National Coordinator of the group, Professor Hafizu Abubakar, gave the advice at the weekend at the maiden edition of Maitama Sule Leadership Lecture series held at Bayero University, Kano.
Professor Abubakar who reminded that younger generation, especially those of northern extraction must prepared to mobilised maximum vote to reclaim their mandate from those he referred as exploitative condescending class in the country.
The former deputy governor said Northern Nigeria students must be reminded that the bastion of hope for rebuilding the region rest in their hands and it must be guided jealously.
According to him, “Unless the prevailing leadership selection process is radically challenged and reformed, the system would continue to be unduly manipulated by the minority, corrupt and exploitative elites that have monopolised the total available activity in the country since independence.
“The thousands of enthusiastic students at the event should be motivated to passionately work towards reshaping 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 citizens.”
He tasked the students about their major role expected “to 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.”
He worried that those that claimed to be Northern leaders in the seat of power in the country are people who have strayed far away from glorious path carved for the development of the region by past leaders, many of whom he stressed paid the supreme price in the process.
He decried the dirty politics being played by 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.
“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.
He said the Northern youths have so many opportunities to explore, but because of the laziness and too much reliance on government, the region continue on the backward.
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.
