Northern Nigerian youth and students have been mobilized to prepare for future leadership responsibility by working to reclaim their destiny from what was 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 is radically challenged and reformed, the system would continue to be unduly manipulated by the minority, corrupt and exploiter elite that has 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 designing 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 has been thoroughly mismanaged, misgoverned and abused.
Speakers lamented that those who pose as northern leaders today are people who have 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 implored the students to treat these lecture series as a distinct mentoring process initiated by students of the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG).
He decried the dirty politics being played by Nigerian politicians expressing the need for the mindset of the youths to be changed for the better, stressing 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.
“Therefore the youths themselves as tomorrow leaders know because they are victims of bad leadership at all levels. I am sure they want better leadership for themselves and their own generation. So each and every one of us, including them, realise this because we are on the wrong path and we have to chart a new course for a better Nigeria” he stated.
One of the keynote Speakers, Professor Sagagi harped on the need to harness the potentials of the youth into businesses for self reliance sighting 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.
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