We are not gathered here for a talk-shop. A close look at the theme of this summit tells me that the organizers thought deep and hard to arrive at this decision of holding a summit at this point in time in our history. Let me begin by saluting your youthfulness. It is a thing of joy to be called a youth. Infact , you are lucky to be a Youth. Thank God you are a Youth. It is the age of youth that many great things are accomplished. In every epoch and age the youths determine the fate of society. The youths decide whether a given society should live or die. They the youths are the dreamers and the designers; they are the solders and the seekers of adventures. Uninhibited by caution and fear, youths dare where the elderly act with deliberation. It is in the nature of the youths to search and to discover; to confront and to interrogate! A docile youthful population is a society doomed. The youths must ask question and they must get answers. Your gathering here I believe is to ask questions and design strategies to find answers and solutions to the challenges facing us as a people.
The enthusiasms of the youths are the foundries through which impossibilities meet their eternal waterloo. In the hands of the youths, the tomorrow bears another name – achievement. Youths are achievers. This may explain why civilization has grown. The elderly who may sometimes be weary in the bones or discouraged by the experience of “no-progress” despite trials depend on the youths to give society hope. In China and India it is the youths that have led the technological and industrial revolution that has exploded there, leading to unprecedented growth and prosperity. The youths of Europe and America are now leading in those societies in the sustainability movement so that our ravaged planet can be healed again.
But for the youths to live and be proud to be this great inheritor of everything positive as associated with the youth, he or she must be prepared. The youths must not live in the prison of doubt. Where anger reigns the youths must channel it to change for the common good. It is good and right to be angry but anger for anger sake may become rooted in hatred and germinate in destruction.
Here in lies the challenge facing the youths of Nigeria even more so the youths of the Niger Delta. How prepared is the youths as he / she transit from a child to a youth? What book has the youth read? How many times in a week has the youth sat with elders listening and drinking from the well of their wisdom? What type of up-bringing has the youth gotten? How and in what environment was the youth brought up? What role models are there for youths to emulate? What time do leaders spend in building youths? The most important assignment of any generation is preparing for the next generation. An ill prepared generation will undoubtedly wallow in stagnation and be ensconced in negative primitivism. Such a generation will make no mark on history’s’ hallowed pages. There will be nothing to be recorded in the positive even as the train of history sweeps passes in scorn. Not a note of acknowledgement. May your generation not be counted ‘’ as wasted’’ or ‘’ lost’’.
This is the point this important summit must address. The history of Nigeria is replete with stories of brave young men and women who took extra – ordinary steps to change our circumstance. The youth movements of the thirties and forties produced the Ziks, Awos and the Ernest Ikolis; the fifties produced the Melford Okilos, The Balarabe Musas, the Ambrose Ali’s, the Sam Mbakwes, the Kayode Jakandes; the sixties the Kaduna Nzeogwu, the Wole Soyinkas, J.P.Clark, the Achebes, the Isaac Boros. When the cilvil war exploded, it was the youths that fought and died. When the nation was assailed by the viruses of Coups and counter Coups it was again the youths that led the resistance by the pro-democacy movements, through sweat and blood, poetry and dance.
Back home in the Niger Delta of the 90s, a plethora of ideological youthisms exploded as the region marshaled an agenda to engage the Nigerian State and transnational oil corporations on the vexed questions of survival and sustainability. Youths gathered under communal and ethnic banners like the National Youth Council Of Ogoni (NYCOP) Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) ISOKO National Youth Movement (INYN) Itsekiri National Youth Council (INYN)and several others in Urhobo; Oron; Ibibio; Annang; Egi; Ukuani etc. It was the youths that made declarations and stood by them with pain and blood.
In engaging the present to secure the future the youths of today must know itself, prepare and be very clear about the future it seeks to secure. Throwing stones at the present without a clear understanding of the destination and direction it seeks will be a waste of valuable time and opportunity. A youth who may not have had adequate preparation to be an effective leader or an influential follower owes himself or herself that duty of education. Let me say this: by education I do not only mean the formal class room set up. You can be self-educated in addition to the education obtained in the four walls of an institution of higher Learning. Neglecting community education for example does our progress great disservice. What you learn, working and helping to build your communities, the Harwards or Oxfords and Uniport and USTs of this world cannot give you. These schools will not teach you the core morals of the company you keep, the value of togetherness and love. These things are not obtained in or on an academic sojourn.
To engage the present, a rigorous review of the events of the present is vital? Is the present a surrogate of the past? If it is, what can we do to correct this deformed surrogacy? These are my suggestion to you.
1. Set up STUDY GROUPS in every neighborhood. The study group should then become the nucleus of debates and understanding. Experts on various issues concerning our present can be invited to present papers month after month even as we build a bank of understanding of the issues. You can start now. Not tomorrow, today. You must record the highlights of the discussions and to keep engaged in the governance process, I suggest you send the results of such deliberations to the chairman of your local government; the Governor of your State and the president of your Country. The suggestion of study group is not at all new. Some of you are already doing it. It has been tested, it will work. The biggest danger we are faced today is to allow the youths to grow into vessels of ignorance.
2. The youths must become involved in the issues of community, not the cowboy variety who are given to violence at every turn, no. We are talking of youths who generate ideas for growth and development at community meetings. In those meetings the concerned youths must calmly and stubbornly suggest that communal resources be used for communal common good that benefits the present and the future.
3. There is no end to education. The youth of today must become involved in continuing education through engaging our conscientious elders of integrity. Many years on earth offers our elders in experience that cannot be bought with money. The youths must take on the elders and demand to be fed the positive fruits of knowledge even as it must seek to distance itself from the greedy, self-seeking elders who betray their community every now and again.
4. No youth acting alone can succeed. Constant Interaction as you are doing in this conference offers an opportunity to learn from each other. Learning about what the youths of America and other places in the Western and Eastern world are doing will ginger the youths of Nigeria and the Niger Delta into action. Ultimately our planet earth is just one space given to us to live in harmony with one another. We are one.
5. Finally the youths must constantly raise the bar of our advancement. If we achieve peaceful co-existence today we must not rest and celebrate all night, drinking ourselves to death. No my friends. When you achieve peace you must go for justice. When you achieve justice you must go for development and then the next objective until your bones grow weary and you are no longer a youth.
Yes, to me this is my understanding of engaging the present to secure the future. It is up to us. You and I, working together can wipe away the tears now streaming down the faces of the innocent.
I wish you a wonderful deliberation. May God bless us all.
Oronto Douglas
(TEXT OF SPEECH DELIVERED AT YOUTH POWER'S SUMMIT)
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