By Sylvia Felix And Virtuous Osang
Reflecting on the just celebrated International Youth Day, 2021, youths in Cross River State have been urged to develop themselves and refuse to be neglected.
These were the central message by the Chairman of the National Youths Council of Nigeria (NYCN), Cross River State chapter, Dan Obo; legal practitioner, First Baba Isa and Entertainer, Harmony Odong, on episode 263 of “The Dialogue With Agba Jalingo” on Hit 95.9FM Calabar, where they poured out their hearts on pricking issues.
The State NYCN Chairman Dan Obo noted that, youths of today especially struggling to survive the harsh economic system of today. His words: “In my one year plus as a Chairman, we are actually struggling to survive and that is why we are trying to change the narratives.
“The future is now. There is nobody who will give us the future. We don’t have a choice than to believe in ourselves. Going forward, we are engaging to believe in ourselves.”
Furthermore he said, “The Governor of Cross River State has not sat down to address the issues bordering the youths. There is yearly subvention that comes to the youth Council. For six years, the Governor paid only one year. When things go this way, you don’t have any option than to ask yourself this rhetorical questions? Anybody who tells you that the young people are not ready is an enemy of the generation and we will catch up with them.”
The Obubra born assured that, come 2023, the youth of Cross River State will no long play to the gallery of some greedy and short sighted politicians who do not mean well for their existence.
“I can assure you God willing come 2023, it will be crystal clear that we are no longer the Zimbabwe youths they think about, we are now youths with valuable dollar. We might not have resources but we have the strength to contend with them and of course we will,” he said, inferring he cannot be loyal to the detriment of Cross River youths.
On his part, Barrister First Baba Isa said the country has failed, overtime the system has been programmed and made difficult for any youth to succeed despite being hardworking.
According to him, “It is difficult to succeed in Nigeria. Nigeria is constructed and designed to make sure you fail. If you have admission in Nigeria, they will kill your dream. Go to UNICROSS, UNIJOS, you have graduated, you have served, you want to do your masters, they will still be looking for your year 3 results. They can’t even give you your transcripts within 24 hours but when you go abroad, as you are graduating you are given your transcripts.”
On assertion that youths of today are not ready for leadership, he added: “I believe that power normally is not given but taken. How can we have a free and fair election when our electoral system has been very monetized?
“Our system is corrupt. When they say youths are not ready, that is a fallacy from the pit of hell, we have prepared youths, we have ready youths but the problem is that they don’t even want to see us.”
Reacting to the TV reality show, Big Brother Naija which is termed immoral by many and on the other hand shows how the governance system has failed the youths, the Ogoja born lawyer argued that, BBN has nothing to do with bad Government, “they use that talk most times to give young people a bad name so they can hang them. It is not Big Brother Naija that told Senators to make things difficult for us. Most times, I am a regular flyer, at least I fly like three to four times a week. At times, we can’t land in Calabar because of no landing instruments.
“It has nothing to do with white money, colour of the hair in Big Brother Naija. If you ban it now, will you have electricity? If they ban now, will Cross River State have library despite the fact that they have two professors?”
He reiterated that he is not interested in being anybody’s morality monitor while urging everyone to do the right thing.
Sharing a brief touching story on how western culture impacted negatively in his early life, entertainer and Chief Executive Officer of Delfaro Production, Harmony Odong said as a young man, he thought of going into get rich quick but refrained at the last minute.
According to him, “Growing up at some point I felt for me to live my dream life, I had to get involve in rituals like what you will see in Nigerian films where you take a picture to the herbalist who does his incantations, gives you something to stab the picture and someone in your family dies and boom! Somewhere inside a room in your house in the middle of the night money is generated.
“These are the negative impact because at some point I had to think. Besides just thinking, I had resolved to do this to live my dream life and I had started thinking which of my family member is going to go first? But this actually stopped at a point where I had to ask myself if this is actually true, this notes you get from ritual, do they tally with that of CBN?
“So, when I couldn’t give myself the right answer, that was when I realized this things are just something not realistic, so I had to hustle more.”
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