Mr. Jubrila Madu Gadzama is the National Coordinator of All Progressives Congress National Youth Vanguard (APCNYV). In this interview with BODE OLAGOKE, he speaks on the reasons for the formation of the group, its relationship with the party and why the organisation will not endorse any candidate within the party
Relationship with APC
The Vanguard came up as a pressure group to assist the party in taking over the control of this country by mobilizing youths across the country to support the party to actualize its dream of taking over the nation’s mantle of leadership. We have come of age and we have made all our analyses about the problems facing Nigeria as a nation and we are now clamouring for change, for good and credible leadership. We believe that APC is the only opposition party. We are not just joining APC like any other person, we are people from different political parties that merged into APC. I am from defunct CPC in which I even contested for a seat in the Adamawa state House of Assembly in 2011. The current speaker of the state is from my constituency, and I can tell you that it was God that destined it, it could have been mine.
You see, youth have a vital role to play in this country and it is our determination in the vanguard to assist the party in achieving the transition the party is clamouring for. Transition in the sense that in the cabinet, at least the substantive federal minister will be given to an elderly person while the minister of state will be for youth. By this, there will be a to a total transformation of the system because the upcoming youths will be taking over from the elderly ones, then the country will now stabilize, the country will now move away from family and friend politics affairs, and Nigeria will therefore emerge as one of the best nations.
This is not by talking alone, we want actions and that is why the youth are now coming up to say no, we have to be part of decisions that will change our lives. It is not just to come and campaign that we are going to create employment, though, we know that we need employment but it should not be politicized, it is something that should be a normal thing to do. Take for example, recently there was a bill brought to the National Assembly, advocating for allowances for the unemployed youths (graduates) in the country, unfortunately that bill was thrown into the dustbins. Women are advocating for 35 per cent in the government, what of the youths, what is our own take? So, if possible, we want to have like 50/50 with our elders, so that the youth can be in the scheme of things. In any part of the world, youths are the engine room of governance, and when youth don’t direct their energy in the right directions, then they will use their energy negatively.
Strength of the group
At the moment, I can tell you we have a structure from the national body up to the unit level and our strength at the moment is one million, five hundred and thirty four thousand (1,534,000), cutting across all the regions, states, including the FCT, through the senatorial and local governments. All of these have their coordinators, who work together to ensure proper coordination up to the unit and ward levels.
Relation with APC
At the moment, we, the pioneers of this Vanguard are not in good rapport with the executive because if we are, we will not be coming to follow up anything as we are doing, but sit down and strategise on the issue of great importance on how to move the party forward. This is our idea and we sat down and articulate it. We brought it out long ago and we presented a proposal to the national body, intimating them on how we can work together, but to our surprise we have not heard from the national body either in writing or verbal. Just of a sudden, we saw other people parading themselves in our name as the National Youth Vanguard, going round and extorting money from politicians.
We have never asked for money from anybody, we are here to actualize the dream of the youths, we are here to represent the voice of the youths, we are here to clamour for what belongs to youths. By so doing, we cannot collect money from anybody and still be clamouring for change, it is not possible. You cannot do two things at a time by looking for political offices in the name of pressure group and extorting money from politicians, no. So, what they are doing is in total contrast with our aims and objectives. We even wrote a proposal to the national body of APC to assist on the just concluded registration. Had it been that exercise was given to us, the little challenges faced by the party wouldn’t be there because we are neutral body. I think the party needs to do something urgently on the issue, they need to come in, they need to investigate it thoroughly and know who deserves to be given a place.
Reason for factionalisation of your group
I think it is lack of cohesion and lack of good leadership from the party’s national youth leader. If there is good leadership, we believe there is a budget given to every department of the party to run its affairs and I can tell you categorically that, not only in APC National Youths Vanguard, there is no youth group that is sponsored by the youth leader, we do everything from our pockets. Nobody, I can challenge anybody in Nigeria, has ever given ten kobo to the Vanguard under my able leadership. So, what causes all this kind of thing is lack of patriotism not just to the party, but to the entire country. If we are really clamouring for change as youth, we must avoid divisive tendencies among ourselves.
If somebody comes up with a good idea that can move the party forward, we need to give that person every support he needs and not to create faction just to make money. What is happening in PDP is what they want to do in APC, they (PDP) don’t have any clear sense of direction. Not that we don’t have so many youth groups, we have them but everybody has his own mission. So, some people are just out to make money because a common man will tell you that politics is about making money, and if you don’t have money you cannot play politics. Yes, it is true but it is not a situation where you want to enrich yourself over night, that is not what National Youth Vanguard is out for. We are out to educate, mobilize the youths from all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria for the success of APC.
Endorsing a candidate for 2015
We are not going to adopt any candidate at all, but the party knows what they are doing. We are working in synergy with them as a pressure group trying to actualize what is good. We are even going to checkmate the executives of the party, not just like opposition, because our group is out to checkmate every form of rigging within the party and outside the party, to effect real changes. At the grassroots level, we have people that will be going from house to house to educate people on why they need to vote for APC and after voting, why they need to protect their votes.
Achieving our set goal
We are planning a lot of things like seminar to educate all our executives nationwide on how to act. Besides, we are planning to organise a carnival so that we can show there is unity in Nigeria. All the violence taking place under the guise of either Boko Haram or the other, it is just political problem. By the time we create an atmosphere to tell Nigerians that APC is a national party, we can now sell our ideas to them and they will now understand why they should vote for us and not the other way, because if the country becomes a better place, it will be for all of us and now that is becoming worse, we are all feeling it. Really, we need to educate Nigerians because most Nigerians do not know the manifesto of APC from the top to the grassroots and we have designed a form even before the APC started their registration. We have also designed a form to reach out to all the professionals on why they should join the APC, why they should participate in politics and why they should come in to salvage Nigeria because all hands need to be on deck to salvage Nigeria from where it presently finds herself today.
Advice for APC NEC
They should incorporate the youths into the struggle. Let us face the challenge of rescuing this nation from two ways, when the elders are pushing with elders of other parties, they should leave the other part to the youths because right away, we are facing each other on the social media. Go to facebook, you will see APC Youth Vanguard contributing a lot on twitter and other social media. If we are talking of practical, we have to equip our youths, we have to educate them on all loopholes and sharp practices taking place during elections so that they can work towards countering them. When we share the movement, everybody will concentrate and as our elders are pushing, we are pushing before we know it, we will conquer in the war, and they should do everything possible to empower the youths because nobody can fight a battle without equipment, so they should equip the youths.
