By JOSHUA OLOMU

Stakeholders at the 2024 National Leadership Conference (NLC) have urged youths to be resolute and take responsibility as they yearn for a Nigeria of their dreams.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that this year’s NLC with the theme, “Leadership Capital for Wealth Creation”, is holding from Sept 20 to 21 in Abuja.

The annual NLC Is organised by GOTNI Leadership Centre, with participants drawn from different sectors and parts of Africa and beyond.

It brings together leaders, policymakers, business executives, community organisers to discuss the crucial connection between leadership and economic growth.

According to them, Nigeria as a nation is blessed with abundant human and natural resources, but is facing leadership challenges in spite its wealth.

They lamented that successive leadership failure since the country’s independence have brought high level of poverty, unimaginable social vices and high rate of unemployment for youths.

They however urged youths, who are acclaimed to be tomorrow’s leaders, not to wait for government to come to their rescue, but rather take leadership responsibilities in order to secure their future.

Nkechi Ali-Balogun, a Public Relations expert, said it was time for youths to squarely take their future in their hands through handwork, discipline and creativity.

“I look at the youth of this country, we are so talented, we are so many, but I get worried when we are still having old people like us on the stage.

“If I am to give Nigerian youth a word of advice, it will be that there are no free lunch anywhere.

“Every meal you eat has been paid for, and even if I invite you to come and have a free meal with me, I have paid for it, so, nothing is free.

“You don’t deliver what you didn’t design, and so you must intentionally plan your life and tell yourself where you want to go, and how you want to get there,” she said.

Prof. John -Kennedy Opara, Chief Executive of CSS Farms, said the current security challenges facing the country could be checked if youths were properly engaged.

“Insecurity is real, but it can be conquered if every young unemployed youth in a local government or an area can be engaged, either as a vigilante or as also a farmer.

“Why is insecurity a problem? Because of unemployment, and if everyone is fully engaged and employed, there won’t be insecurity.

“So the solution to insecurity is providing jobs, and agriculture gives about 60 or 65 per cent of our job opportunities.

“However, we should not leave it for government alone because been a man comes with something and to be a blessing to your generation,” he said.

Mr Linus Okorie, Leadership expert and CEO of GOTNI Leadership Centre, said leadership was as a crucial catalyst for fostering sustainable development, economic growth, and wealth creation.

He called for an effective leadership capital development initiative for Nigerian youths in order to drive progress and prosperity.

“Every generation has to decide their future and, in my context, it is the responsibility of the young people themselves to decide to prepare themselves beyond their limits and think beyond the normal.

“Young people have to go beyond stomach infrastructure because they have to understand the future, and what is at stake.

“We have played with the future of this country so much, and now I want us to have a rethink, I want us to repackage our values and our thinking process.

“I want us to focus on relearning and build a leadership capital culture that will help us take leadership seriously so that we can make the big difference that we need.

“Then on the part of government, it is the responsibility of government to invest the resources that are needed in helping young people find seven-star skills.

“The marketplace recognises only value and those values can be ideas that can be generated into sustainable services and these  services can yield finances,” he said.

Some participants who spoke with NAN at the conference, expressed hope that the event was a major springboard to national value re-orientation and progress.

Mr Wole Senkoya, Managing Director of Skyewise Global Investment, said that Nigeria can harness the wealth that she had in agriculture, and has no business being broke.

“We have no business being homeless or being jobless or at worst, not having food on our table and that is something anyone should take away from this platform today.” (NAN)