Day 21: My National Conference Exploits....

Thursday (24th April 2014)...

We began the day with a lecture presentation by a waste management expert. It was an interesting discuss as he spoke about the negligence of waste management in Nigeria, and lack of professional waste managers nor professional bodies.

"Waste management is not even taught in undergraduate level".

He said: a neat environment shows transparency and good governance and a dirty environment shows bad governance and lack of transparency. I totally subscribe.

He suggested that responsibility of waste management should be handled by the 3 tiers of government.

The Federal Waste; this should include explosive, mining waste and Nuclear waste which should be handled by the federal government.

State waste; should be any hazardous waste with the exception of the ones mentioned above.

And council waste; should be non hazardous waste.

He also advised on the need for each state to have a waste management authority, because waste managemt is beyond sanitation.

"Nigeria doesn't even have a database for waste" he lamented - well is that not asking for much? When we do not even have a database for lives lost? 

Away from my committee; I learned that the committee on Electoral matters wanted to include Nigerians in the diaspora to vote come 2015, it seem all of them were myopic or under the illusion that diaspora only means Nigerians in the U.K and U.S. They almost swore not to change position until a delegate asked them whether they know how many Nigerians we have in Niger, Chad, Saudi, Cameroon and other countries? they are all abroad right?Are we truly ready for that? A confused delegate said that he has never thought it that way. And they all agreed the matter should be left until when Nigeria is truly ripe and ready for that. That is why is good to use your brain, all the time.

On Thursdays also, we - the youths at the National conference held a press conference. Our submission;

TEXT OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE ORGANISED BY THE YOUTH DELEGATES TO THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE HELD ON THURSDAY 24TH APRIL, 2014 AT THE NICON LUXURY HOTEL ABUJA.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the press. Welcome to this press briefing.  We have called you to bring to the notice of the media and the general public the attempt to deliberately gauge the opinion of the youth at the national conference.

It is interesting to note that of the 493 delegates, the youth have only 18 representation which is a marginalisation of the majority by the minority considering the youth population. In other climes, a conference of these nature should have more of the younger generation under the guidance of a few elders. It is only in Nigeria, that we have more of the older ones than the younger ones in discussing the future. Sir Ahmadu Bello, Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo negotiated the independence of this country at relatively young age. We accepted to downplay this because we thought the conference would be about intellectual contest that will allow the best ideas scale through. This is despite the urge scepticism of our constituency. We started the conference with a subtle blackmail that we should respect our parents at the conference once it is noticed that our opinion varies with the status quo. As young Nigerians well brought up with our various rich cultural values for respect, we have immense respect for our elders at the conference. But we also understand that we can respectfully disagree and insist on our position except a superior position emerges. It must be understood that we are here in our official capacities to represent the youth and not to massage the egos of some people.

When the 50 wise men were convened, a serious omission was made by not having any youth representation. Is the leadership saying that we have no youth who can represent the interest of the youth on the key issues that was discussed and agreed upon?

Again, 20 committees where constituted and the principal officers refused to see the wisdom in young delegates being represented in each committees despite that we raised objection at the plenary. We appreciate that one of us emerged a deputy chairman of a committee. While we appreciate the importance of the economy, environment, energy, labour, transport, civil societies and sport in our nations development; how come we were omitted from equal critical issues like devolution of power, restructuring of government, public services and political parties? Was this a deliberate attempt to silence our view on political issues or another omission? If this is not addressed urgently, we may have no other option than to dissociate ourselves from outcomes of decisions taken about our future in our absence.

We will like to use this opportunity to draw attention to the increasing senseless killings and insecurity in our country. We the youth are most vulnerable. We therefore call on the government at all levels, our elders and the youth across the country to come together at this time regardless of political differences to confront the common enemy. We sympathise with the families of the deceased and pray that God grants the families the fortitude to bear the loss.​

Thank you for your time​

That is about all for yesterday, meanwhile my committee is trying hard to get our report ready for deliberation by team members on Monday. I envy your weekend :( 

See you soon ...

On Twitter: @Yadomah....