Take Your Destiny Into Your Hands, ‘Oba Mekunu’ Salis Urges Youths

Eminent Lawyer and politician, Oba Mekunu Owolabi Salis has urged Nigerian youths to unite along a common front and take their destiny into their hands in the crucial need to champion their collective cause irrespective of tribe, sex, religion or sectarian differences of any hue.

Speaking ahead of the thirty-day National Youth Conference proposed by President Bola Tinubu, during his Independence Day broadcast,the Lawyer-politician enjoined them to emulate the heroic precedent in Kenya,in which Miss Cynthia Muge, and Paul Nwiringim, both in their early twenties, contested as Independent candidates and defeated well established high heeled heavyweights in the political scene

Delving into history, he recalled that The Nigerian Youth Movement which was formed in the early 1930s comprised members like Nnamdi Azikiwe,Obafemi Awolowo, Sir Kofo Abayomi,Ernest Sesei Ikoli,Dr. Akinola Maja, H.O. Davies, J.C. Vaughan, Samuel Ladoke Akintola, Samuel Akinsanya, later the Odemo of Ishara,among others, who not only championed the cause for Independence, but later played immense roles in the political life of their nation after independence

“Emmanuel Macron in his late thirties,also became the youngest president in French history,just like
Sebastian Kurz born in August 1986,became the Chancellor of Germany,at the tender age of thirty one years” said the renowned Polar tourist who made history as the first black African to travel both to the North and South Pole.

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“I am saying this because as youths,the future belongs to you, considering your unique status as leaders of tomorrow.More-over,you have not only the youthful energy,but also the numerical superiority which if usefully harnessed, essentially make you irrepressible and unstoppable,only if you could jettison the primordial sentiment of tribe,religion and sex and forge a united solid front in the patriotic bid to lift your fatherland to higher frontiers that will make it an exemplary object of envy among the comity of global nations”,he stated further.

“This is certainly not an impossible tall order ambition.What you rather need do is to equip yourselves with the necessary intellectual, spiritual and moral fiber that essentially make you a factor to reckon with in the political equation and the general scheme of things.”

“This in other words is to urge you to believe in yourself and rather jettison the deep-seated inferiority complex,prompting you to believe that you can be nothing better than area boys and errand boys,to the dominant political overlords,and inferior, under-rated second class members of the dominant political parties .Don’t allow political power to be thrust on your lap by the existing political class, because such may be an illusion in futility.Rather,one expects you to inspire a peaceful, non-violent revolution which will eventually see you at the commanding height of politics and decision-making in the affairs of your fatherland,so that this favourable dispensation,once accomplished,would effectively enable you to influence decisions of immensely seminal proportion for the beneficial advantage of the youths.

He however called on the president to embark without delay,and with renewed vigor,on the daunting burden of problems confronting the youths adding that the youths are so frustrated to the extent that it wouldn’t be proper to treat their case with levity lest the nation risk the frightening prospect of violent uprisings and insurrections,the end of which no one could fore-tell.

While applauding the plan for a national conference as a move in the right direction,Salis implored the president not to wait for the convening of a confab in order to know what to do about the increasingly worsening plight of the youth

“I’m saying this because the problems confronting the youths are readily well known just as they are extremely very critical that they cry for an urgent solution.Hunger is at an all-time high,as recently indicated by a national newspaper,which featured on the front page that a greater proportion of Nigerians have since resorted to begging for survival.Same with the ever increasing number of youths dropping out of school,just as a lot of sick ones are dying daily as a result of lack of money to afford the cost of medication

“If we remember that heinous crimes like kidnapping,rape,armed robbery,cult gangsterism, ritual killings,high wire frauds terrorism and incessant violence which transpire daily in the nation are mostly committed by the increasingly frustrated youths,then will we realize that the increasingly alarming state of insecurity we experience on a continuous basis is a function of the abject neglect and abysmal failure of past leaders to address the crucial interest of the youth with the spirited zeal and fervency it deserves”,said the notable social critic and public affairs commentator.

“I’m always almost moved to shedding tears seeing young Nigerians drowning daily in the Mediterranean in their desperate attempt to escape the hardship at home for a greener pasture in the U.S. And for some who eventually make it,they turn out aimless wanderers living at the mercy of fellow Nigerian good Samaritans;that is if they are ever lucky to find one.”

“Those of us who feel the pinch particularly at this prevailing period of economic impasse at home in Nigeria,are often too short of words to narrate the tale of woes.”,said the youth mentor, life coach,motivational speaker and popularly acclaimed philanthropist.