instances had brought about certain positive changes in Nigeria in the past.

However, in the context of present realities and for the positive contributions of student activism to our national politics to be sustained and modified in a more scientific manner, a general and revolutionary overhaul of the Nigerian education sector is expedient, so that scholastically inclined activism can become the focus of governance and politics on campus and outside which is precisely this lecture series aims to achieve.

Students activism must therefore reach beyond the narrow focus of local campus interests. Instead, increased energy must be directed towards greater national issues – issues that address our commonality and which have effects on our well being and those of future generations.

Such issues include arresting the prevalence of drug and substance abuse, eradicating indolence, corruption and poverty in society, promoting democracy and good governance, among others.

In other words, as northern Nigerian student activists, you must become national and global development partners; an active pressure group on national and international development matters.

As students who have shown a commitment to the goals and ideals of the CNG, I will start by advising you to familiarize yourselves with its goals and accept to live with them.

Resist the temptation to live in perpetual blame of past leaders. Do better than them by taking up your legitimate and natural role of rescuing the North from the margins of irrelevance, impotence, inconsequence and decay.

Work to remove leaders who are poorly-prepared and ill-equipped to lead except for their ambitions for power and ill-acquisition of wealth, leaving our people at the mercy of armed crime, unforgiveable poverty.

Join politics to make a difference; to bring peace to communities; to stop corruption and end insecurity by replacing leaders who think power is an end in itself; who mobilize our people only during elections, sowing seeds of division and leaving everyone poorer and more insecure than they were.

Be conscious of the fact that you, and only you, can make the North better or worth, and have implicit faith that the North will overcome its current challenges. If you think my generation has failed you, you should work to ensure that you do not fail the next generation.

Watch out for the children who do not go to school; who roam around begging; who are poorly-brought up; who are tempted by crime and drugs because these will be the standard by which the future will judge you.

Finally, remain vigilant over the direction and fate of our nation, being major stakeholders in whatever happens in, and to Nigeria, whose position on how the nation is structured and operates must be informed by unity and determination to resist attempts to turn us into marginal elements in all calculations on the future of our nation.

I hope, as we leave here, we would have raised issues that will engage you as you embark on this commendable task to awaken and mobilize the greatest asset of the North, its youth.

Thank you.May God Bless you all.

Abdul-Azeez Suleiman is the Spokesperson of the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG)

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