Why organisations should help alleviate youth sufferings

Uncontrollable births by some average and uneducated citizens also help in alarmingly shooting up the country’s population and compounding the woes of the young people.  This has also helped to compound the pains of the nation as social and educational infrastructures and opportunities become terribly over-stretched. Parents and family relations are no longer able to […]

Uncontrollable births by some average and uneducated citizens also help in alarmingly shooting up the country’s population and compounding the woes of the young people.  This has also helped to compound the pains of the nation as social and educational infrastructures and opportunities become terribly over-stretched.
Parents and family relations are no longer able to adequately cater for their children and wards.
This pronounced inability in countless families has left the innocent children and grown-ups stranded and abandoned. As a result they lack parental protection and become easy prey for criminals, economic saboteurs, drug barons, sponsors of insurgency and political thugs.
Even those who are lucky to go to school still roam the streets in search of jobs. It was little wonder therefore when few months ago, at the Nigerian Immigration Service recruitment, several of them perished and others got maimed during the stampede while trying to be screened at Abuja National Stadium, in Port Harcourt, Uyo, Lagos among others.
It is for this reason that many corporate firms, NGOs, religious organisations and professional groups should step up action to alleviate the plight of Nigerian unemployed school leavers, the street children whose population keeps increasing in major cities, and those turned into beggars by the vicissitude of life. This way, the future will hold much hope for peace.
It was for this singular reason that Cross River State Governor, Senator Liyel Imoke founded The Bridge Leadership Foundation about four years ago as a personal vision to help mold much brighter future for the Nigerian youths.
He is worried that the well-to-do, corporate firms, groups and political leaders don’t do much to build up the human infrastructure.
Speaking recently, when the Bridge Leadership Foundation hosted the 2014 Career/Founder’s Day celebration at Monty Suite in Calabar, Imoke said when he completes his tenure next May 2015, he would not seek for political office but ‘My next job will be  to train the human minds.’
He said:  “I will rather concentrate my entire energy and time to train the youths and offer them opportunities to become better entrepreneurs with better skills to become employable. My future critical role will not be to become a senator or any other high political office but to fully concentrate on how to impact my experience. I want to work to help build up the minds of young people. I will commit much more time to this Foundation when I leave office next year.”
He frowned at the attitude of the society that celebrates governors and other political leaders who completely concentrate on infrastructures to the detriment of the human infrastructure.
“Too much attention has been focused on massive public infrastructures by public officers rather than on development of the people, especially the youths. These political leaders are therefore celebrated whereas those that look at healthcare, education or developing the minds of the youths are less regarded.
“Bridge Leadership Foundation has no government involvement.  I set it up as a personal initiative to intervene and help harness the many youth potentials. Quality of lives is of much concern to me,” Imoke said.
He said that this most important and critical aspect of national development which is counter-productive to the society and the young people has become neglected.
The celebration gathered young people from many states of Nigeria in order for mentors to share their experiences with them on how they became successful.
After three years, the Foundation has trained over 6,500 young graduates and unemployed people on different skills and professions according to the acting director, Mrs Ini Utuks while explaining this year’s theme: “ICT and The New Technology.”
She said: “The Foundation seeks to address gaps in the provision of practical leadership models for young people and thus provides a platform designed to inspire, motivate, train, mentor and empower young people to achieve their best.”
Another group with headquarters in Calabar is the International Youth Fellowship, now called Brotherhood All Youths Assembly (BAYA).  With religious inclination, it is now headed by a former banker and entrepreneur, Tom Inyang-Akpan.
BAYA conducted empowerment and moral programmes for its members in Nigeria and beyond from July 14 to 19 in Calabar.
According to Inyang-Akpan, the group which enjoys much supports and funding from an influential religious leader and philanthropist, His Holiness Olumba Olumba Obu, has sponsored 30 young Nigerians to professional training thereby helping to reduce the plight of the youths.
“Our group is universal. Those that benefit from our sponsorship are not necessarily our members. Our aim is to harness the great potentials of the youths in Nigeria in order to channel their minds from vices, take them away from the streets and inculcate godly values in them”, Tom Inyang-Akpan said.  
Another organization, Mothers Against Child Abandonment (MACA) was founded by Mrs Obioma Liyel Imoke. It campaigns against child abandonment and goes from street to street to pick them up and train them.
According to Mrs Nancy Irek, public affairs officer to the project, penultimate week ten of the street children were sponsored to Atlanta in the United States of America to participate in a global competition.
“The governor’s wife is training many other young, stranded Nigerians who were stranded on other entrepreneurial development ventures. She has facilitated the establishment of Sure-foot International School where some of these youths attend,” she said.