Minister of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs, Alhaji Kabiru Tanimu Turaki, has urged Nigerian youths to be united, eschew all forms of violence and support the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan’s development drive in the country.

He was speaking yesterday in Abuja during an advocacy visit to his office by members of the Nigerian Youths Multi-Stakeholders Dialogue Group to seek his endorsement and support to organise Nigerian Youth Multi-Stakeholders Dialogue Summit.

Turaki emphasised the need for the youths as potential leaders to guard against being used by unscrupulous politicians to foment trouble during elections, noting that politicians who make use of the youths for their selfish reasons abandon them after elections whether they win or lose. Either way, the minister said those youths that allowed themselves to be used negatively would be the losers. He further enjoined the group to enlighten the teeming youths in Nigeria not to be used as cannon fodder.

Noting the group’s acknowledgment of the achievements of President Jonathan’s administration, the minister said the youths should not sit on the fence, but should celebrate the good done by the present administration and be part of the change by seeking to be elected, as “change is not possible from without, but from within.”

Speaking earlier, Chairman, Nigerian Youths Multi-Stakeholders Dialogue Group, Comrade Abdullahi Abdulmajeed, described the group as a national, all-inclusive network of Nigerian youth democrats and advocates for sustainable development, united and peaceful co-existence.

Abdulmajeed stressed that their visit was in recognition of the Federal Ministry of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs’ centrality and the imperatives of its activities to the youths’ project.

Comrade Abdullahi re-iterated the group’s readiness to collaborate with government’s efforts to restore Nigeria to its once enviable glory and safe it from the brink of disintegration and anarchy.

However, the Honourable Minister promised his support and that of the Ministry to the yearnings of the youth movement, especially their proposed Multi-stakeholders’ Dialogue Summit.

In her remarks, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, commended the group for the visit and assured them of the management team’s full commitments to seeing that the vision of the youth movement was actualised.

•Photo shows the visiting delegation of the Nigerian Youths Multi-Stakeholders Dialogue Group in a group photograph with Minister Turaki, Perm Sec. Oyo-Ita, and Management Staff of the Ministry . . . yesterday in Abuja.

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