Youth empowerment greatest antidote to insecurity in Nigeria, says CHRICED

The Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education (CHRICED) has described youth empowerment including their participation in governance processes and given them access to employment and empowerment opportunities as the greatest antidote to both the economic recession and situation of insecurity in Nigeria.

“It is pertinent to further underscore the fact that when young citizens, with their energies and vibrancy, find an effective and well organized framework to help fulfill their potentials, as human beings and as citizens, what follow is usually peace, security and prosperity,” says CHRICED’s Executive Director Ibrahim Zikirullahi.

“Working on this project has been very interesting because we realized the fact that when institutions, within and outside government, make concerted efforts to amplify the voices of young people in the governance process, the result is always very remarkable,” adds Zikirullahi who was speaking during a press briefing to mark the close-out of the nonprofit’s project on promoting youth employment and participation on Wednesday in Kano.

He added that it was this optimistic worldview that propelled CHRICED, with the support of British Council’s Nigeria Stability and Reconciliation Programme (NSRP) to come up with the project on promoting youth employment and participation in three local government areas of the state of Kano: Doguwa, Bichi and Kumbotso.

He said the project was designed on the premise that lack of equity, transparency and fairness in the distribution of employment benefits and opportunities from government run employment and empowerment schemes, tend to fuel violent conflicts.

“As we have posited in other interventions, youth unemployment and the corresponding low participation in governance, fuels violent conflicts like Boko Haram insurgency, the militancy in the Niger Delta, electoral violence, armed robberies, kidnapping, as well as many other dimensions of violent disturbances afflicting our country,” says Zikirullahi