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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The All Progressives Congress (APC) youths may have foreclosed the chances of any aspirant above 50 years winning the 2023 presidential ticket of the party, urging President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure he hands over to a Nigerian youth within the age range of 40 to 50 years.
APC North Central Zonal Youth Leaders who gave the charge at the press conference held in Abuja on Thursday disclosed their readiness to launch a campaign to ensure that a Nigerian youth replaced Buhari in 2023.
Fielding questions on the sideline at the event, the Convener, Terve Aginde, said: “I am happy that Nigerian youths, about three of them, coming out to contest for positions as high as the national chairmanship of the party. We are making progress with that and we will queue behind them to see if we can achieve the feat.
“We are also calling on the youths to succeed President Buhari. We will even prefer a youth within the age range of between 40 to 50 to succeed Buhari. And one of the reasons I appreciate President Buhari is that he has made politics very unattractive and uninteresting to people like previously because he has ensured that money is not in circulation too much.
“So, with or without money, we can achieve taking over the leadership of this country if we put ourselves together,” the youth leaders said.
In their welcome address at the APC Youth One-Day Sensitisation and Capacity-Building on active and meaningful participation in Leadership, they appealed for a strong united block to participate, contribute taking their destiny into their hands.
Reading a prepared speech, Aginde said “As we are all aware that our great party the APC is again preparing for another national convention to elect new National Executive Committee of our great party, I felt it’s important for all of us to come together and build a stronger united block to participate, contribute and make sure we take our destiny in our hands.
“The main aim of this meeting is for us to come together and build up strategic methods, position ourselves in preparations to take up leadership of this country. There’s no other time than now, fortunately, we have gotten the support of our dear President to participate, contest for leadership positions, both at the party level and as well as contesting for all leadership positions, ranging from Presidency, Governor, Senate, House of Reps and State House Assembly positions.
“To achieve these, we must discuss, strategise and unite to take over our rightful positions in the leadership of our dear country. Our party under the leadership of Mai Mala Buni has recorded a lot of progress but more needed to be done, and what is needed to be done now is rest on the shoulders of the youth and women.
“This party’s success can’t be written completely without acknowledging our contributions right from 2015, 2019 and now. We must, therefore not let this opportunity pass us by at the time we have constitutional powers as a result of the Not-Too-Young-To-Run Act signed by our dear President, which the President as well made reference to recently during the visit of the APC Youth Lobby Committee to him at the Presidential Villa.
“I will therefore urge our great party the APC to, however, prioritise leadership positions for the Youth and Women wings of our party as we move towards the next national convention and the 2023 general elections. I am sure that we the youths and women are prepared, ready and equipped for leadership positions more than ever before,” he said.
