A media organisation, African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL), in collaboration with the International Institute for Journalism (IIJ) and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, has tasked the Nigerian youth; especially students of tertiary institutions, to be politically conscious.
During a roundtable discussion held Tuesday in Abuja, with the theme “Democracy and political mobilization: the role of students and youth”, coordinator of AFRICMIL, Chido Onumah, said that Nigeria needs a social transformation that is people-oriented, progressive and beneficial to masses, adding that young people must be actively involved in the social engineering process.
He said: “Over the years, Nigerian students have been in the frontlines of effort to change unequal social relations in the country. However, the level of political consciousness among Nigerian students has gone down. The firebrand activism, anti colonialism, anti imperialism that were dominant in the pre and post independence years has dissolved into empty and deliberate scheming to justify, promote and further the actions of the oppressor class.
“To change the situation, it is our belief that we must reinvent the political education philosophy of the 1970s and 80s that provided veritable platforms for students to engage one another and the society. To achieve this, we have put together these roundtables on focused political education to help students return to their original role of serving as dynamic and constructive agent in the development of the country.”
Also speaking, the director of IIJ, Dr Emma Shehu, said that Nigerian youths are not playing their roles as consciousness of the nation, pleading for youths to wake up to their responsibilities of holding leaders accountable.
“We are not playing our role of holding our leaders accountable, which is why we are where we are today. The student movement has been compromised with factions coming up daily. They are the most affect as students now protest only when there is no water in school. They join the labour market immediately after graduation to face issues they didn’t criticise as students. Therefore, the need for this political awareness cannot be overemphasized,” he said.
