August 12th, 2022, the world over, International Youth Day was marked. IYD, for short, is a day set aside to celebrate the roles played by young people in society and to bring to the front burner their challenges, especially on inclusion and inclusivity. In fact, the theme designed for the 2022 edition was ‘Intergenerational Solidarity: Creating a World For All Ages’. Though a country where a huge percentage of its population is youth, few states of Nigeria have regard for the youth and design tangible programmes to help them grow. However, the story is different in Kwara State where the incumbent Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq has implicitly made youth inclusion and engagement a policy. I barely see a sub-national in Nigeria that comes close to Kwara in terms of inclusion, engagement and empowerment of young persons.
In what is unprecedented in the history of Kwara State, young persons are now appointed Commissioners, Special Advisers, Senior Special Assistants, Special Assistants, Technical Assistants, Heads of government agencies and parastatals. Young people between the ages of 18 and 40. And they don’t really have to be the son or daughter of ‘chief kinnikan’. They just have to possess qualities that would add value to the state. These were positions that used to be the exclusive preserve of the older generation! It is therefore novel.
What this novelty has done is to bolster the confidence of other young persons. They have seen their age-mates appointed and saddled with responsibilities. They also now believe they can do it. They can sit on the table some day. And the effect is what you saw in the recent primaries. You could see how young people aspired for various elective positions both in the governing APC and other opposition parties in Kwara State. We have more of young people flying their party’s tickets as candidates. That’s the AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq effect. Youth are now leaders of the present in Kwara State.
Hitherto, the same young people were only considered good as tools for political violence and lackeys to politicians. No inclusion for them. No programmes to make them a better version of themselves in this same Kwara State.
Under the current administration however, apart from the burgeoning appointments we have seen for young persons, many of the projects and programmes of the government have always had the youth at heart.
Let’s go to the world of the Kwara State Social Investment Programmes (KWASSIP), which oversees Kwapreneur, an empowerment programme for young business owners in the state. Two editions have held so far. In the first edition, 170 young business owners benefitted from non-interest loan between N350,000 and N3,000,000. This has boosted their various businesses and the state economy. Appraisal indicates 75% success stories from the beneficiaries.
The first edition was good, but the second edition got better. #Kwapreneur2.0 heralded the award of N1m grant each to 100 young persons to scale up their businesses. The opposition members have been in shock since then. #Kwapreneur2.0 has unsettled their camp, making them throw conjectures around. Their spokesperson, Tunji Moronfoye, a careerist propagandist if ever there was one, had made wild claims about the programme. I hope he would not recant and apologise like in the case of the INEC chief. Some SDP comics too are joining the wagon to call the programme APCpreneur. But it wasn’t Aanigbapreneur or SDPpreneur when some of them benefitted in the previous edition. The logic these wannabes are trying to establish is that you’re not entitled to democratic dividend once you are in APC. How poor, narrow-minded and offensive!
The long and short of it is that the oppositions are overwhelmed by the feats of the AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq administration in the area of youth empowerment. They are afraid of the massive votes that the governing party would draw from the youths on account of the youth-friendly and inclusive disposition of its leader.
This current administration had through KWASSIP trained several youths on digital marketing. It is also on record that three young business owners were sponsored to Durban, South Africa for the Inter-Africa Trade Fair 2021. The Innovation Hub, Visual Arts Centre, Garment Factory you hear of are purposely to serve the youth population. The youth are taking cognisance of these developments. They had seen a government turn their mates to ‘good boys’ for political purposes, using them to harass defenceless citizens. At the appropriate time, they would choose between an administration that offers them a decent life; invests meaningfully in them and a dynasty that placed their lives at risk; had scanty sense of inclusion for them!
Adefila writes from Isin, Kwara State.
