 Welcome back to PLOS Politics. The vice president, Yemi Ushimbaju, has charged youths in Nigeria to join politics. The VP said more political participation by the majority of youths would help them to make meaningful changes. He stated that social media does not transform the lives of millions for good or ill and added that if they want to affect the future, or affect rather the future, they would have to be involved in politics. The vice president added that it is crucial for young Nigerians already involved in politics to influence others to also participate and advise young citizens not to be discouraged from joining politics because of negative sentiments associated with politics in the country. Joining us to discuss this is Ahmed Buhari, a politician, and Kemakolam Uyinipchia, a development consultant. Thank you both for joining us. Mr. Buhari is joining us via Zoom. Thanks for joining us this evening. Thank you for having me. All right. And of course, Kemakolam, thanks for joining us. It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you. All right. So I'm going to start with Ahmed Buhari. So quickly share your thoughts. This is a conversation that we've had for many, many years. We've gone through the stage where, of course, there was the not too young Tehran bill that was eventually passed, but not very much seems to have changed. What do you think might be the biggest hindrance to more young people involved in politics? Good evening, everyone. Good evening, viewers. I think it's important for us to acknowledge the fact that there are positives with social media as they are negative as well. But I believe that for us to have a good progression, everything has got to be done in moderation. I've been saying one thing for like a while now. I think many Nigerians actually live on social media. So for example, a young Nigerian has fans in it, has people he admires in the United States. So he's looking at Nicki Minaj every morning, is looking at Pope Daddy, is fixated with Osha, and then he lives on the streets of Hollywood or somewhere in New York or wakes up in the morning and sees yellow buses on the streets for Jota. It's a very, very difficult thing to reconcile in your brain. So and this puts a lot of people into a lot of pressure and to be honest, a lot of young people are frustrated. However, social media on the other hand is somewhere that a lot of people have, you know, maximized the opportunities to make sure that they do not just sell their talents but also sell their products and in some cases connect with the rest of the world and put themselves ahead. Some people use social media as a platform to educate themselves. When the vice president did mention that young people should, you know, be watchful of social media and ensure that they join politics, I think for me it's a great advice. However, not everybody can be involved in politics. The same way it's important for us to know that there are people who have got to be on social media to earn their daily bread, not because they're doing anything that is illegal, but because they are actually using that new space that we have in our system that we can actually use to develop ourselves and progress with the rest of the world. OK, well, I'm going to move the question to Kemal. The social media, of course, has its own uses like he's already mentioned, you know, and even for those who decide to be active in politics, there's still a road that social media will play, of course, referred to the elections in 2015. It played a major role with, you know, bringing the current condition into power. But besides that, you know, the main conversation is about young people getting involved in politics and not just in elective positions, but also in participation with politics, in voting, getting registered, in standing in line to vote and, of course, being a politically aware in the first place. Where do you think that might not be going far enough with Nigerians? OK, as difficult as this sounds, because we live, of course, we are in the information age and social media, I believe, is the number one means for democratising information. And like my co-speaker mentioned, lots of young people literally live, quote, unquote, on social media. But I'm looking at social media as a tool that brings about improvements in life and, you know, daily existing and humanity existing. I absolutely agree with the vice president. Now, social media is neutral. It's neither good nor bad, but the use that you bring to it or, you know, how you take advantage of it, how you bet it's very malleable. You bend it whichever way you want. But somehow, in a very ironic sense, the power that social media has to drive change or to bring about development or otherwise is not necessarily translated into a direct change or impact in the life of the individual. Granted, it's a huge medium of expression. You can drive a lot of advocacy on social media. You can have a lot of opinion groups. You can push, you know, advocate for a lot of things. Unfortunately, it doesn't really move from that into drops down change or like a paradigm shift. And I'll give a very clear example. Recently, during the June 12th, you know, Democracy Day celebration, we had pockets of what do you call it, rallies, you know, young people were clamoring that the president should leave and all of that. So I took a look at, you know, all that was going on and I felt amused because this is a democratically elected government. The only thing that can unseat a democratically elected government is mortality, which is the pathway of the person or impeachment. Now, a lot of young people, you know, the millennials and the Gen Zs, which I belong in that generation, Twitter and generally social media has given us a platform to air our grievances, have our voices heard. Unfortunately, we expect that that opportunity to air your views translates into change or like a paradigm shift. But that's not the case. If you want to unseat a government, you're not God. You don't have the power of mortality. What can you do? You begin to lobby the people in the House of Representatives who are sent there to represent you. That's the process. You lobby them to institute a call for impeachment or whatever it is. But I absolutely am as sad as it seems as the facade that social media gives of having so much power and so much clout. It doesn't necessarily translate into the real world. And I'll give you a shocking example. We've seen people with hundreds of thousands to millions of followers on social media who need help with specific things in their lives. And the following on social media doesn't necessarily translate into the changed life outcome that they hope to get. So in a nutshell, it's just... Yeah, but there's also a level with which it's important, which you both have agreed with regard to social media. I'm going to go back to Mr. Bawari. I want you to speak on the relevance. If we were able to find ways to galvanize young Nigerians outside social media, we currently have a Twitter suspension in Nigeria. If for any reason we didn't have as much social media influence in the country, do you think that it would still be possible for the Nigerians, the youth of today, to be more politically aware and to become more politically active? You know, just like Kemal pointed out, it's important for us to understand that social media is never bad nor good. It depends on what you make out of it. So yes, in all of these things, I think what we must do as a system, as parents, as citizens, as government in itself, is to ensure that we use this platform to our advantage by pumping in positivity, good messages, educational messages that can actually enlighten the people as to what is obtainable, what is right, what should be done, how it can be done, how it can be achieved, as opposed to letting the space just double on its own. And when the government a few years ago, some years ago spoke about regulating the social media platforms, a lot of people came with a huge backlash saying that you cannot regulate a platform that you rode on to get into office. But I think it's important for us to also remind everybody that anything that's not done in moderation will always be abused. Just now, a news just came out from Canada that just contributed, the president of Canada is actually pushing for the regulation of social media in their country. It means that the generation that has been exposed to these platforms that do not have prior knowledge on how values, views and aspirations of a people are being curtailed are now on these platforms and actually excessively abusing it. I have seen hate messages on social media. I have seen fake messages on social media. And some of these things, you may not know the immediate repercussionary effect, but they do really, really have a very, very negative impact on the minds of a lot of Nigerians, regardless of their age, bracket, social status or political or religious affiliations. So I think it's important for us to understand these things as we progress as a people and ensure that we do all we have to do in the right, in the limitations that we can perceive to ensure that we do not further destroy our existing fragile structures. All right, so final question. I'm going to go to both of you now. Salim Kema, the the positives, you know, which we've mentioned with regards to social media, being able to spread information, being able to galvanize people also, you know, in the right direction, you know, as much as we can. How do we ensure that we translate or we move that energy from social media and get people to actually be active on ground politically? Well, basically what the vice president has just said and what he's doing by getting the young people to stand up from your chairs and or your beds and go out there and you see the idea. And sorry, let me just jump into what he said, speaking about regulating social media. That's that is dead on arrival as a matter of fact, because you really can't regulate, saying you want to regulate social media isn't directly saying you want to muzzle the people and, you know, direct or dictate what people say. Like we keep saying social media is neutral. Whatever people want to use it for, it's left to them. However, we need to, those of us who are on the forefront of development and advocating improvement in our national polity and in the day to day existence of Nigerians need to step up to the plate and ensure that for every fake news or wrong information there is a counter information that can put people right. And like your question, how do we galvanize all of this and translate it? At the end of the day, votes, well, until it gets to a point where voting becomes electronic, where you can sit in the comfort of your home and cast your votes. For now, we have to go to the ballot, we have to thumb print, we have to put the ballot paper in the box. Until that time, sitting on social media and campaigning and advocating for things, well, we'll only just give you clouds and we'll create some form of mental awareness and consciousness in the minds of people about where we should be and where we should go. Now we're not downplaying that because revolution or change, positive change, even in personal life, begins with the information that you allow into you. So in a nutshell and in conclusion, we can move the power that social media has towards a positive change in our national polity by getting young people, particularly the enlightened, the elite class, right? If you check the antecedents of, you know, electioneering in Nigeria, it seems that the young people that take the pains to go out and stand in the queues are those who are of the lower echelon of society. But for people like us who feel we are posh, such a strenuousness that comes with electioneering and politics, we probably don't want to expose ourselves to all that, but we need to. We can't keep clamoring on social media. There has to be the matching physical movement that gets us from our phones to the ballot boxes to effect the change that we want to see. All right, Mr. Buahari, I'm guessing you might agree with that also. Well, yeah, some of it, not all of it. Countries in the world have regulated social media in their spaces. It's important that we always understand that as a people, we have our views, our values, our aspirations, the things that we like, the things that we do not like, the things that we believe can help us succeed. And the things that we also can perceive could cause us issues. And that is why, when I made an example with just the Chair of Canada, who's already talking about moderating or regulating social media space in their country. Nigeria is going to be sitting down with Twitter in a few days. I've just seen the federal government has put up a team that's going to sit down with the Twitter team to see how they're going to progress with reopening the use of Twitter in Nigeria. And I'm ensuring you do that. At that meeting, there's going to be some bans and regulations that are going to put on the table to see that Twitter follows through if it wants to continue existing in our space. All right, but still respond to taking the energy and the conversations from Twitter and from social media to the ground and getting people to be more active. Because that's where it's important, according to the Vice President. Yes, it's important. And you know, in 2016, I became the first youngest person to ever declare to run for the office of the President. Well, for many people, they felt it was too, I was being too ambitious, but the truth of the matter was that I was tired of sitting on the sidelines and make complaints or be part of rallies or complain and create agitation sometimes that take us nowhere. I stepped to the floor, I moved from the sidelines, I made my plans clear, I instigated or should I say ignited a campaign process that was truly based on ideology and ideas and things that we believe would actually push us to the kind of people that we hope to become. So for the Vice President to say all of that, he said, trying to advise young people, I was excited about it. At the same time, it's important for us to know that not everybody is necessarily going to be involved in politics, but it should be nice if most of the people who spend most of their energies just trying to be part of social political exercises that will not yield any positive results to come to the political space, join political parties, grow with the parties, bring in ideas. Like I keep telling everybody, no political party is wrong. No political foundation is wrong. It is the people within the party that actually dictate whether it's gonna be a good party or a bad party. So if you think you're a good person, get more good people, go into political party and the people who are, if they're more good people, we get better results from these political platforms. And there's the little hindrances here and there that people would argue that might be limiting the number of people who want to get involved. Some people would say, oh, the price of political, or running for political office in Nigeria is too high. It's too dangerous out there. There's a political thugry and some of all of that. Do you think that with time, all those things will be put aside? Yes, there is that myth. It's not like it doesn't exist in some places. But yeah, I remember when I made my declaration, a lot of people called to say, be careful. You're going to be killed very soon. And I said, well, we're not attacking anybody. We're just gonna run a clean, clear campaign that is gonna be idea-based and activate young people to understand that we've got to be involved and that we're not gonna keep complaining. And so I think, for me, I've always said it, that if we truly wanna succeed as a people, as a country, there is just absolutely no way we're going to do all of that without understanding the gimmicks involved with politics. We're involved with political party structures. So I'm glad I'm seeing more young people involved. The most important thing is that we hope that they learn from the right kinds of people because like every other thing that people talk about, politics is a space where people have said so many negatives about how it's a bad game, it's a dirty game. I don't think so. I think, again, it's the people that are inside. So more good people come around, join political parties, make your plans very clear. And I'm very sure that we'll succeed. All right, and Kemal, I think I'll end up with you. Your thoughts on the same thing. Okay, so basically, I still want to come back to this issue of regulating social media, right? It's a very dicey issue. And you would think, now with issues of morality, right and wrong, what really is right and wrong? That's a philosophical question. But let me take it further. Like what right have you to tell me what to say or what not to say? Now granted, there are certain proclamations or post on social media that could heat up the policy. Correct? And if you go through, well, a lot of people don't take their time to go through the policy of the social media platforms. And it's written in black and white, correct? So there's already a disclaimer. And for certain things that have the propensity to heat up the policy or bring about discrimination or issues that would generally create unrest, some of these social media platforms are known to do the needful in line with their policies. Speaking generally about the participation of youth in politics and the danger, life itself is a risk. You wake up every morning, you hope to get to work, you can just step out of your house and get knocked down by a boss. It's the same thing. Every career, every sphere of operation comes with its own risks. However, I think because of the nature, because of how in the limelight politics and politicians are or is, it seems to glorify the risk factors involved in politics. You can't take that away. And it's, I mean, we've seen, even right here in the studio, we've seen cases whereby, you know, the floodlights fell on presenter. So life itself generally is a risk. That said, we can't sit on our hands and expect that there'll be change. And a lot of times young people just keep looking at the big things. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said, if you want to change the world, get up in the morning and make your bed. Then you have changed the world. So look at your private, you know, there are areas of private and immediate influence. What can you do to change the situation and make it just a little bit better than it is? And that's politics and development. All right, thank you very much, Kemal Uyenuchia. Thank you very much for coming around. Thank you for having me. Thank you for speaking with us. And Ahmed Bawari also thanks for your time this evening. I'm interested in perspective. All right, thanks for staying with us. We'll take a short break. And when we return, I'll be giving my take. We'll be right back. And my take, many Nigerian governors and politicians created the term legacy projects as projects or achievements which their administrations will be remembered for long after it is over. This clearly shows the importance of the question, what will this government, this politician or this political party be remembered for? They take it very seriously. And what the emotions of the electorate will be towards that political entity in the future. Sometimes the after effects go beyond just political to even tribal. People ask questions, would we let a person from this tribe ever attain this position ever again? Nigerians in whispers have already begun asking these questions about the current administration and leadership. As we have heard many times, the 16 years of PDP and what that most times refers to, soon it will change to the years of the APC. It is important that the current administration takes seriously what it truly wants to be remembered for. Is it corruption, trains, bandits, recessions, kidnappings, the Niger bridge, cattle? See you again tomorrow on Plus Politics.