President Bola Tinubu’s announcement of the ”gathering of a National Youth Conference” to address the issues raised by protesters during the August #EndBadGovernance protests is generating mixed reactions.
Whereas the step has been hailed in some quarters as one in the right direction, others raise concerns about participation and how delegates to the conference would emerge.
Those in the latter group hope the loyalists of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) would not dominate the talk shop, thereby making nonsense of the conference.
They demanded inclusivity in representation while specifically saying detained protesters should be immediately released and included as delegates to the Confab to give the exercise credibility.
Other demands include guarantees that Confab resolutions would be implemented and the report would not go the way of previous exercises which reports were left to gather dust on the shelf.
The holding of a National Youth Conference that would last 30 days was one of the major issues highlighted by Tinubu in his Independence Day Speech on October 1.
The President had said: “As we work to overcome the challenges of the day, we remain mindful of the next generation as we seek to galvanize their creative energy towards a better future.
“We lead today with the future we wish to bequeath to our children in focus, recognizing that we cannot design a future that belongs to them without making them its architects.
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