• Calls for social moral rebirth

From Geoffrey Anyanwu, Awka

Former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu has blamed vices associated with Nigerian youths on successive governments who underestimated their potentials.
Kalu said this in a speech, “The place of the youth in advancing the desired change,” at the Holy Family Youth Village, Amansea, near Awka where youths, largely students of tertiary institutions, reside.
The former governor said though evils in the society are seen as the handiwork of youths, people tend to forget that they are victims of a depraved and uncaring society.  Kalu, who received a warm welcome from the youths of the village described the moral and value system of the country as decayed and bankrupt. He noted, with regret, that the Nigerian youth has almost lost faith in the country and made wrong choices of criminality and thuggery.
“Social misdemeanors associated with our youths are a problem of misplaced priorities embedded in psychophancy, greed and corruption.
“Why are our schools not properly equipped to provide the right atmosphere for learning? Right from the day a child is born, in present Nigerian state, he starts facing the huge challenges to survive.
“…We daily pontificate about the need to develop the Nigerian youth to become more productive and useful to the nation and their families. All that is good, but how much time and resources do we devote genuinely to their development?
“We lack the moral right to chastise the youth for some of their excesses when we have not given them the right upbringing, affection and leadership. Do not forget that it is what we sow that we reap. Life has a way of throwing back at us some of the evils we commit against it.”
He urged government at all levels to reclaim and protect the future of the country by educating the youth to make them contribute positively to nation building, noting that the growth and development of any nation depended largely on the calibre of its youths.
Kalu commended President Muhammadu Buhari for launching the “Change begins with me” campaign, which describes as a moral and renewal campaign meant to redirect the consciousness of the people to genuine enterprise, hard work and honest living, patriotism and development.
“In all of these, the need to fight poverty and hunger, corruption and baseness in public life has become increasingly inevitable.
“There is no way there can be adequate citizenship participation in nation-building without government meeting its obligation to the people. It is the right of every citizen of this country to life and security.”
Kalu said his heart bleeds when he sees able-bodied youths roam the streets or engage in acts capable of destroying them and questioned why their energies and talents could not be harnessed and committed into meaningful ventures, stressing that for the country to have sustainable peace she must develop the Nigerian youth.
He, however, challenged the youths to take their destiny in their own hands by taking the right decisions noting that his success today was because he was able to take the right decision.
The former governor frowned at youths offering themselves as political thugs and engaging negative things that put them in bad light.
Insisting that all would not be graduates with white collar jobs, he urged the youths to see the opportunities in being educated in crafts, agriculture and some other ventures that could make them responsible in the society.
In his remarks, the chairman of the occasion and former National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Victor Umeh commended Kalu for his steadfastness in fighting the cause of the Igbo nation.
He recalled how both of them are suffering in the hands of election riggers when actually they were the people who the people knew that could stand and speak for the Igbos at the Senate, just as he noted that Kalu was the only Igboman that could challenge the former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Also speaking the Auxillary Bishop of Onitsha Archidiocese, Most Rev. Denis Isizoh commended Kalu for his outstanding achievement and described him as a great Anambra State  in-law.
He said, “Orji Kalu you are a very good in-law. The first tarred road in Umunya was done by you, from Abia state you came and did that road in Anambra and that road served so much as we used it to divert from the bad expressway.”