Negotiate Your Way to Power, Imoke, Saraki, Others Charge Nigerian Youth by Emameh Gabriel

•As Wike blasts Secondus, says he lacks character and quality of a leader •Rivers gov, Oshiomhole engage in verbal brickbats

Ahead of 2023, a former Governor Cross River State, Liyel Imoke, has charged Nigeria youths to leverage their influence and negotiate their way into power. This is as River State Governor, Nyesom Wike went hard on the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus, describing him as a serial liar and one that could not be taken for his words. Imoke made the call yesterday in his opening remarks at his 60th birthday and 10th anniversary of his foundation, Bridge Leadership Foundation (TBLF) as well as 11th Career Day Conference of the foundation. He said despite the influence the Nigeria youths commanded both in and outside of the social media, they have not been able to annex such influence to break into what he described as the ‘boardroom’ so as to provide a fertile ground for them to influence policies in the polity. He identified the failure of the youths to set out their objectives before going into politics as one of the reasons they have been constantly sidelined by the current generation of leaders in the country. He noted that social media seemed to be the place, where the young people thought they had influence but added it was not enough, given the fact that government across Africa always had certain influence over the operation of social media. He advised that the current crop of leaders in the country would not be ready to shift except and unless the youths broke their ways in and be actively involved in politics. He, however, reminded them that just as 2023 was around the corner, it provided them another ample opportunity to get into the business of political leadership. He said they must be audacious to make the change they yearned for. He noted that it was not enough to be “a member of an organisation but to also be a member of the board, because that is where things happen, unless you are in the board, you will remain where you are. “Whenever you think you have such a power of influence for any activity, it must be for a purpose. It must be towards an objective. And until you become part of that decision-making process, your effort will remain just an effort. “Next time, before you finish your influences, make sure you negotiate your way into the boardroom. When you get to the boardroom, there you can influence policy. Until you get into the boardroom, you can never influence change! You can make all the noise, you can have all the activity, you can have all the followers, but, you will not change the policy. “This is the time for a new generation to get into the boardroom, it is time for a new generation to appreciate the importance of being audacious. No one, not anyone of us in front, or anyone there is going to shift! No one is going to shift by you saying, please make space for me, I am young, it is my time. “Nobody gave me space. At 30, nobody gave me space. It was hard work. But, the good fortune was that I wanted to be in the boardroom. The generation that we are talking to, 2023 provides you with an opportunity to be in the boardroom, provides you with an opportunity to take control and to take charge. But, it’s a lot of work. Are you ready to deliver? Are you ready to do what it takes? “The time has come for you to make those decisions”, he said recounting how one of the keynote speakers, Nelson Chamisa, an opposition leader in Zimbabwe challenged the government in Zimbabwe, and to the surprise of everyone else, he got 45% of the popular vote in the election. It was unprecedented and the most recent is Bobi Wine, a Ugandan politician, who challenged the status quo. Other dignitaries at the event also took their turns to extol the virtues of the former Cross River State governor, saying he laid the foundation, where the next generation of leaders would emerge from. Saraki, while speaking, described Imoke as a man of character and commended him for the feat the foundation had attained in the last decade. The former senate president said character was what makes a good leader not age even as he charged the youth to be actively involved in politics and to also leverage their population advantage to change the leadership narrative in the country. He said: “One of the important things is to build people with character. Character to be able to know what you stand for. Having an ambition is not a bad thing, because it is the ambition that will drive you to become a leader. “The youths must be ready to use their voting strength to make the change. They must not only engage in complaining but be fully involved. Please, be bold, be focused and be audacious”, he added. The PDP national chairman, Secondus, in his tribute, thanked the organisers of the event for using the occasion of Imoke’s 60th birthday to organise a platform for national leadership dialogue aimed at transforming the country. He said: “The country needs this foundation and many others that will gradually transform our country. Our country is in crisis, you are in the right place and in the right foundation. “Because of the situation in the country today, we must go back to the foundation, where we derived all the powers. As we see our country drifting today due to poor leadership, we must give way for our youths, who have learnt so much. You can come on stage, because you have been equipped to lead. “It requires one person, it doesn’t matter where you come from. I can see many of you have what it takes. We need the right leader, not only a leader but a statesman to lead this nation”, said Secondus, who added that the foundation has the capacity to produce one of such qualities to lead the country, just as he promised that the PDP would be working closely with the foundation to tap from its wealth of experience. But Wike later stole the show, when he walked to the podium amid encomiums from the crowd only to tongue lash Secondus, who left the occasion the same moment he was to give a tribute to the celebrant. Wike, in his usual brash manner of speaking, lambasted Secondus saying he talked with two sides of his mouth and blamed him for the current woes in the party. He said if Secondus, who came to the podium to talk about good leadership, had acted as one, the party would not have been hit by the crisis that has started to consume it. “Talking about leadership, unfortunately, the national chairman (Secondus) left before I start. We should not be theoretical but be practical in what we practice. He goes to the church, you see the pastor, you pontificate him. He leaves the church, he does a different thing. What is the problem with this country: it’s leadership. “If he ( Secondus) had shown leadership in Cross River, our party would not have had the problem we have today. The national chairman said we need good leadership in the country, but if you don’t show good leadership, the party cannot produce good leaders. That is the truth of the matter. “We talk about character. What is leadership? Leadership is about character, boldness, selflessness and audacious. As a leader, you must have character. Not to speak white in the morning and you speak black in the evening. Is that leadership? What are we telling our youths? We are talking about the future of this country. “Our youths must be audacious. In essence, they should speak out. They should be bold. How many of us have been bold to speak out from our party? Those who are bold, those who are fair, those who have characters, do you want them to exist? Certainly not”, said Wike, who described Secondus as one who did not possess the qualities of a good leader. “Leadership is that you must decide whether to stand for the truth or not. You must decide whether to do the right thing or not. Leadership is the ability to say the decision I took was wrong and I have accepted that I was wrong and now I am in the position to correct it. There is nothing wrong with you admitting that you are wrong. That is one quality of a leader. To be able to identify, when he is wrong. “As the head of a family, you see crisis in your family, you take a decision that will keep that family together. Leadership is all about sacrifice. You put your ego down for the interest of the family. That is leadership. All the leaders, who are here should show good leadership. Like Oshiomhole’s APC, today the country is having leadership problem,” saying the ruling APC was a disaster. Reacting to Wike’s comment about poor leadership of the ruling APC, which he said has drifted the country into chaos, former Edo State Governor and erstwhile national chairman of the APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole recounted one occasion, at a leadership meeting with PDP leaders and how he was almost prevented from speaking about the rots that characterised the PDP era at the centre. He said in that occasion, “They didn’t want me to talk about the fact that six hundred barrels of crude was stolen every day for two, three, four consecutive weeks. How can 600,000 barrels be stolen everyday and you didn’t want to talk about it? “It was Wike’s PDP that was in charge of the country then. I think if any young man here is in that hall, I do not think anyone of them can be more brutal than we were that day – speaking truth to power even though observers thought we were all in power. But some are more in power than some others.” Oshiomhole, who subtly took a swipe at another former Senate President, Pius Ayim, for allegedly dividing the attention of the audience said, “As you can see, as I am speaking here, the former Senate President (Ayim) has engaged a successor Senate President so that they will not hear what I am going to say”. He disagreed with other speakers, who harped on age as one of the fundamental problems of the country. “One of the points former Senate President made, Senator Saraki is when he talked about character. I think that sometimes we sectionalise and exaggerate the issues. I don’t think Nigeria’s issue is a matter of age. There are competent old men. There are incompetent old men. There are also rascally young boys and incompetent young boys and girls. “Therefore, I agree with you when you said we must speak about character, because we speak about age as if it’s a burden. It’s a stage in life. What is constant, is character. Our problem has to do with value, character and consistence,” he said. Oshiomhole, however, commended Imoke, saying “I want to join everyone to congratulate you for choosing to use your 60th birthday to have a conversation with the very young people and the not-so-young”. In his keynote address, Zimbabwe opposition leader, Chamisa said Nigeria stood on the threshold that could be the transformation in African history. He said young people must be ready to be part of political leadership and the democratic development in their country, adding that it was a crime as youth not to be revolutionist and also a crime not to be actively involved in politics. “The key question affecting Africans today is to ask the leadership questions that are important: how do we move forward? How do we become audacious? What are the roles of audacious young people? How are they able to move the continent forward? How do we build this new Africa? What is it that will make a new Africa new? “What do we do, how do we achieve transformation and modernization? When we talk about audacity, we are talking about willingness to check a series of audacious maneuvers; we talk of a patent of fearlessness, bravery, courage. “That courage, that picture of the future is very important. It will take you where you have to go and it will also make sure that you will never get lost: it is impossible to get lost, when you know, where you are going and it is important to be informed by your past, because your past shapes and informs the future. “But it is also impressive to have very audacious young people with audacious goals from the African continent. Those big audacious goals now on this continent are that we need to make sure that we democratise Africa and after this, the young people of Africa have to agree in governing ourselves and democratise our continent. “We will occupy Africa; we will crash, smash and squash dictatorship on the African continent. We will silence the hun and violence. We will be peace builders, we will end corruption, we will defeat exploitation, we must transform lives, we must build strong institutions, we must make leaders accountable and responsible in society in the nation. In governance, we must fight injustice and the breakdown of the rule of law, we must unite Africa, we will lead the world. Let us be leaders,” he said.