Open Letter To The Minister Of Youth And Sports Barr Solomon Dalung

Permit me to convey my belated warmest congratulations on your well deserved appointment as the minister of Youth and sports. I'm saying well deserved in every sense of the word because you have been a social activist whose views on the less privileged are well known. Before Boko Haram became monstrous you have always advocated the modified version of OBJ stick and carrot approach that is that the insurgency can only be conquered through dialogue and persuasion.

I also had the rare privileged of traveling by air from Abuja to Yola where we had intensive conversation on the problems bedeviling the nation. I was highly impressed with your passion for this country. It is with these in mind that I'm pretty sure that PMB took the right decision in making you a minister of federal republic of Nigeria and capping it with assigning an appropriate portfolio of Youth and sports.

I have waited patiently to listen to your template for the this very important assignments bestowed on you, but to no avail. This is further compounded by the scanty policy thrust of APC on youth development as contained in their manifesto. The manifesto simply said it would create 20, 000 jobs per state. For those with SSCE they will participate in technology and vocational training. It will also pay unemployed youth a stipend of N5000 per month.

As far as I'm concerned, the task before you is most daunting and challenging and therefore requires a lot of mental, human and material resources to accomplish. The gloomy situation is captured thus: 70m of the about 170m population of Nigeria are youth. 80% of the youth are unemployed according to CBN. This population is the energy room of the country and therefore their effective utilization will bring about monumental economic transformation while failure will bring about all kinds of social vices such as armed robbery, drug addiction and trafficking, kidnapping, militancy, prostitution, cultism, ritual killings and insurgency. All the vices mentioned are heavily imbedded in our social life today and these have aided immensely to socio- economic stagnation we are witnessing today

Sir it will not be out of place to urge you to work assiduously to address these myriad of problems of the youth. This is why I said your job is most challenging and requires all the brains, the energy and resources you can muster in order to give the youth a new lease of life in particular and the nation at large.

My modest contribution to your job at hand is to request you to work hand in hand with ministry of labour and productivity, which is solely responsible for job creation, to immediately create an agency for Youth empowerment program.