NOA: Youth involvement in the National Development Is Indispensable.
NOA: Youth involvement in the National Development Is Indispensable.
The Director General, National Orientation Agency, NOA, Garba Abari says that the youth are indispensable critical mass for meaningful national development.
He stated this in his address at the one-day National Orientation Agency youth summit titled “youth participation in national development” held on Thursday in Abuja.
The youth summit he said was introduced to constantly keep issues that affect youths in the front burner of the national discourse thereby generating feedback to government.
Abari also expressed his confidence in the youth being vibrant and knowledgeable, versatile, and creative energy, and that when properly channeled, there would be no limit to what Nigeria will achieve as a nation.
He further stated that the summit was to create a veritable platform for engagement with the youth on the key national issues that are of the utmost concern to them, and come up with recommendation and the appropriate strategy to address them.
The operations and development manager for youth alive foundation, Kingsley Attang in an interview with the media stated that youth should be carried along from the design and planning of whatever that has to do with development actions and programmes that affect young people.
He said that this can be done by including young people in the stakeholder ship of every agency of the government to create opportunity for their involvement in national planning and budgeting.
The executive director evergreen initiative, Allibab Cinwon, also said that the youth accounted about 60% percent of the entire Nigerian population and should be involved in the decision making and policy initiatives in order to move the nation forward.
He further said that government should put up strategic action plans with efficient monitoring and evaluation indicators that will enable the youth involvement in the policy making process.
It is therefore expected that this intervention by the national orientation agency would address the rampant cases of youth agitations, and close the gap between government and its citizen, and build the confidence of the youth in the government.
