In this interview with Najib Sani, Ameen Amshi states why he wants to be APC national youth Leader during the forthcoming national convention of the party in February 2022.
He said the APC government led by President Muhammadu Buhari has begun the difficult and thankless job of rebuilding our broken nation, but there are many who benefit from the rot and don’t want a change.
Despite unprecedented efforts, programmes and projects designed exclusively for our youths and aimed at empowering them financially and socially, such as N-Power, Youth Empowering People (YEP), Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS), Trader-Moni, Presidential Youth entrepreneurship Support (P-YES), Youth Empowerment and Development Initiative (YEDI), etc, some of them have allowed themselves to be weaponized by reprehensible political forces, and turned against the very rebuilding that, given time, would secure their future.
Youth decadence and restiveness are at an unprecedented level and all manner of depravity and profligacy have manifested as a direct result of the engineered depression and delusion that they have been plunged into.
It is against this dire backdrop and with a considered desire to play my part to right the ship, that I declare my intention to contest to become the National Youth Leader of the APC.
The young man who is a native of Yobe State spoke on various issues.
What informed your decision to run for the office of the National Youth Leader of the APC?
My firm and unshakable belief that the Nigerian youth is vastly underserved, underestimated, and underutilised in the Nigerian project.
I want to run for the office of National Youth Leader to build on the commendable work done by the current leadership, under the guidance of Ismail Ahmed.
I want to help build bridges between our youth and our elders, between young citizens and their leaders, between our genders and between youths of different ethnicities, faiths, and social classes. I want to help guide our youth within the party and in the nation at large to utilise their numbers, to coalesce their talents, aggregate their energy, navigate their differences, and ultimately unleash their power to birth the Nigeria of our dreams.
How do you think this position will make impact on the general development of the party nationwide?
If I am elected, I will work feverishly to rebuild the youth structure, party wide.
I will collaborate with state and ward youth leaders nationwide to create an effective safety net for party members wherever there is an APC office anywhere in the nation. We will escalate issues that affect them to the national leadership of the party and the government in a manner that takes governance to the grassroots and actualizes the people-centric model that the Federal government desires but that has been hampered by weak subnational governmental systems.
If we succeed at this task alone, the positive impact on the party will be immense.
What will be your priority areas if you get elected?
Education, Empowerment, and Entertainment.
Education of our youth in relevant areas of commerce, enterprise and technology that enable them to become personally self-reliant financially and socially. And that prepares them to participate in the actual, technical work of developing and implementing nation-building policies and projects.
Empowerment because we have too many talented youths who are wasting away with their heads full of ideas that they don’t have the funding or other support needed to implement.
Entertainment media, especially music, is a field that we are excelling at almost by chance. Davido, Wizkid and co are global icons and sources of inspiration to millions of our youth. We need systems that enable as many talented youths as possible fulfill their potential in a structured, merit-based way.
Entertainment in this sense also includes sports.
These are the areas I would focus on. I would do this by interfacing effectively with the relevant ministries and agencies that are statutorily empowered to engage with youths to attain the stated goals. I would also seek collaborations with private sector entities to sponsor or otherwise support promising talents in mutually beneficial business arrangements.
Given the precarious security situation in the country, do you really think Nigerians will still want the APC to retain power at the centre come 2023?
No one with a human heart can dismiss the deaths, pain, and suffering that we have endured as a nation over the past decade or so due to insecurity. I am a native to Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states; so naturally, kidnapping, banditry, and terrorism stand roundly condemned by this candidate.
However, we must look at the remote causes and roots of our insecurity issues, many of which reach back to the past government, which ironically was led by the main opposition party, which, also ironically now claims to be able to do a better job than the current administration at tackling insecurity, while simultaneously battling several cases in court that have to do with looting of funds that were meant to equip the military.
We should be careful not to fall into a gutter because we are crying.
We live in an emotional and forgetful age, so it is easy to overlook how residents of Odi and Zakibiam were massacred, or how a serving governor was abducted, or how a serving Attorney General was murdered in his home, or how the National Assembly was teargassed while in session, or how Churches in Abuja needed metal detectors to hold service.
There is a lot to be desired regarding our national security, but the APC has shown the greatest commitment to solve it. We shouldn’t let our grief and anger make us run back into the arms of the people who created most of these problems.
What is your general assessment of the President Buhari administration so far?
The President has been treated extremely unfairly by some of our youths because no administration comes close when it comes to interventions, projects and grants that have been extended, exclusively to them.
NPower, Youth Empowering People (YEP), Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS), TraderMoni, Presidential Youth Entrepreneurship Support (P-YES), Youth Empowerment and Development Initiative (YEDI) to name a few.
On the political, economic, infrastructure and security front, he has done what many of us who are more realistic, expected him to do. Elections have much more credibility now than before, the playing field for enterprise and business has been levelled, infrastructure is being developed at a pace unmatched since the 70s, corruption is no longer a state-sanctioned policy and our military is now the second most powerful in Africa, resulting in the stemming of the unrelenting march of Bokoharam on Nigeria.
On all those fronts, he has succeeded.
President Buhari is a team leader who wants his team to participate while his team wants to rely solely on its leader.
Both sides need to meet in the middle.