By Daniel Tyokua
The president, 4th Model ECOWAS Summit (MES), Abiodun Essiet has urged government and strategic stakeholders to do more in area of providing platforms for youth to use their innovations to solve problems.
Speaking at a two day ECOWAS Summit organised for youth in Abuja, she said government should see how it can promote the skills of youth in areas of training and empowerment.
She explained that youth take centre stage in every setting and must be given the opportunity to come up innovations that would add value to the development of the country.
The president who said the programme cut across all the ECOWAS countries noted that it will help the youth model to understand what happens in Africa, and understand the vision between ECOWAS and see how they can contribute their own role in developing the region.
Mrs Essiet said youth as future leaders, should always be looking inwards to see how they can collectively solve problems in the society.
According to her, “In the next year 2050, most of the population of Africa will be youth, then we maybe taking some of the leadership positions by that time, but the youth need to be prepared to understand some of the policies and laws that affect us as a region. “Abuja is hosting the summit for the first time, the three other editions were held in Accra, Ghana.The Summit is all about bringing youth across the ECOWAS region together to deliberate on issues that affect the region.
“It’s also to help in bringing member states together to understand the issues and have a common ground, removing every boundaries within, and helping to relate well economic wise, and see how to bring about the development of the region.
“It is the first we are bringing it to Nigeria, because at the last summit, myself as the President of Nigeria delegates, representing the country, won the best delegate that year.
“So, we are looking forward to see how we can also score some of our youth, to have the best delegates from the different youth representing different countries to know where we are taking the next summit.”
