The National Economic Council on Thursday received an update on the public engagements and modalities for consultations regarding the fallouts from last year’s ENDSARS protests across the country.
The update was presented by the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo who is also the Chairman of Ad-Hoc Committee constituted by the NEC to find solutions to the demands of the protesters.
In the update, the VP said the NEC engagements would focus mainly on Wealth creation, social safety nets and employment, education, digital economy and sports development, creative industry and hospitality, security and good governance.
VP Osinbajo said the engagement would be targeted at groups and audiences with participants to be drawn from groups for young intellectuals and emerging industry leaders from diverse sectors.
Other groups are students of tertiary and other educational institutions, youths in the Diaspora who are interested in social-political developments, entertainers and social influencers, trained artisans, etc.
Also, youth leaders in civil society organization, political parties, religious organization, traditional institutions, young women and young people with disabilities.
Modalities and stages of the NEC engagements would evolve in three stages.
In Stage One involving the state governments and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) facilitated youth engagements would be guided by a panel of seasoned professionals (for comprehensiveness, practicability and effectiveness).
The VP said this would essentially be a youth-driven engagement organized by each State Government or the FCT Administration.
“As the initial engagement, the engagement will allow for streamlining of the thought processes of the youths’ interaction with State officials and the selection of representatives, who will participate in subsequent engagements at Zonal and National levels,” the VP said.
Stage Two of the engagement would be at the zonal-level engagement where the issues of concern and the consensus reform ideas developed from the State-level engagements would be presented by the individual States’ representatives.
The VP said the engagement at this stage would be a collaboration between the youths and the State Governments in the respective zones.
Stage Three of the engagement would be national, where select representatives from States and the Federal Capital Territory would participate in an interactive session with Federal and other Government officials.
Apart from the youth representatives presenting the consensus issues of concern and reform ideas developed from the first two stages, the VP said the session at the national stage would be people-centric, providing a platform for the government to listen to the youth and focus less on presenting its own achievements or defending its perspectives.
