The Senator representing Kogi-West senatorial district, Dino Melaye says if youth of the country want to be reckoned with politically, they should stop waiting for power to be given to them.
Melaye says power must be struggled for as “it is never served as a buffet”.
The vocal senator who said this in an interview with The Punch newspaper also queried the approach taken by President Muhammau Buhari in his anti-corruption war.
He said, “Power is never served as a buffet. To attain power, you must struggle for it. The youths of this country will not get power on a platter of gold. So they must come out of their cocoons and begin to make sacrifices in search for power. The youths of this country must be resolute. They should be interested in how they are being governed and they must be interested in policy formulation and implementation. They must be interested in their political and economic environment. That is the only way they can capture power because power is not given; power is taken.
“The youths of this country must show capacity and interest in every facet of our national life and they must also make sure that they react to the environment. Power ultimately belongs to God. But when man wants it, man must labour for it because he that refuses to labour should not eat. The youths of this country are about 65 per cent of our population and have about 70 per cent of the voting rights in this country. The youths have the strength, the energy, the dynamism, the intellectual prowess and more important the population to capture power.”
On Buhari’s anti-corruption war, Melaye said, “The President is sincere about his corruption war. But is the approach right? He cannot say so. I want to say the approach of Mr. President in fighting corruption will yield no dividends because in the ongoing trials, no single Nigerian has been successfully prosecuted and jailed. Because of the magnitude of resources available to the looters of our national treasury, they will have a way of manipulating Nigerian courts.
“Most of the cases are still at the court of first instance and one year after, witnesses have not been examined and cross-examined in the courts. Then you will use two years in the court of instance, you will use another two years in the Court of Appeal and you have the Supreme Court. By that time, the President might have been out of power, money not retrieved from the looters, time and resources wasted because the Federal Government is also engaging lawyers and congesting the courts.”
