Comrade Daniel Onjeh, has urged the NANS){kind=link}
The Benue South senatorial candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC)Comrade Daniel Onjeh, has urged the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) to support President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration and its policies, assuring the students’ body that Nigeria is on the way to economic and social recovery.
Onjeh in a speech titled: ‘State of the Nation: The role of students in nation-building’, delivered at the Senate retreat and symposium of NANS in on Thursday noted the nation had plummeted in all political and socioeconomic indices to the point that some scholars had christened it a failed state.
Onjeh explained nation-building is a dynamic process that requires the active involvement of all segments of society, not only the political class and that it must involve students, young people, all genders, the business community, civil servants, persons with special needs, etc.
Furthermore, he stated that people can make their nation greater with imaginations, thoughts and dreams, stating students can become better citizens that will build a better nation.
Students, Onjeh stated, are agents of positive social transformation and must take their involvement in nation-building beyond mere rhetoric.
Students, he argued, can help to foster national unity, integration, and cohesion.
Speaking on transformation, Onjeh said The fight against corruption should start from schools, stating School authorities must be accountable whioe students must not engage in examination malpractices which is moral corruption.
Speaking, Onjeh asserted that government at all levels should cultivate a culture of leadership succession.
He recounted how Ghana has been providing opportunities for its young people to take up sensitive positions of leadership in its central government.
He cited the example of Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa (the President of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) in 2006) who has served as a Federal Minister on two occasions. He served fas the Minister of Communications and subsequently as the Minister of Education.
Comrade Ablakwa is a member of the Ghanaian Parliament. Onjeh also gave the example of Comrade Janga Augustus Kowo (the President of the Liberian Students Union (LINSU) in 2006) who is serving as the Comptroller-General and the Accountant General of Liberia.
Ablakwa and Kowo were Onjeh’s contemporaries when he served as the President of the West Africa Students Union (WASU) in 2006.
Musing on the challenges Nigerian youths face, Onjeh lamented the fact that “much of their energies are dissipated in acts of cultism, violence and brigandage, drug abuse, etc.”
Onjeh enjoined NANS to change the approach to agitation to conform with current democratic reality.
He urged student leaders to be prepared to sit at the negotiating tables.
Onjeh urged NANS to begin sponsoring private bills to the National Assembly. These bills, he explained, should seek to forge a better and saner society, strengthen political institutions and boost economy to the end of closing the unemployment gap.