Salihu Lukman, the Director General of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) has observed that the current protest around #EndSARS is a proof that Nigerian youth are troubled, and they are at the receiving end of all the trouble our country is facing.
Lukman in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja noted that in many respects, the protests highlighted deficit in terms of government initiatives meeting the expectations of Nigerian young people.
According to him, “Such deficit could emanate from poor communication strategy. In order to address the problem, there is the need for government to immediately review implementation of government welfare initiatives and ensure provision of specific packages targeting young people, in addition to meeting the specific demands of the #EndSARS protests”.
The PGF Boss stated that Nigerian youths have woken up to the challenge of political engagement to address problems affecting them and have taken over the streets and the airwaves.
“At best, government and all of us actively involved in politics are doing catch up. For more than a week, across all our media, both locally and internationally, news about Nigeria is all around the protest by our young people.
“The protest is very popular, and the leadership appear very determined to continue with the protest. Being the party in government, are we going to painstakingly work for democratic resolution? Or are we going to opt for authoritarian measures to end the protests?”, he queried.
Lukman said his party, the APC, and Nigeria’s leaders should be able to provide the needed leadership, which cannot be easily determined with reference to for or against the protest by young people.
“It must be based on honest recognition of the problem and therefore ensuring that our party and our leaders are genuinely committed for open engagement with our young people to solve the problem. Accordingly, consideration should be given to create some employment opportunities at Federal and state levels for young people. In addition to employment opportunity, some credit facilities to support business initiatives of young people should be introduced. Whether through Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency (SMEDAN), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) or special arrangement, a coordinating structure involving the representatives of young people should be established to administer implementation of the credit scheme.
“Specific to the protest by our young people, to end the protest will require that at the highest level, perhaps the President, government should make special announcement making all the offers, which cover how government intend to meet the demands of the protesters. The announcement should come with special appeal to young people and invite them to nominate representatives for engagement towards implementation. The process of getting the nomination of the young people should be carefully and transparently handled. The government announcement therefore should appeal to the young people to allow a period of at least one week to ensure that appropriate mechanism is put in place towards implementation of government initiatives to resolve the problems. Within the period, the protesting young people should suspend the protest.
“As a party, we should take steps to harvest all the goodwill that we have. This is in fact the point when APC should be able to demonstrate its political sophistication. If there is any point when our national reality present APC and our leaders with the opportunity to demonstrate commitment to bring about change in the country, the protest by our young people present an opportunity. It is such a defining opportunity that must be handled with caution as it can potentially consolidate or completely erode APC’s electoral advantages especially with 2023 in the horizon”, the APC Chieftain maintained.
He cautioned that: “As a party therefore, APC must resist the lazy approach to present the protest as being influenced by political opponents. Even if political opponents are to take advantage, it will be on account of our failings as a party.
“So far, government should be commented for affirming the inalienable rights of Nigerians to freely protest as provided in the 1999 Nigerian constitution as amended. In the same way, Nigerian youths should similarly be commended for successfully exercising their rights as guaranteed by our laws.
“In any case, given that the organisation of the protest departed from known conventions based on which setting up negotiating platforms to engage the leaders of the protests would have been made effective, it is difficult to meet the demands of the protesters. This is why, demands are sneaky, and the protest has assumed a feature of interminability.
“It is such a difficult reality. Yet, government and our party must do everything possible to resolve the problems and end the protest. Just as we appeal to our political leaders, we need to also appeal to our young people, especially the underground leaders to see beyond the protest by taking the necessary steps to win landmark political concessions, which should include access to opportunities for leadership responsibilities by young people.
“Part of what this generation of young leaders must avoid is the unfortunate repeat of the mistake of our 1990s generation of activists when with all the political opportunities after a difficult prodemocracy struggle, in 1998/1999 we failed to take advantage of political transition and participate in politics.
“Not even appeals to our leaders by no less a person than revered Nelson Mandela when on two accessions as President of Republic of South Africa he sent former President Thabo Mbeki, the as Vice President of South Africa with the appeal to Nigerian prodemocracy activists to engage the transition process as part of the diplomatic mission to facilitate military disengagement from Nigerian politics.
“Mr. Olisa Agbakoba, Mr. Femi Falana, Mrs. Ayo Obe among many others are alive to confirm or refute the efforts by Mandela to convince Nigerian activists to take advantage of the 1998/1999 transition to be part of the emerging political leadership of this Fourth Republic. The rest as is often said is now history. After the difficult struggle to end military rule in the country, at a defining moment when we should mainstream ourselves as part of the political leadership of the country, we came up with theories of ‘democracy without democrats’ and disparaging our political class as ‘Abacha politicians’.
“If our protesting youth failed to convert the current protest to opportunity for access to political leadership responsibility, the resourcefulness of our youth as exhibited during this protest will be wasted. In fact, if there is anything capable of guaranteeing that the legal framework of “Not Too Young To Run” will lead to more political participation of young people, it is the current protest. But that is only possible if the negotiation around the current protest by our young people is broadened to issues of political participation. How can our leaders and APC achieve this? It is important that we are able to convince our leaders to recognise that opening the space for young people to actively participate in politics is necessary and compellingly in the overall interest of our democratic development as a nation.
“As a party of change, APC is blessed with many energetic young people. Part of what must be done for APC to be able to reposition itself and attract the new strong energy of our young people is to ensure that the current process of rebuilding the APC is tailored to recruit our young people. In particular, a special strategic commitrtee to recruit identified leaders of interest groups, including the leaders of the protest movement by young people should be considered ahead of the membership registration exercise that is about to commence. Part of the medium to long term plans should be to try and develop new approaches to political leadership recruitment, which at the moment is unplanned.
“The days ahead will be decisive in determining whether our leaders can take steps to affirm the credentials of APC as a party committed to social change. The ability of our leaders to develop sophisticated structures and strategy, which can earn the trust and confidence of our protesting young people is facing a big challenge.
” All committed members of the party should rally round our leaders to support them to put in place the needed framework to resolve all the problems facing our young people and accordingly bring to an end the #EndSARS protest. This should strengthen the process of orienting the politics of our party towards social change, which will confirm our progressive credentials”.
