Book launch: You can’t isolate youths from governance, they’re stakeholders to development---Ayodeji Akeem Amodu …Says Tinubu believes in youths

Estate Surveyor and Valuer, the Senior Special Assistant to the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu, on Housing, Ayodeji Akeem Amodu, has stated that the youths are so important that nobody can isolate them from governance, as they are stakeholders to development.

Amodu also emphasized that the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, believes in the youths and the youths themselves believe in Tinubu, the Iconic.

Amodu who described Sanwo-Olu as Mr Governor, Mr Salable, Mr Infrastructure and the Incident Commander took the position while addressing the media at the launch of the book titled The Iconic Bola Ahmed Tinubu: An Inspiration to African Youths which was held at the Lagos Oriental Hotel recently.

He said “I am a youth myself, I am just 50 plus now, the youths have been yearning for inclusiveness in governance, and I can say to you that it is high time the youths are put in the right places to actually participate in governance. As a leader, I believe in inclusive governance, there is no way you can isolate youths from governance because they are stakeholders to development, both social, economic, political, we need to bring the youths, we need to hear their view.”

He opined that the reason the youths demonstrated during the EndSARS saga was due to a feeling of exclusion from governance. “If you look back into what happened over two years now, during the EndSARS, what prompted that up was something that was civil initially but it went out of hand because the youths were bottled up with a lot of thought that they were not being carried along, they have not been given their rightful place, so they all joined up and it was a gang-up, and people were brainwashed to actually come out to display what we saw during the EndSARS.”

Amodu brought a message of hope, saying that government has seen the lacuna and has designed roadmap to fill it. “Be that as it may, the government has seen that there has been a lacuna, there has been a vacuum, even before the youths came out to display what happened at the EndSARS, going forward, 2023, as you know, the general elections have just been concluded, and that is one thing our President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, will come to fill come May 29, when he will become the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic and the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, by the grace of God.”

Amodu maintained that as someone who believes in the youth, Asiwaju will appoint about 50% of youths into his cabinet “Asiwaju is someone who believes in the youth, look at his manifesto, he actually went all out to say, there will be about 50% of youths in his cabinet, that he is going to make sure that there is not going to be issues of they are not carried along. If you remember, Asiwaju became a Senator of the Federal Republic when he was a youth himself, and he understood what the youths needed, he understood the tenacity at which the youth need inclusiveness in government, and that was why he performed so much, someone that came after being a senator to become the Governor of Lagos State, when he chose his first cabinet, they were all young people.”

The internationally renowned Estate Surveyor gave instances of youths whom Asiwaju appointed into his cabinet when he was Governor of Lagos, saying that the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) was appointed when he was a youth, adding that even though people were saying that Asiwaju was too old to run for the office of the president, they forgot that he is a man who believes so much in the youth. “He employs the youths, he made sure that a lot of the youths were employed in 2004 in the civil service, most of the parastatals that are existing in government, from the LASMA, LAWMA, Neighborhood Watch, KAI, these were people that were meant to be street urchins before, but the Lagos State Government came all out and employed them en mass. The civil service, during the time of Asiwaju’s first and second term, witnessed the highest number of employment, and what are we talking about? The youth should wait and see what Asiwaju gonna do this first tenure of his, and I know that he is not going to let them down, he is going to make sure he put them in the right places.”

Amodu appreciated the youths whom he said worked assiduously to ensure that Asiwaju garnered votes enough to make him victorious. “During the campaign we saw all what the youths did, just recently the national leader of the youth His Excellency Dayo Israel just had a dinner in form of an Easter, for people to come and celebrate with Asiwaju’s victory at Lagos Continental. So you saw how that young man, at one point he was the One Day Governor in Lagos State, and from there he has been picked, and he has performed, he has been given very strategic positions, and that has even led him to be able to take over that position of a national youth leader, and we saw how he went all out, he travelled wide, all the 36 states, just to campaign for Asiwaju, what else can anybody want from the youth, Asiwaju believes in the youths and the youths themselves believe in Asiwaju, the Icon himself.”