Today’s youth need real opportunities to participate in political processes and contribute to practical solutions that advance development.
When given an opportunity to organize, voice their opinions and play a meaningful role in political decision making, young people consistently demonstrate their willingness and ability to foster positive, lasting change. They also become more likely to demand and defend democracy and gain a greater sense of belonging.
Their participation in democracy promotes active citizenship, strengthens social responsibility and can enhance democratic processes and institutions. And today’s young citizens are tomorrow’s leaders and decision-makers.
The need for youths to participate in politics is something that is good in the socio-political and economic development of Yobe State. It’s not just how youths can participate but they should also have their own quota to bring.
Though we’re in the era of democracy where everyone has the right to participate in politics, it’s very unfortunate how some of Yobe State politicians are using the advantage of their positions to change anything like we don’t have such right.
Therefore, there are many ways of solving this problem in Yobe State because it’s not just the problem of participating but that most of the youths are lacking purchasing power. They can’t participate in politics because the nomination form is too expensive and only a few of the youths can afford to buy it, so there is the need for Nigerian political parties to reduce the price of nomination forms.
Not only the lack of purchasing power but the majority of Yobe State youths also rely solely on politicians to earn their living, they are not even thinking of participating which is absolutely wrong.
There were many Nigerian leaders who took over leadership as a youth, and they led excellently- the likes of Yakubu Gowon who ruled Nigeria at age 32, and history will never forget him so I don’t see any reason why our youths of today cannot participate in politics.
Furthermore, educational background is of paramount importance as you can’t participate if you don’t have any experience in politics.
In Yobe state, there are many reasons behind calling the attention of youths to engage themselves in political matters and even to contest for various sensitive sits of government.
Since the beginning of fresh democracy in Yobe State youths are only considered to be materials of armed forces, businesses, civil workings and other lower levels of government because of our mentality that youths can never control any role of government properly. That’s actually our greatest mistake as we statistically observed that Yobe State has become one of the outgrown states with a massive number of vocationally and academically trained graduates in Nigeria.
Likewise, the need of involving youths in political matters will surely bring more benefits to the state where millions of certain talents from the youths will be discovered.
However, the needs for the participation of youths in Yobe State politics will dominantly change the lives of those who became addicted to drugs, armed robbery, kidnappings, raping, jobless and other crimes as the youths in government will find a way to profer solutions to the major challenges faced by their fellow youths because they lived with them and know their weaknesses.
The only way to change Yobe State to a better place is by drawing the attention of the government to envelop all it’s arms with youths or show them more support to participate in political matters so that they will bring the change everyone wants to see in life.
