ASUU strike: We will engage stakeholders to end it – New APC Youth leader
Joel Oladele-Abuja
The newly elected National Youth leader of the ruling All Progressive Congress, Temidayo Israel has expressed his readiness to work with other youth leaders across the nation to ensure that the ongoing ASUU strike is called off through dialogue with stakeholders
Addressing Newsmen in Abuja during a familiarisation visit to the national headquarters of the party on Monday, Israel described education as a “leveler that brings the child of a poor man to the same level with the child of a rich man” therefore the need to prioritize it
“Education is vital to us, as part of what we are going to be doing as a Council of youth leaders; myself and my colleagues from the deputy to the youth leaders is to be able to sit down and begin to identify who are the stakeholders that we also need to engage with, so that we can resolve this issue
“We are going to make an attempt by the grace of God to speak to the minister of education and lend our voice to the issues and also to sit down with other stakeholders for example, we will also lend our voice to the labour. We are not part of the main stakeholders, we can only go and advocate and lobby in our own little way.
“We will make sure by the grace of God to do everything in our power to serve our generation and to ensure that we speak and we remain a voice for young progressives and we know that if we do that it will be easy for us to be able to mobilise for our coming elections.”
Speaking on the rate of unemployment amongst Nigerian youths, the youth leader said it’s a global challenge, however, he promised to engage local and international sectors on how to find solution to the problem facing the youths and the country as a whole
“You are all aware that the global economy is suffering from challenges, so the unemployment we are experiencing in Nigeria is not peculiar to our nation. America is going through challenges due to COVID-19 pandemic.
“But we know that as Nigerians we are blessed people, we have resources, we have manpower. We have natural resources as well and we also have the strength and tenacity of the millions of young Nigerians who refused to be broken. We have entrepreneurs in the agriculture value chain, in Fintech and different sectors of the economy.
“And so what we are going to do by the grace of the almighty is to begin to identify the various stakeholders that we need to work with in the political sector, the International development sector, the civil society sector. We will begin to engage with them on how to find solutions to address the challenges facing our nation and our young people.
“One of the things we want to do also is to work with publicly elected officials under the All Progressives Congress, our party to begin to work with them to ensure that they fulfill their promises because if they fulfill their promises they will make our job easier. The promises within the confines of their capacity to the citizens. When they do that we will be able to go to the people and tell them, you see what your governor has done; you see what your commissioner has done; you see what your councilor has done and it will be easy for us to mobilize and push for that.
“Also, what is very important for us is that there are a lot of young people in public office. We want to engage them from commissioners to senior special assistance, councilors in the local government. We want to work with them and be able to tell that they are delivering true value to young people across the country.
“We would not relent. As young people, we will come together. We will mobilize to work with all the stakeholders to ensure our country can reap the benefits of the progressives”
