Young Nigerians are most strategic assets, and the heart of its development -Buhari

“Ours is a country of very young people and the cliche that the youth are only leaders of tomorrow is now well discredited. The fact is that young Nigerians are currently at the frontlines of every consequential struggle for our future, every consequential struggle that is being waged today. Across the world, our most potent ambassadors are young Nigerians who are breaking new grounds, breaking records and winning laurels in diverse fields of endeavour” – President Buhari

“To speak of a new Nigeria that is not bound by prejudice and divisive narrowmindedness, but defined by a progressive spirit of liberalism, enterprise, innovation, mutuality, and openness is to speak of a new breed of Nigerians who manifest these values. Gathered in this place are young Nigerians from diverse backgrounds – different ethnicities and creeds – and you represent the new Nigeria. Your generation will lead Nigeria into its best era yet” – President Buhari

OPENING ADDRESS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI, GCFR, AT THE MAIDEN NATIONAL YOUTH CONFERENCE, NYC, IN ABUJA, ON NOVEMBER 1ST, 2021

Protocols

I am delighted to be able to join you at this maiden edition of the National Youth Conference and to commemorate our National Youth Day.

The theme of this event is, “Energizing the Youth for Development: Inclusiveness, Governance, Security, and Employment”, and it speaks directly to the imperatives of this present moment in our nation’s history.

Ours is a country of very young people and the cliché that the youth are only leaders of tomorrow is now well discredited. The fact is that young Nigerians are currently at the frontlines of every consequential struggle for our future, every consequential struggle that is being waged today.

They are serving as members of our armed forces and security agencies, laying down their lives, risking their limbs in the battle against terrorists and other forces of anarchy.

They are in civil society, advancing the struggle for a fairer and more just and humane society, by promoting the rights of women and ensuring that the concerns and interests of the vulnerable remain at the centre of our society’s attention. Because of the labours of our youth, in addition to being home to the third largest film industry in the world, we are the epicenter of a global and Pan-African popular culture anchored to the dynamism of Nigerian creatives.

We are home to celebrated and award-winning writers from Chimamanda Adichie to hundreds of younger Nigerian writers. In one Grammy award ceremony, two Nigerian musicians, Burna Boy and Wizkid won awards.

Our sportsmen and women are breaking records and winning medals. The likes of Ese Brume, Tobi Amusan, Enoch Adegoke, and Blessing Oborududu. These are all young Nigerians doing great things in sports.

There are also young Nigerians riding the crest wave of the information technology revolution and they are pioneering new patterns of enterprise and wealth creation, and in the process have established this country as the most vibrant innovation hub on the African continent.

There are several unicorns and promising start-ups in Nigeria already. In the Fintech sector alone, we have a number of unicorns, Flutterwave, Paystack, Opay, and Interswitch all valued at more than $1billion each.

In the e-commerce sector, we have Jumia. We also have Piggyvest, a wealth management platform that at the end of 2019 had helped about 80 million users and all of these are persons who are doing incredible things.

Our tech entrepreneurs and innovators are not just applying their talents to profit-making endeavours, but also seeking to address social problems. People like Saadat Aliyu, who runs a tech hub in Kano, have developed an app for reporting cases of sexual assault.

Only last week, the Canon Young Champion of the Year Award – which celebrates the achievements of young people around the world who are driving social and environmental change – went to Alabi Samuel Anjolaoluwa in the Under-21s category for his inspiring project, ‘Students of Ibadan,’ which shines a light on the struggles faced by under-served students in the city of Ibadan.

The genius of young Nigerians for invention is evident. You know the likes of Silas Adekunle, the robotics engineer who invented Mekamon, the world’s first intelligent gaming robot. Max Chinnah who, at 26, invented the Genesys Cooker, a smokeless stove that addresses the problem of smoke pollution which kills an estimated 4 million people every year.

I could also speak of Ejikeme Patrick Nwosu, an organic chemist who has invented a fire-retardant paint that could drastically mitigate the risk of fire outbreaks. How about outstanding young teachers in primary and secondary schools? The award-winning Henry Anumundu who has been recognized for his effective teaching of primary school children in very poor communities, or Oluwabunmi Anani, the 2020 Winner of the Maltina Teacher of the year award, recognized for her revolutionary teaching methods in English and English literature for senior secondary school students in Yola, Adamawa State.

Across the world, our most potent ambassadors are young Nigerians who are breaking new grounds, breaking records and winning laurels in diverse fields of endeavour.

We recognize that our young people are this country’s most strategic asset. Investing in them is clearly investing in the economic strength and development of our nation. This is why my administration has established initiatives such as the N75 billion National Youth Investment Fund and the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Creative Sector Fund.

It is why I recently approved the investing in Digital and Creative Enterprises (i-DICE) programme – an over $600million programme supported by the AfDB which will support young tech and creative sector entrepreneurs through the provision of finance for training for their businesses, finance for skills development and finance for infrastructure.

Earlier this year, we partnered with the UNDP and the private sector in the Jubilee Fellows Internship programme. Under this programme, every year – for the next 5 years, 20,000 graduates, after their youth service, will be given internship opportunities in private sector companies and in public agencies.

The idea is that these interns will gain relevant career and life skills that will enable them to transition seamlessly into the professional, business or public sector, while also earning very good pay during the period of the internship. Every youth corps member who is here today is eligible to apply to be one of the 20,000 that will be chosen as Jubilee Fellows. And during the course of the internship, the participants will be attached to a private or public company and they will be paid for the entirety of the programme.

I have also, as you must be aware, approved the increase of N-Power beneficiaries from 500,000 to one million. Because young people constitute the majority of our population, they are by both default and design the very center of all of our efforts to stimulate growth. From our Social Investment schemes and all of the other innovations in the economy and support for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises, we have placed the interests of our youths at the heart of policy making.

Despite these efforts, I still think it is natural and inevitable that there would be a degree of tension between a generation at the vanguard of innovation and the establishment. Young Nigerians often feel frustrated by the inability of our institutions to keep pace with their drive, their aspirations and their dynamism. I can certainly relate to this, but believe it or not, I too was once a young person!

While differences of opinion in respect of official policies is normal in liberal democracies such as ours, but out of respect for the rights and sensitivities of others, disagreement must be temperate and channeled through legally and socially acceptable means. Disagreement must never lead to destruction.

Most importantly, we must keep our faith in our country and remain optimistic that it will serve as the locus for fulfilling our aspirations. Building a nation is an inter-generational endeavour. I think this is a particularly important point. Governments can be changed in electoral cycles but the destiny of a nation is shaped across generations.

This country is ours – above and beyond partisan squabbles, disagreements and everything else – the future will be what we make of it. In these days when we seem to be assailed on all sides, it is natural to fear for the future and to nurse anxiety about what tomorrow holds.

However, this is not the time to give up or to succumb to despair. This is the time to engage and to work more assiduously to build the country of our dreams.

The successful “Not too Young to Run” campaign, which led to legislation that expands opportunities for the political inclusion of young Nigerians, is a sterling example of how dedicated youth advocates initiated and saw through a key piece of political reform by working through the system. It is evidence of what can happen when Nigerians from diverse backgrounds make a common cause.

My signing into law of the Not too Young to Run bill almost three years ago opened the door for youth inclusion in our political process and, by extension, in governance. It is my belief that young Nigerians should organize, mobilize and participate fully in public affairs. Your contributions are invaluable to the debate on what sort of future we want.

Your engagement in political life is about participating in the campaign to ensure that Nigeria works for all of us. The big policy questions of the day – how to transform Nigeria into a first world economy that provides high levels of good-paying jobs, welfare, security, and equity for its people – are questions of particular relevance to your generation.

But so also are the challenges that attend all massive social and economic transformation in diverse societies. Our present challenges are, therefore, neither unique nor exceptional. The task of lifting people out of poverty, promoting economic growth and social justice, healing communities torn apart by conflict, addressing historical grievances, doing justice and forging a common identity in a diverse society is one that many nations throughout history and across the world have had to tackle. It is within our power to address these issues and emerge from them even stronger as a people.

This is why you must reject the temptation to inherit the biases and prejudices from your parents or of seeing the country through the jaundiced eyes of some in generations that have gone before you. The lesson of history is that the world’s most successful nations are those that have learned how to harness the power of diversity.

I urge you to build the networks, partnerships and alliances in life, business and politics that transcend ethnicity, race and religion. Diversity is an opportunity to learn, to make new friends and to add to the wealth of your experience as human beings.

By the same token, do not be captives of nostalgia. Be wary of the invocation of the “the good old days” or a lost golden age that supposedly existed before you were born. There was no such era. Every generation makes the most of the time that it has. Your forebears played their part in their time, and now you must seize yours.

In the words of our nation’s first President, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, “Youth is the golden age of man.” There is no more golden time than the present; so seize it.

Progress is not made by looking back, but by looking ahead. Your generation has been gifted with so many tools and opportunities. You are at the most developed time in the history of the world and technology. Everything that you know today is much better than in previous years. So, you can shape, not just your destinies, but the destinies of your nation. It is up to you to use them well. Refuse to succumb to hopelessness and easy cynicism.

By all means, you must learn the lessons of history and be diligent students of memory; but the future will be defined by our capacity for visioning and innovation, imagination and re-imagination, invention and re-invention, that is what will determine the future.

To speak of a new Nigeria that is not bound by prejudice and divisive narrowmindedness, but defined by a progressive spirit of liberalism, enterprise, innovation, mutuality, and openness is to speak of a new breed of Nigerians who manifest these values. Gathered in this place are young Nigerians from diverse backgrounds – different ethnicities and creeds – and you represent the new Nigeria. Your generation will lead Nigeria into its best era yet.

While I do not subscribe to the notion that youths are only leaders of tomorrow, I nevertheless know it to be true that the future does not arrive until it is imagined, produced and modeled in the present. Birthing the future requires us to engage even more deeply in constructive endeavours that build up our communities, whether through public service and politics or enterprise and political activism.

Young Nigerians are the very best of us. They are our reservoir of hope and creative optimism. All that is good and great about us as a people is inherent in our youths. I know of no other set of people as obsessed with constant self-improvement as young Nigerians. At home and abroad, this drive to not just be better, but to be the best that they can be, inspires achievements that make us all very proud.

I urge you to continue to seek the path of self-actualization. For our part, we will, as an administration, continue to support your efforts by creating an environment that enables the fulfillment of your dreams. It may be difficult, but we will get there.

In conclusion, I want to ask that you boldly and with commitment, continue to ensure that the Nigerian youth and the great Nigerian dream remains at the heart of everything that you do. For us, it will remain at the heart of our investment and development agenda. I look forward to receiving the outcome of your deliberations from this conference with a promise that government will process it quickly and seek the implementation of relevant aspects for the benefit of the young people of this country.

Wherever you are in this country, whatever you are doing, keep moving, don’t look back, you will win eventually, keep moving ahead, whatever the situation, we move!

On this note, it is my pleasure to declare this Conference open.

I thank you for listening.