Dr. Tahir Umar Tahir is the National Coordinator, Community Youth Development popularly known as CYD; a Non-Governmental group (NGO) with strong national network with headquarters in Kaduna. The organisation has structure in all the parts of the country supported by coordinators at States and in the 774 local government of the Federation. In this interview With Ibeneme Ebelechukwu, he spoke on the group mission and vision as well as roles of Nigerians citizens in curbing insecurity.When was your organisation established and for what need?
The NGO was formed in the year 1999 and the establishment stemmed from the 1999/2000 Kaduna crises that engulfed the lives and properties of many youths and making many women to become widows and consequently arousing many difficulties and challenges for the people. So that problem informed the concerns of the founders of this organization. We sat down and decided to form this group to work towards alleviating the problems of youth, empowering them and emancipating women. The NGO has been engaging in community based activities such as advocacy on good governance which mainly bother on unity issues, including the empowerment of women and youth as well as engaging in meaningful developments. And frankly, through our programmes and policies we are determined as
What have been your achievements so far?
As an NGO, I am very proud to say that we have done a lot in the areas of sensitization. We have been able to over the years sensitize Nigerian youth both the Christians and Muslims across the country on the need to live in peace with one another. We have held so many national and international conferences in 2010 in Kaduna, which helped us to bring so many youth both the Christian and Muslims from different part of the country. In that conference we were able to set an agenda and at the same time, we were able to opened and commissioned an empowerment centre at the Ramat road Unguwar Rimi, where our youths were trained on skill acquisition programmes and computer among others. Three years ago we also have been able to launched a free scholarship scheme mainly for children of the orphan, those who were affected by the crises especially in Kaduna axis, we have about 250 of them in that scholarship scheme and by the grace of God we have a lot to do.
A lot of Nigerian are worried that several peace and reconciliation conferences have been held without making any impact as series of bombing still happens, do you think CYD can make any impact?
So many speakers at our just concluded 3rd annual unity conference actually pointed out these things but at the same time there are equally a lot of problems that we must not allow to get to the point where we cannot solve them therefore, it requires a new dimension and approach to tackle them. Like what is actually happening in the case of Boko Haram. Secondly, I believe that there are no limits to the level of efforts we can actually put in to ensure that we have sustainable peace in this country and I believe that each and every one of us has a vital role to play. The government has its own role, the religious leaders has theirs, even the parents too, have their roles to play and so we will all continue to draw this to the attention of everyone one in case they have forgotten; and I tell you if all this group of people agrees to play their role, then we can actually move forward but not to say that we have held enough conference and so we should stop. No, that won’t solve it, remember we are from different background, different culture and we must continue to work together to understand and appreciate each other. We thank God that that at the conference, we have been able to show where we are and the fact that our leaders are beginning to show keen interest in solving this problem. For example, both the Vice President and Hon speaker have actually asked us to submit the resolutions taken from the conference with the aim of implementing them. So I think we are on the right cause. As youths, we believe that there is no going back in giving peace a chance in our country. Today, we have been able to demonstrate that as a people we can actually sit down to discuss and understand ourselves with intention of making a better Nigeria tomorrow.
Do you believe in many assertions made that President GoodLuck shouldn’t have contested the last election and such, should he be blamed for all the violence’s in the country?
No, I don’t believe so because at the last concluded election in Nigeria, it was adjudged to be almost the best of all the elections and I think I believe so and I can say he was voted for, by almost 70% of Nigerians from all parts of the country and I know that a greater percentage of Nigerians not only believed but supported this assertion. So I believe he was voted by so many Nigerians. Though my NGO remains non-partisan group but I think anybody that has that view may be from his political colleagues or class but for me as a person, he was voted in and I believe in that election.
In 2015 we will be witnessing another round of election, what is your group doing to ensure that youth are off violence?
In fact we are doing a lot and that is one of the things we hope to be tackling using our medium and short term goals; We want to make sure that the youths who are the future of this country do not engage in violence activities and are no longer used as political thugs and I say that by the grace, we will be seeing results that in area, I mean we cannot fold our arms and watch the youth of this nations being used to achieve or settle certain political cause and so many plans are on the way to address that. We intends to use dialogue and seminar activities in achieving that as well put up empowerment programmes that will help to engaged then in meaningful activities to stop such evil. Also we have our political/education unit in our both national and local areas that has been created to handle it. This department will be engaging in lots of sensitizations and educational programmes that are geared at tackling such problems as well educate our youths on what they should and what they should not do, including not allowing themselves to be used as thugs and even cast their vote based on competence rather than selling their conscience by collecting money.
What level of partnership do you enjoy from government/private organization towards achieving your mandate?
By the grace of God we have strong network and have been partnering with so many organizations that have made it possible for us to achieve our aims and objectives particularly in our empowerment projects but we plead for such alliance to continue particularly from government and other parastatals because it will help us to do more. For example, where any job vacancies/advertisement is made open we take upon ourselves to reach out to these organization by providing them with the directory of some youths who we know are in dire need of it. Aside that too, we have our partnership which has actually helped us in providing some level of vocation training for those who might not be able to work because we believe that government cannot do it alone, that is why for those who are qualified for job we help them and those who cannot work, we provide them with vocational skills to help them become self-employed and reliance. We also mobilize and go as far as purchasing scratch cards for youths to enable them fill vacancies especially when such job opportunities are from military and Para-military organization, we are working tirelessly though we still have a lot of challenges because there are organization we reach out to partner but we were turn down, some keep promising till you get tired and some at first, will express desire but before you know, the desire disappears but despite all these, we are determined to succeed
0 comments: