BY DAYO ADESULU
Baywood Foundation, an education driven organization, in collaboration with the African Union and ECOWAS are set to empower over 10,000 youths with leadership skills.
Their focus is to run an internship empowerment programme for Nigerian youths and extend it to other African countries with the aim of jobs creation..
Speaking to the media in Lagos, Baywood founder, Emperor Chris Baywood Ibe explained that the programme which is slated for 2020 would be driven by the trio African Union, ECOWAS and Baywood Foundation to train youths to participation in governance with a view of taking leadership roles in the continent.
Internship for 10,000 youths from diverse socio-economic backgrounds
He said: “Beginning from next year, 10,000 youths from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, gender and academic disciplines under the auspices of the Baywood Foundation will participate in a special internship programme for a period of 12 months.
‘’During this period, the selected candidates who will undergo a strict vetting process, would be placed in an internship role in a relevant institution, such as a political party, legislative body, government agency, among others.’’
AU, ECOWAS, Baywood Objective is to position candidates for networks opportunities
According to Ibe, “The focused objective is to position the candidate within an environment which provides opportunities to establish networks, upgrade knowledge levels and chart a career path in Government.
”With young people making up over 60 per cent of the population in Africa, Ibe said the system must provide an enabling environment and affirmative action for them to participate in leadership. To this end, he said road blocks in their paths should be removed.
While lauding President Muhammadu Buhari for signing the not-too-young-to-run bill, he decried that part of the challenges identified by Baywood Foundation, were the abandonment of youths, lack of engagement and collaboration with youths.
African youths lack opportunity to participate in governance
His words: “All these have culminated in the lack of opportunities for youths to actively participate in governance. These problems are lamentable, anti-democratic, including the exclusionist disposition of African leaders who capitalise on ethnic, religious as well as socio-economic divisions in their countries to perpetuate themselves in office.
“The African continent is riddled with Presidents who have spent over 35 years in office and are aiming for 40 years or more. The statistics in this regard make for very sober reflection indeed; hence, the clarion call for affirmative action. “The consequences of this characteristic of African leaders have led to the gross socio-economic under-development of the continent, corruption, genocides and the exclusion of many generations of youths from governance.’’
