 Apc national youth leader sets agenda for new ministers of youth development. I am Bola Oba Arthis, is plus politics. The youth wing of the all progressive congress, Apc says great exploits are expected from the new ministers of youth development. Dr. Jamela Ibrahim and the minister of state for youth, Mr. Yodelia Lawandei, Dayo Israel, the national youth leader of Apc, said this in legals in the congratulatory letter to the duo. Israel has shot the new ministers of necessary support from the Apc youth wing to help them achieve their goals and aspirations. Joining me to discuss this is Dayo Israel, Dayo Israel is a pleasure having you guesting on the show virtually today. Thank you very much, it was really great to be here and it's good to see your face after a long while with the Bola Oba. We really don't want to go into the history of how 25, 26 years ago we told together in London England. Absolutely, and Ben see me the great exploit to be with the UK. I must congratulate you and I must also celebrate the goodness of the Lord upon your life. You really come very far from that youth, that idealistic, creative, value innovative youth that you were. Even as in those days in your teenage years you were youth leader in a community in the UK, the Aspera, especially in the greater London area. Congratulations. Absolutely, we are grateful to God. Okay, there is business to be attended to and in a way you are one of those that your colleagues, the youth, 60% plus of the population of Nigeria will look up to at this juncture in our history. What is your pitch to those watching now who may not be members, the youths watching now who may not be members of your party, but who are somewhat distraught, disillusioned and a bit feeling disenfranchised? What will be your pitch, your starting pitch? The young people of Nigeria, either you know, obedient or batified or articulated, must understand and realize that the kinds of politics are over and it's now time for governance. And the focus of the administration of Asewajibola Abethinubu is actually the president and commander in chief of the M40s of Nigeria is to ensure that we can create more jobs for young people in Nigeria. We can drive the numbers of unemployment, the percentage and the data, drive them down so much through job creations in the public sector, in the private sector, by empowering young people to become entrepreneurs and successful ones of that, investing in young businesses across sector, agriculture sector, financing sector, technology and all of that. You will see what for example the minister of digital economy and communication, you will see what he has done recently. What the minister has done recently was to be able to introduce new programs that would create jobs for young people. So there are jobs in tech, there are jobs in IT that have been created by this administration. There are a lot of other opportunities that the Asewajibola Abethinubu administration is providing for young people. I would ordinarily have thought that the minister of digital communication is at this juncture emphasizing training before creating jobs or before and holding people into job opportunities. So I hope you are not conflicting the facts as they are now. Training is different from skills empowerment is different from enterprise empowerment. Would you agree with me? So there are different features of the government intervention. So human capital development is one area, building capacities of those that want to be entrepreneurs in the digital economy space. That's one area. Building capacities of SMEs to be able to also run successiveness in another area. And also funding start-ups is another intervention of the government. And I'm aware by the grace of God that the other ministries including the ministry of trade and investment that are driving projects and programs for young people that would help to fight poverty, tackle inequality and give them an opportunity to have the economic power to keep their family and support their loved ones. But in addition to that, my letter two days ago was to encourage and congratulate the newly appointed ministers of youth and minister of state for youth to encourage them because they sit on the threshold of history. They are the course of history to be part of the youngest set of ministers in the history of Nigeria, in particular to man the ministry of youth. And the goal is to encourage them to let them know that where they're there to represent the interests of the entire young population of Nigeria, the entire young people of this country. And that we believe in them, we're praying for them and we're anticipating their success. And to let them understand that we are ready starting for myself as a national youth leader to give them every support they may require and to be able to help them to perform with the resources of young people that are very good to them. Pao say something, I think he's Igbo 12. He said we have surrounding us a cloud of witnesses and it's to remind the excellences, the ministers of youth that they are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses of young people who are looking forward to their success, who are expecting their performance and were available to support them to achieve their potential and their promise to Nigerians. Dayo, given what I know to be your antecedents, I must say that when I read the letter, I felt it was a bit plattitudinal. And you know what I'm saying that because I know that you are a person of ideas. I was hoping, when I started reading it, I was hoping that we're going to be trading some fantastic policy ideas with the honorable ministers that are some point in the letter. Inevitably it had to be congratulatory. But I felt you could have punched better in the direction of ideas, especially policy ideas given the situation of the country now, particularly the situation of youths in Nigeria. Was I over expecting or why did you just structure it to be that plattitudinal? In life there are processes and there are chases and stages. The reality is that the letter wasn't meant to be all exhausted but the letter was important to assure Nigerians that the party's youth wing has given the ministers their total support and that was standing by them. We intend to then take that beyond the face of the letter into practical physical engagement on supporting the ministers on policy ideas and policy. And that's why the second to the last paragraph of the letter offered the services, the experiences that we have and were willing to share with them if they do desire to engage and all of that. So part of what the letter said was that starting from myself as a National Youth Leader that even before as you alluded earlier that there's over 20 years of extensive cognitive experience in youth development that we can provide advice from to the ministers and also there are a lot of other young people across the country who share great ideas that we're happy to arrange with the ministers to be able to also pick their brain and engage in their vision. Let me rephrase or reframe the last question in another way possible now. When I was reading the letter, I was feeling that the dialogue had always known and you know I have a rich history of this person that dialogue I have always known more than two decades now would be going in the direction of maybe organizing like you did during the election hearing campaigns like you did in Ibadon, like you did in Abuja brought youths together from all over Nigeria and I was thinking maybe at some point I'll say something I'll say we do zonal geopolitical zonal youth confabulations or conferences or sessions that these ministers will come and pitch ideas, policy ideas to the youths and see how some from the private sector and indeed from the social enterprise sector can work collaboratively with the government to help bring many of their colleagues and you know many are disillusioned we can be given, we can leverage the traction that people like you have to harness the opportunities that the president may have was I over expecting something from you or was it just my close knowledge of you that may have been troubling my head those are going to happen but at this phase the focus is to allow the ministers to settle in in their different roles and understand the office and strategize and agree on their modes of operation at that phase we would be able to now come and engage the excellences, the other ministers and share ideas with them and also open up programs that we can engage them to participate in to all intent and purpose they are part of our party they are youth in our youth wing as a matter of fact the minister himself is one of the members of the APC youth wing and the junior minister which is the minister of state is one of my state youth leaders who was the state youth leader of the state APC youth wing so they are people and we want them to settle in and then see how we begin to engage with them post confirmation and swearing in that app on two days ago fantastic, okay let me go in another direction now and I really don't want you to feel like ebon bola is humming me now why is ebon but I think an opportunity like this should trade on what has always made the two of us to be close that's ideation in value innovation I am thinking and this is not thinking aloud now I am thinking somebody who is fortunate divinely blessed to be in the position where you are now should also be should also be working in an infrastructure within the party and indeed beyond to collate ideas from the youths and find a way of piping those ideas to cabinet members why am I thinking about that it's easy it's easy for somebody like you to connect with people who constitute more than 60% of the Nigerian electorate indeed the Nigerian population and when you connect you can easily design where they choose where their shoes are pushing them and also find a way of channeling channeling some of these ideas a kind of feedback mechanism infrastructure what do you think about that absolutely I agree with you and those are some of the things that would also unfold and one thing to also recognize are some of the limitations of my office so for example as national leader of the party the priority is on the youth of the party while the ministers focus more on the use of the country so of course they overlap because we also have a lot of the party the government belongs to the party so you hear the APC-led administration but also to the party level we don't have the kind of resources that the government has so many of these ideas that you talked about to champion at the moment I would say the party doesn't necessarily have the resources to be able to form those ideas but we're hoping that we'll collaboration from the government the government can take the lead in that area because it has the resources it has the manpower it has civil servants and officials and stuff to drive some of those ideas and we would want to a sub-barron authority of power, the responsibility the role that we want to play is to provide technical support to provide guidance to provide encouragement as to fulfill their mandates to the Nigerian people Dayo I think you may be overplaying the humility card or you deliberately want to be somewhat circumspect maybe because I'm not an APC-led partisan but I would ordinarily have thought that your position just like the position of the national leader just like the position of the national chairman of your party your position is so strategic that there is no APC-state today that you get to and you have a program that the government of that state may not likely be unshaking you I'm just thinking aloud now I don't know how these things work I've never been a partisan I think I should use this platform to also clear that that perhaps should have been an ideal but that may not be the current realities and of course that ideal comes with a lot of pressure of my person as well I think people would say to me oh you have governors funding you you have governors, you know you have all the resources but the reality is that my office doesn't even have an impress a running cost per diem or a subvention and so for me I think the approach has been to work within your means and then to leverage a relationship and the main goal is that the government has the primary responsibility because as you know over the years this has been my forte even outside of government in driving youth inclusion and youth development but at this stage the goal is also to support the government to do its job and to be effective in delivering service to the Nigerian youth okay to be honest with you I quite understand the picture you have painted now and I know that sometimes those of us you know the FNW motors those of us who drive Rolls Royce with the amount instead of being behind the steering we sometimes romanticize the opportunities and the privileges available to people like you but in view of the reality the portraiture of the reality you just painted now it may not be that easy but having said that I said and maybe this is unfair to you I said the value I know is somebody that will think outside the box absolutely and the value I know is somebody who ordinarily ordinarily even within the context of the of the sobering circumstances can value create challenge you know let me challenge you at this juncture give me one or two ideas that Nigerians apart from even APC youth partisans the Nigerians can be looking up to in the next couple of weeks months from somebody as influential as you absolutely I think part of the thing we want to focus on at the level of the party it should be able to help more young people get value for their citizenship of Nigerians and from the level of the party for example we are launching our membership program for the APC youth wing we already opened our website www.joinapc.ng I think you will pay for that I apologize for that but the goal is that being a member of a political party for example should be beyond just election you should be able to for example as a member of our youth wing of our party be able to walk into a restaurant which is a membership card because we have a relationship with that restaurant or perhaps because the owner of that restaurant is a member of the APC and you can just present your card and get a discount you can do that in a salon at the airport we are trying to build partnerships with businesses with organizations who are willing to work with us to ensure that young people can actually it helps to survive even in this current economic situation that is not just peculiar to Nigeria but given across the globe for us also at the party level is to complement the effort of the government and the ministry of youth at the government level to create a lot of empowerment program for young people and connect them to opportunities in government so we can say ministry of mining what are the programs you have that are youth related and then we can connect our young members to be part of that ministry of youth these are some ideas that we have let's collaborate together and provide services to our young people because after all is said and done the real value of government must be that it is helping people to have a better life and quality life you know value driven governance and that's what the ATC administration want to offer young Nigerians just about when you started sounding like the day you had always known the little eatlers in the in the back room are telling me that about time we handed it sorry about that I really appreciate engaging with you I really appreciate the fact that you are still as intellectually solid your intellectual persona is still as solid as adult I wish you all the best thank you very much we go for a short break now and when we back we do let's go for a short break