There is no doubt that Nigerian youths are totally dissatisfied with the current turn of events on the political stage. Some of them have found the courage to move against old politicians, at least verbally. They are annoyed that the Old Brigade – elderly retired military officers, referred to as militicians, and old politicians – have kept on recycling themselves in office, rather than quit the stage for the youths to have the chance to decide which direction to take the country.
Under the umbrella name, Rescue Mission Support Group, RMSG, the youths met in Akure, Ondo state capital, at the weekend to devise ways of mobilising their colleagues across the country against the old politicians ahead of the 2019 general elections.
The RMSG accused the old Brigade of ruining the nation’s economy, insisting that none of them should be allowed to return to power through the backdoor. The coordinator of the group, Mr. Michael Omosebi, who addressed hundreds of youths at Itaogbolu in Akure North Local Government Area, listed President Muhammadu Buhari, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Bola Ahmed Tinubu, among others, as the old politicians that must be stopped in 2019.
Mr. Omosebi wondered why Buhari, who has held other prominent positions in government, and who is battling with old age and ill health, is now being put up for re-election in 2019. As for Obasanjo, the youths recalled that he served as Head of State in 1976 and returned to power in 1999 as civilian president with Atiku as his second in command. The RMSG believes that the duo ran an administration that was scored very poorly in terms of performance and should stay out of government.
The RSMG accused Obasanjo of trying to establish a new party comprising the same old and corrupt class of people in a new bid to return them to political power. Mr. Omosebi described the “Third Force” as a strategy to hijack political power again by the same politicians who plundered the nation’s wealth.
The RMSG appealed to other youths who are itching for a better Nigeria in 2019, to ignore Obasanjo’s antics and come out in support of their plan to stop rogues from looting the national treasury again. Some youths who attended the forum said they had thrown their support behind the RMSG but they wonder where the group will find the huge resources required to push the plan across the nation to its logical conclusion.
