Sen. Ede Dafinone has advised parents to be more involved in reorientating the youths on the need to shun social vices and imbibe good habits.
Dafinone, representing Delta Central Senatorial District, gave the advice in Ughelli on Wednesday at a public lecture organised to mark the 10th anniversary of Advocate Newspaper.
The lecture is entitled “Youth Empowerment and Leadership Evolution: Rethinking Nigeria’s Leadership Recruitment Process”.
The senator, represented by Adelabu Bodjor, his Chief of Staff and Director-General of his campaign group, blamed parents for the poor development of their wards.
Dafinone, who said he was given to ensure sustainable youth empowerment in his constituency, urged parents to always involve their wards in whatever they do.
According to him, leadership training in a sustainable manner begins from the home.
“We need to reorientate our youths that education is not a scam. Parents should, therefore, get their wards involved in whatsoever they are doing,
“For every bad child, the parents should be held accountable,” he said.
Earlier, the Publisher of Advocate Newspaper, Shedrack Onitsha, said his dedication to journalistic excellence in the past 10 years had contributed to shaping the media landscape in the Niger Delta.
He said the lecture was carefully selected to ignite a dialogue that would challenge the status quo and advocate for a competent, reflective and inclusive leadership recruitment process.
The Keynote Speaker, Prof. Enajite Ojaruega, said Nigeria has the highest number of youths globally, but without the nation taking full advantage of it.
She said Nigerian youths were endowed with innovations and creativities, amounting to the greatest export the nation could boast of.
The professor of African Literature in the Department of English and Literary Studies, Delta University (DELSU), described the youths as the bedrock driving the nation’s advancement.
The don decried the low level of youths in leadership recruitment despite their role in promoting the image of the country positively abroad.
Ojaruega noted that leadership would, however, not come on a platter of gold and therefore urged the youths to earn it by working their way to relevance.
She identified some of the forces working against the youths as the political landscape, economic landscape, and the social fabric.
“Nigerian youths have been marginalised and disenfranchised. We need to get our values right and our mindset for a get-rich syndrome must change.
“We are in a serious leadership crisis. The late Chinua Achebe once said that the problem of Nigeria is bad leadership but today, it is also a problem of followership,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Special Guest of Honour, Mr Fed Majemite, emphasised the need to entrench vocational studies in the nation’s educational curriculum to equip the youths with skills.