Rattled by the growing influence of Nigerian youths declaring support for the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has constituted a special national taskforce to mobilise youths and ensure party’s victory at the 2023 presidential poll.
APC National Youth Leader, Dayo Isreal, who inaugurated the committee at the party’s national secretariat on Wednesday, dismissed Obi’s influence posing any threat to the ruling party’s presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
He announced former Kwara State Commissioner for Information and former President of the Pan African Youth Council, Ben Duntoye, and the APC Deputy National Youth Leader as the Taskforce chairman and deputy respectively.
He declared that a lion like Asiwaju Tinubu has no reason to feel “threatened by the noise of rats at his backyard coming from the LP presidential candidate, Obi.
Israel also noted that it is purely a “national taskforce for registration and revalidation of youth-led and youth/student focused support group for 2023 presidential election.
Asked if he is threatened by the large numbers of youths mobilizing to vote Peter Obi, he replied: “First is a Lion is not threatened at the noise of rats in his backyard. So, you must understand that we have continued as a party to play our part and the youth wing of the party as continue to rise to the occasion to mobilise the young people of our generation.
“While we are not threatened, we are not sitting on our hands, we are taking responsibility. And that is why we have this dynamic crop of young people who are passionate about change, because we believe that the future of the party belongs to us.
“That is why we have co-opted all of these dynamic gentlemen to come together. To see that we must also begin to mobilize young people in our own party. And because we have a structure of the youth wing, the party youth wing is not going to do the work alone. We are going to do it with the support of support and campaign groups.
“And so our own response to all of that mobilization is also, as a general, wake up all our own field marshals, and all our battalions and Garrison commanders in our party support group across the nation, and bring them together to ensure that we begin to mobilize Nigerian youth in our various states or zones and our constituency for the party’s victory.
“Yes, we are not threatened, but at the same time, we are not expecting a miracle to happen. We are doing the job and this is part of doing the job. We want to document all our support groups. We will then begin to create programs and activities for them.
“We are going to train them, we are going to give them skills. We are going to work with them to ensure that all the various support groups are delivering in their various zone.
But that is not all by the grace of God we are going to be inaugurating another special committee next week that is going to focus on the introduction of E-membership for the APC Youth wing.”
