Comrade Babajide Adisa is the Lagos State Chairman of the Nigeria Youth Democratic Party, NYDP. As the 2023 election draws closer, the party is positioning itself to mobilise the youth to take over leadership positions.
In this interview with Ayodele Olalere, Comrade Adisa revealed the party’s strategies to win electoral positions in the coming elections.
How long has your party been in existence?
NYDP have been in existence as an NGO and as frontier pressure group for years. But as events take place from one government dispensation to another, there will be need for each member to look into what is happening to the objective of this organisation, and how we can also add our voice to the system.
So, along the line, there was a motion for NYDP to come into place, which was formerly NYDD, Nigeria Youth Democratic Diplomats. So, from the word diplomats, it makes it look like a force, a pressure group to the government. We have a national chairman, Barrister Johnson. So, towards the end of 2010, we started taking some drastic steps towards becoming a full political organisation. But the activity that led to the message to come out was as a result of our insistence and those of other youths that it’s time for us to come out and let our voice be heard. So, that is why some people may not know that NYDP has been existing underground.
So, NYDP is basically a platform for youths to make their voices heard?
Yes. But some people misunderstand what the term youth means. In a psychological behaviour in the developmental stage, we have the adolescence, we have the youth and the old age. So, we are looking in summary youth in mindset, not youth in age brackets that if you now grow to a particular age, you won’t be able to belong to that category.
If you are 60 years of age, what is that notion in you that carries the yearnings of the youth? NYDP is not for youth within the age bracket of youth. It is the word youth with mindset, youth with the right mentality. So, whether you are 50 years or 50 plus or you are 60 years, as long as you are seeing that whatever you are doing, you are giving room for the strength of the economy, the strength of the nation to come into place, then it is balanced.
So, what is the strength of NYDP in terms of the number of members and reach nationwide?
Well, I don’t want to make some exaggerating words. NYDP is all over Nigeria and worldwide. In the month of March, we did an international conference in Abuja and that conference launched in about 99 international chairmen with one person, representing each country, like I’m representing Lagos State. So, our strength is in millions. Our strength is not only within our bracket. Our strength is in our mothers that are women. They have accepted us and welcome us. Our strength is in the hands of the fathers, who have welcomed and accepted us. They know they have been cheated and they are scared of the future of their children. Such parents have the youth mindset.
The 2023 election is around the corner. What is your party doing towards that?
The difference between 2021 and 2023 is just the next four months. When we talk about politics, it is done from now. So, we are set as far as 2023 is concerned. That is why we are getting information from the national body that each state should put their structure in place. We follow necessary due process electorally
There has been a clamour by youth that the older ones should allow them to rule the country. Do you think the youths are really ready to take over the mantle of leadership in the country?
I think there’s a misconception there from the government of the day. If you pick the word youth, if you look at the trend from the #EndSars protest; when it started, the group of people that came together positioned and structured themselves very well in the streets. The first week, everything was going like, you know, the youths saying they didn’t want this to happen. People that have been affected came out and expressed their opinion. Most of our female youths have been victims of rape from SARS. They raped some of them and some guys came out and said that they took their phones. But they were able to do it because. They saw an opportunity and there was much evidence of clips, showing where the protest was hijacked.
So, the youth are 100% ready. When President Muhammadu Buhari was then in the military, his age bracket with that of Yakubu Gowon and Olusegun Obasanjo were the same. Remember, they had fathers then. Why didn’t their fathers prevent them from ruling the country on the excuse they were still young?
So, we should not allow the government of the day to cage our mindset into ‘we are not ready. When they were planning the coup then; did any one of them have experience?
Nobody had gone for any training for planning a coup. They arranged the tactics and they succeeded. History is there to teach us. They are cheating us and our generation and they should know that this cheating is affecting the system.
The youth are ready not only to come out and agitate physically. We’ve also talked to ourselves to carry our momentum and energy. This is our strength now. We are ready with this. We are ready. See, we know what happens at the poll. How many aged people go to the poll and withstand the stress from let’s say 5 am to 7 pm till when the results are counted. It is the youths that are there because we have the passion.
I could remember the number of times I would trek from my residence to go and vote. We have been doing it over and over. We are the ones they are using and that is why they will now come back and say hoodlums hijacked votes. Who are the hoodlums? Are they not youth? Do they call elderly people hoodlums?
So, we are very much ready. We have our state chairmen across the 36 states of Nigeria. Every day, we receive directives from the national body.
We have been holding several strategic meetings, talking to ourselves, and also we are ready to sensitising our youths. We are ready to mobilise ourselves and re-sensitise ourselves that the only protest that is lawful that government cannot say don’t come out is the election.
I read a book, “30 years of military rule’ when I was in university. My dad was a soldier, so when I came across age bracket of the likes of Obasanjo, Gowon and Buhari and I look at the impact they made at that age, why would they now say youths cannot come on board or youths can come on board through a means they have already cooked and incorporate them into it.
Look at the youth conference just organised by the All Progressives Congress, APC. It is a preparation to cook our youth into a system that is already on the ground. Ten thousand youths will be given the opportunity to participate in the 2023 election. If I am one of the ten thousand youths, it means each youth will. have another 100 behind him.
Let us add another eight years or 16 years to what is on the ground. Those youths that are going into the system now, what will they or where would they be again by that time?
One major problem that seems to have hindered these youth projects has to do with finance, as the cost of obtaining forms is beyond the reach of the youths. How does your party intend to tackle this?
There are some things we will not be able to say on the pages of the newspaper because we have to also be very much diplomatic with our structures and our templates. We have a welcoming and system-friendly package for our contestants. That does not mean that we are throwing out for free. We know the key to finance has been locked by some people but we are not looking at that if we are trying to lift ourselves. We asked ourselves, how do we bring out those structures to help and encourage those that will contest in one elective post or another.
What are the chances of your party in the next election both at the state and national level?
When people are tired of a system like we saw in the last bye-election in Lagos State, the polling centres were very scanty yet the number of votes counted and the results were announced. The Independent Electoral Commission, INEC, has prepared a template for the Anambra election and we are keying in because of the step by step process that we have taken. The party that is on the ground would want to claim they have all the power but let us remember the same party that was on the ground some years ago, I mean the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was kicked out by APC. Anything can still happen. Everything is not about money. PDP was in power when they had the key to the treasury yet they were defeated. By the grace of God, if things work out as planned and we have a landmark in Anambra, the message will go by itself. The governor will not emerge by himself; all of them will emerge through a process of election.
Does NYPD support restructuring?
I would say yes but we need to understand what is restructuring and where it is coming from. Now if PDP has called for a conference and produced a confab report now, that is a path towards restructuring. What happened to those documents and those exercises and the amount of money injected into that project. Okay, if something has happened and they could not implement it and the people that were selected to be part of that exercise are still alive and are saying the government should go back to that report, why has the government refused? It’s not only the Yoruba faction of elite nor the South-east or South-south that were called to the confab but every part of Nigeria was also represented.
Another word for restructuring is repositioning, re-fixing. Maybe the government in power doesn’t understand that word restructuring. They are not seeing that it is for us. So, NYPD is going to look into restructuring through revisiting the confab report. We are coming on board and when we are in the office, our people will be advised even at the House of Assemblies, both at the state and National Assembly to call all the confab reports. If we cannot restructure because of our female sex or youths that are active working population, or because of the aged ones nostalgia provisions, we are not ready going to be distracted this time around.
What is the way forward for Nigeria from these problems of insecurity and the bad economy?
We can always get out of this if our government should desist if our politicians stop the use and dump syndrome. They should not use and dump the youths. Most of the crime you see is because people are used and dumped after election. We have many graduates; they use them during elections and dump them later. The old men we have now are not active to carry what’s on the ground now compared with the 1980s.
The way we can get this out is to engage the youth in the right way. Don’t give them what you can collect from them again. This thing is like you have a child now, you study a child, whenever you come back from work or travelling, you know what your child more or less requests from you. You bought it already; we want to give you a surprise, mistakenly you just bring it out from the bag. You can’t collect it again from the child and. you can’t do surprise again.
Our crime rate can be resolved if our government avoid use and dump in security. Don’t give people what you cannot collect from them; engage them properly and give them a mindset that whatever they are doing, they should remember. money has been committed to it.