Former Chief of Army Staff and Nigeria Ambassador to the Republic of Benin, Lt. General Tukur Buratai, on Monday, charged young members of the ruling All Progressives Congress to emulate political founding fathers such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Balewa, Ahmadu Bello and Obafemi Awolowo by taking charge of leadership in their prime.
This is even as the National Youth Leader of the APC, Dayo Israel, announced that the party remains the political platform with the highest number of youths in its rank.
Buratai made the statement at the two-day summit of progressive young leader’s summit held at the International Conference Centre in Abuja.
The former chief of army staff stated that the average Nigerian youth has a huge task to protect the country and ensure it progresses in various fields.
According to him, such trait was what made the nation’s founding fathers their national heroes.
He said, “Recall that our great founding fathers of blessed memory, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Balewa, Ahmadu Bello and the great Awolowo were in their primes as youths when they took the mantle of leadership of this country and I believe you too can do that.
“First and foremost you must pay attention and you must also respect your leaders, you must cultivate the attitude of followership. As youths, you must follow your leaders. You must follow, respect and be loyal to the present leadership.
“It is through that you will appreciate the challenges that this country faces and you will surely find solutions. As we enter into the 2023 campaign proper, the youths have great role to play and in this regard, you must mobilise the electorate to ensure that they come out en-mass to vote for the right candidate and I believe you know who I am referring to. APC with the good support of the youth is the party to beat.”
Israel, on the other hand, also told journalists that the APC youths have embarked on a door-to-door campaign to secure victory for the party’s presidential flagbearer, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
The national youth leader opined that he was quite optimistic the former governor will triumph in 2023 presidential election since the APC remains the only party with the highest number of youths followership.
“If you are talking about the political party with the highest number of youth, you are talking about the APC. We are not like those who have one person in a room, using five other accounts to tweet on social media just to create an impression that there are a lot of them.
“Some even use different tribal names including Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa. Do you know how many lives we have been impacted through our trader moni programme and how our grants to young entrepreneurs’ social investment programmes have affected them?
“By the grace of God, we have begun grassroots mobilization. We are also engaging these young people to begin to become political stakeholders in their own community, mobilizing, doing door-to-door campaigns and also various advocacy in the grassroots as foot soldiers to ensure that we can deliver Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as the next president, Commander in Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“One of the things that we also did in the last primaries of the party was to negotiate for 50 per cent discount of forms for everybody below the age of 40 and for the youth in our party because want to get the youth into the Parliament, or the House of Assembly and at the National Assembly,” he said.
