Pulse.ng : COYAT advises minister of youths against town hall meeting amidst youths’ restiveness

By Philip Yatai

A youth group under the aegis of Concerned Youth Alliance for Tinubu (COYAT), has cautioned the Minister of Youth Development, Dr Jamila Bio Ibrahim, against holding a town hall meeting amidst youths’ restiveness.

The leader of the group, comrade Jameel Mohammed Mashi, who gave the advice in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday, described the planned meeting as a poor human relations.

Mashi said that organizing a town hall meeting amidst ongoing nationwide protests by the minister was ill-timed, considering that the youths were angry and already communicating their grievances to the government through protests.

“Perhaps, townhall as a medium of youth engagement could have worked four to three months ago when there was no restiveness of any kind.

“Even though it would also have achieved the objective of packing agreeable people in a hall and speaking to the converted, it would have at least indicated the readiness of the minister to engage the youths.

“However, this weird approach of convening a town hall meeting at this time when protests are springing up across the country reveals Bio-Ibrahim fixation on using the same approach that would probably work for other ministers with different portfolios, but definitely not a youth minister,” he said.

He advised the minister to engage directly with the youth, both online and offline.

He also urged the minister to open her X account so that she can be engaged by the youth who dominate the social media.

“She also needs to be out there speaking to the youth, explaining what is being done, pleading for calm, and reemphasising the promise of President Bola Tinubu to make life better,” he added.

Mashi expressed concern that the non-engagement of the youth who approached her in office or at public for a was very discouraging.

According to him, if she hadn’t been talking to the youth before now, then there is no justification to seek to engage the youth now.

He described the planned town hall meeting as a controlled event where she would select the faces she wants to see.

He advised that instead of a town hall meeting, the minister should engage the youths directly on the streets, just like how the Minister of State, Ayodele Olawande engaged a group of protesters somewhere in Abuja.

“If the minister cannot do that, she should, at least, visit locations with a large concentration of youth to engage and talk to them directly.

“While we understand that the planned town hall meeting is scheduled to be held in the South West Zone, we would like to use this medium to warn Dr Jemila to not bring her town meeting to anywhere in the North.

“If she cannot engage with us in places where the majority of us can have the opportunity to speak to her, she should not insult us with the selection of her preferred faces to attend any town hall meeting on our behalf,” Mashi insisted.

The group leader also distanced the group from the N5,000 and N10,000 she allegedly shared to some unidentified youths, out of the N2 billion she allegedly received to engage Nigerian youths with a view to stop the protest.

He stressed that COYAT was open to open and free engagement with the minister as against a selected few in the guise of town hall meeting.

“We want her to speak to us on the streets and other places we converge as youth.

“She should meet us where we congregate to get diverse and frank opinions. We do not want an ‘arrangee gathering’ tagged as town hall.

“Any attempt to ignore this warning and hold any town hall meeting anywhere in the North would be met with stiff resistance,” he warned.