President, Advocating for Young Leaders of Nigeria (AYLN), Mokwenye Chike, is a barrister at law and Ambassador for Peace (AP). He speaks with Head, News Desk, VICTOR EBIMOMI, about the organisation’s plans to ensure that the youth take their rightful place in the country.
What is your organisation, AYLN, into?
Advocating for Young Leaders of Nigeria (AYLN) is a non-governmental organisation that works to improve the life of youths nationwide through the promotion of education, health, wellness, culture and arts, to prepare them as future leaders. It focuses on youth’s legal rights issues under the three systems of law – customary, statutory and religious – in Nigeria. We promote knowledge, youth empowerment and development. We also protect and defend the rights of youth, raise awareness on youth’s human rights, abuse of these rights and other legal issues as they affect the youth, with a view to determining policies which can best promote all human rights. We are also supporting and strengthening youths, human rights-focused organisations and individual activists. We also promote good governance in Nigeria and participate in the developing the economy of Nigeria.
When did you start this?
A year ago.
What are the immediate projects you have now?
We have two core projects for now. We have agricultural projects in form of rearing of poultry, egg production and others because we also intend to train youths and develop them as agricultural leaders in Nigeria. With that, we can generate two million jobs for the youths. We also have a bio-fuel project that can help to generate more megawatts for Nigeria; it will be handled by expatriates who will be coming to Nigeria soon after the election next year.
You mentioned election and it is fast approaching. Is there anything you are doing in that aspect?
We are doing something. Apart from political education for the youths, we are also planning to conduct opinion polls on presidential election and the governorship election of Lagos State. Through the opinion polls, we want to know who may likely be the next president and who will be the next governor of Lagos. And with our group, we want to be involved in governance. What I mean is that we will be working with government at every level and then serve as a contact to reach to the youths because the organisation’s major focus is on the youths. By so doing, we will have a kind of understanding with the governments that this is what our youths want and we want it done in this sector or that sector, so that we can also assist in developing the Nigerian economy.
How long do you think you can go with some of these projects, especially those for youth empowerment?
They are going to be continuous projects because we have millions of youths we want to engage. We want to occupy them with many programmes. You know, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. For instance, in the area of Boko Haram, we want to help curb it because we want the youths to be engaged with various programmes through our organisation. We want to engage them in different ways and at different levels of our projects. We want to have a one-on-one with the youths through the programmes.
We will conduct enlightenment and empowerment programmes for them. We will mentor them to prepare their minds for leadership. We will coordinate about 200 committees that will be working under the supervision of AYLN to bring the youths together.
We are very concerned about the Boko Haram issue, so we are going to work with the federal government to curb it by enlightening the youths in various programmes we have set out to implement. If a man is idle, there will be different thoughts going on, at any point in time, in his mind, and if there is no way of helping the youths, they could come out together and form a bad group. So we want to help them from falling into wrong hands through our organisation’s projects and programmes. It is not going to be restricted to the North alone; we will take it round the whole federation.
In the next three years, where do you think the organisation will be?
Like I told my executive members, we are going straight to Aso Rock. We will make sure that we have branches in all the states of the federation and our coordinators will man the offices in the states to make sure the youths are occupied with our programmes; sensitise them towards positive mentality and equip them to be better citizens and leaders in future.
With all these projects, do you see the youths taking over political leadership soon from the ‘old brigade’?
Yes, we are working thoroughly on that area because if you look at many countries in the Western world, you discover that they have 30 plus to 40 years emerging the presidents of their countries. That is why we are preparing the minds of our youths to start thinking as future leaders. Apart from politics, we want to ensure that they are leaders in any sector that our organisation prepares them for.
