BEVERLY HILLS, July 07, (THEWILL) – The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, CISLAC, and the Prisoners Rehabilitation and Welfare Action, PRAWA, on Friday traced the recent renewed agitations by some youths in the country to bad governance and looting of the public treasury by Nigeria’s political class.
They noted that having failed the country, members of the political class are now using the youths for their selfish interests by prodding them to instigate violence and marginalizing themselves through ethnicity and religious violence.
This emerged as the groups and their partners launched the ‘No To War’ campaign at a one-day programme tagged, ‘Multi-Stakeholders: No War Coalition Consultative Meeting Aimed At De-Escalating The Ongoing Tension In The Country’ in Abuja.
The groups noted that the elite is playing up divisive tendencies because they want a reduction in the population of youths through war so that the present political class can remain in power to continue diverting public funds.
The Executive Director of CISLAC, Auwal Ibrahim Musa said government at all levels have failed in taking cognizance of early warnings so as to mitigate the tension that have now surfaced, regretting that there is no equity and justice in the country.
Lamenting that young Nigerians only have looters with no role models to look up to, Ibrahim said the political class are now procuring arms for youths to kill themselves as the 2019 general elections inch closer.
“We all know that the main reason why our young people are involved in this is simply because of the collapse of governance in the country and our young people have been abandoned, they have no decent livelihood, they have been denied access to education and jobs,” he said.
The CISLAC boss advised youths not to allow the “tiny political class” use their energy to destroy the country, adding that such politicians would never use their children and have a ready aircraft to take them out of the country should war breakout.
On her part, the Team Leader, PRAWA, Ogechi Ogu (Esq) said the government must not wait for violence to start before addressing the indicators, adding that the stakeholders’ meeting was aimed at redirecting the thought of the people and raising awareness amongst the people in the de-escalation process.
