By Muhammad Abubakar Suleiman
The Northern Nigeria is a region in the country that has highest population as well as abundant natural resources but yet people are living in abject poverty, jutting unemployment level and poor infrastructures. Youth in every ramification are the strength upon which developments are gotten, they constituted over 70% who are the force in labour market and brainboxes that could bring positive standardization of lives but sadly they are far forgotten. The Voice of Northern Youth (VONY) is established to champion and forward challenges bedeviling entire geo-political zones of North primarily for lasting solutions to prevail.
Nigerian population as at August 2022 were estimated to be more than 217 million and the youth constituted 70% of the population, the unfortunate part of it was that the youths are getting less in annual budgets and majority of graduates from higher institutions of learning are youths; they keep roaming around without tangible works. Idle mind is said to be devil’s workshop, when people are redundant without any acceptable means of income; they tend to become vulnerable to do anything including vices just to get money and survive. Unemployment and inaccessibility to capitals by youth have pushed most of them to engage in heinous acts such as robbery, thuggery, kidnapping, etc.
Voice of Northern Youth (VONY) as messiah to the obstacles of developments projected to implement its activities in all nineteen (19) States of the Northern Nigeria, currently it is active in Kaduna, Jigawa, Borno, Taraba, Bauchi, Katsina, Sokoto, Plateau, Kano, Nasarawa, Niger and Zamfara. It is true that nothing can be achieve in a rancorous setting, peace therefore is paramount; one of the objectives of VONY is promotion of peace amongst citizens by putting away divergences and work as one for developments to reign. Unity and peace are key points that foreign investors consider before melting their wealth, VONY left no stone untouched in that aspect.
Similarly, children are the future leaders, they could only actualize their ambitions when their education, fundamental rights and welfare are prioritized. Voice of Nothern Youth fights against child molestation, sexual assaults, early marriages and trafficking; successes were recorded in orienting people in those areas and it stood firm to ensure that perpetrators never go unpunished. Some youths were influenced by bad peers into business of hard drugs and majority of the abusers are those in youthful age, VONY has identified several addicts and were taken to rehabilitation homes while campaign on dangers of such on radio, television and social media platforms are active.
Population of widows and orphans is always on the rise which requires urgent intervention, they are mostly abandoned by relatives without care, support and necessities of life; sadly some embraced prostitution while orphans are sent far to live with relatives. Interestingly, Voice of Northern Youths (VONY) in its capacity has trained many widows on skills and they are earning incomes with which they live like others whereas school fees of orphans, educational materials and upkeep were cleared and sponsored. Furthermore, not only the fundamental rights or youths, VONY is aimed at protecting the rights of all northerners that are residing in North or other parts of the country; it serves as voice of the oppressed.
Muhammad Abubakar Suleiman is the National Coordinator and can be reached via;08039522622.
