Plan Int’l Nigeria unveils 16-youth board management

Plan International Nigeria has unveiled a 16-member Youth Advisory Panel (YAP) to create the change agenda and deepen youths’ participation in governance in the country.

The Country Director, Plan International Nigeria, Charles Emmamuzou Usie, said this in Abuja during the inauguration of the panel, with membership drawn across the six geo-political zones.

He said that the panel would join Plan International Nigeria in co-creating decision making, policy development and project implementation.

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“In the last six months, Plan International Nigeria has been in the process of establishing YAP with the overall objective of engendering inclusion and participation of youths and girls in the decision-making process. We have renewed our mandate globally and what that mandate means is that girls and young people have become the centre of what we do,” he said.

Usie said: “If we want young people and girls to be at the centre, we need to bring them into our everyday operation in meaningful ways in such a way that they participate and enable us to make the right decisions in the kind of programmes and interventions we design.”

Delivering the inaugural keynote, Executive Director Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, charged the panel to focus on ensuring the change needed to transform the country and the continent.

On her part, the Shadow Country Director, Plan International Nigeria, and member of YAP, Miss Pelemo Nyajo, said that active participation of youths in decision making would create a high level of performance for national development.

She said: “This panel is a huge step towards meaningful youth participation because we will be actively participating and putting them on their toes and making sure that the youths are the centre of all their programmes. Representation is very important. Persons with disabilities are not very much represented in a lot of communities, so with the YAP, we will create impact and hopefully we can make a change.”