Bola Badmus
A South-West group, Yoruba Youth Council (YYC), has urged Nigerian youths to promote peace in the forthcoming 2023 General Elections and make it free and devoid of violence, urging them to come out en mass to vote for the candidate of their choice.
Leader of the group, Comrade Eric Oluwole, made the call on Monday in Lagos, saying that one of the objectives of the group was to organise masses based plan to mobilise Nigerians against violence before, during and after the elections.
Oluwole, while making the call at a press conference tagged: “Youth Awake Now (YAN), which took place in the Onigbongbo area of the state and attended by other leaders of the group, said it was high time for the Nigerian youths to speak with one voice irrespective of their socio-economic, ethnic, religious or political background.
This was just as he charged President Muhammadu Buhari to order the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to reissue the old notes in large quantities back to the Nigerian economy to cushion the effect of scarcity, ahead of the general elections.
Oluwole also urged the Federal Government to order the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL) to immediately clear the bottlenecks around petroleum supply chains with military dispatch, expressing the group’s optimism that if the twin problem of scarcity of fuel and physical cash were addressed, normalcy would return speedily to the Nigerian economy.
Besides, he said the government would have succeeded in averting timely any threat to the successful conduct of the February 25, 2023, presidential election and all the other accompanying scheduled polls.
“Ahead of the 2023 General Elections, the youths leaders in the southwest are getting concerned about the building momentum, lingering crisis over the biting scarcity of the new Naira notes and fuel.
With the bottled-up anger and the threat of violence being unleashed over the frustrations being experienced, the youths cannot continue with this hardship in our region.
“We feel saddened by the prevailing conditions in which Nigerians generally in recent weeks have been forced to eke a living, compelled to do so by the artificially induced scarcity of physical cash due to the hasty and untidy implementation of the currency design, currency swap and cashless policies by the CBN as approved by the Federal Government.
“These conditions are aggravated by the worsening fuel scarcity across the country, with its adverse consequences, which have grounded the socio-economic activities of our people, making living in Nigeria now difficult and almost unbearable,” he said.
Oluwole, while sadly noting that the youth had consistently been at the receiving end of policies made by regimes and administrations that have governed the country, said they constituted the largest number of the Nigerian electorate and, therefore, needed to be alive to their responsibility, by thoroughly engaging the manifestos of each of the presidential candidates for proper scrutiny to enable them to be well informed, and use the information gathered to influence who they would vote for.
He maintained that there was a need for such to get the youth determined to change the narrative in the country by electing their preferred candidate that would usher in the change Nigerians were yearning for.
Oluwole said the vote of the youth would be in the block, disclosing that the group has written to all presidential candidates about their plan for the youth, adding that YYC shall vote based on any candidate with a better plan for them.
He, however, said the group was yet to decide which presidential candidate it would support, noting that the decision on which of the candidates to vote for may be taken at the last minute as, according to him, 24 hours is a long time in politics.
Representatives of the groups who were at the press conference include Yoruba Youth Leader, Eric Oluwole; Lekan Wilki for Yoruba Youth Alliance, Abiodun Rosanwo of Yoruba Youth Community Policing, Adewale Adeyemo, Yoruba Afenifere Youths and Yinka Adedugbe of Congress of Yoruba Youths.
