Nigerian media practitioners have been enjoined to
bring back the glory days of responsive and responsible journalism that
hallmarked the struggle against colonial rule in the pre-independent Nigeria.
Moses Siloko-Siasia, Chairman of the Nigerian Young Professionals Forum (NYPF)
made this call at a dinner with media executives in Lagos where the "Nigerian
Elders Give Young People a Chance" campaign was launched recently.
Siloko-Siasia, who bemoaned the preponderance of the
old and fading generation in the country’s leadership sphere called on Editors,
Journalists, Bloggers and all Opinion Moulders to embrace the time-tested
ideals of patriotism that fired the journalistic zeal of several Nigerian
Nationalists who through media activism, created a Nigeria that made it
possible for young professionals to hold commanding positions in the polity.
Explaining that the campaign was in tandem with
the group's determination to engender a generational shift in governance, the
NYPF leader urged the elderly among politicians to give the youth the chance to
take over governance “as most problems currently bedeviling the country stemmed
from the same people who had remained in leadership since independence and are
still there directly or indirectly.”
"We are in a fast-paced world and any
nation that does not create room for its young people to take over governance
is living in the past.” "The tempo of global development today is high and
only a young and vibrant leadership can cope. "It is high time Nigeria's
young people were given a chance to assume leadership positions through
elections and appointments," he said.
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| Members of NYPF |
On the strategies to end the seeming dominance of
gerontocracy visible in the sphere of Nigerian governance in recent time, Mr.
Moses Siasia identified education as key to ending the vice grip of the fading
generation on the economic system and governance.
He stressed that, the current generation of young
people inherited a dysfunctional, decrepit, antiquated and antediluvian
educational curricula in a warped system, “so we believe that we must start
from the primary level of education to inculcate young Nigerians with the right
values and ideas for purposeful governance as over the years, we have seen that
our elders have refused to give young people a chance” he added.
While responding to the call for institutional support
for the NYPF campaign, the Director General of the Nigerian Television
Authority (NTA), Mr. Sola Omole said that Young Nigerians have to prove their
competence capacity to rationally challenge the ongoing status quo, “they have
to bring all they have acquired skilfully and intellectually to takeover
governance of the country.”
He stated that countries where young people are movers
and shakers of the economy and governance exist because these young people
fought to takeover by revolutionizing their system with modern ideologies and
technologies. Mr Omole reiterated that the solution to the problem of Nigeria
is for young Nigerian to be passionate towards making a change and demonstrate
the capacity for the change.
On his own part, the Editor of Guardian Newspaper, Mr.
Martins Oloja commended the NYPF for taking the campaign to the media, assuring
the forum that the campaign will resonate with the media.
The Editor, called on the NYPF to rescue the system of
education as the system is producing graduates that are not capable to create
the capacity for change. He continued to stress that the Higher education
system of the country has degenerated and those in leadership positions are not
doing anything about it.
He called
on Nigerians to hold their leaders responsible for education, to take the
standard of our education from primary to secondary school level very
seriously, reintroduce teacher-training colleges and many institutions that are
needful in providing a higher standard of education.
Managing Director of News Agency of Nigeria (NAN),
Olorogun Ima Niboro, said that the system has been eroded to the extent that
what is left is shaking.
He emphasized that the framework of spending 6 years
in primary school, five years in secondary school, one year for A Levels and
three years in the university should be introduced because the framework
produced professionals who were capable to create the needful change in
Nigerian governance.
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