How To Vote Abidemi Oderinlo into The WYMD Leadership Board

 Voting as started now please vote Abidemi Oderinlo for the Africa Region (World Youth Movement for Democracy):

1) Go to this link: 
www.wymdonline.org  or  http://democratic-youth.net/world-youth-movement-for-democracy/voting-2014/

2) Register to be a member using Your Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo or Wordpress by clicking on the icon and sign in or Register directly on the page by clicking the blue Register beside the login button.

3) Click on the REGIONS map to go to the voting page

Once you click on the map, it will redirect you to STEP-1 which is Europe, start by selecting the name of the candidate or select "none of the above", scroll down and click “VOTE AND MOVE TO THE NEXT AREA”. This will automatically redirect you to the next continent.

 4) Select the name of the contestant for each region of or “None the above” if you don’t know them or don’t want to vote in the region and click on “VOTE AND MOVE TO THE NEXT AREA”

When you get to STEP 3, the Africa region, select name ABIDEMI ODERINLO

5) Finish by clicking SUBMIT VOTES

6) A thank you page confirms the completion of the voting process

                                               

QED!!!!

Now that we know how to get it done, let's go for it. Go to this link:  www.wymdonline.org  or  http://democratic-youth.net/world-youth-movement-for-democracy/voting-2014/

Thank You!

ABIDEMI ODERINLO for WYMD Leadership Board.. Vote! Vote!! Vote!!!

The World Youth Movement for Democracy (WYMD) is a network that aims to support the development of sustainable democracy movements by empowering the next generation of democracy activists. The movement provides a space for young activists to build relationships with each other, to collaborate across borders, to deepen their knowledge on key issues, and to develop practical skills. It promotes democratic values and provides for sharing of information and ideas and it is guided by a Leadership Board with representation from Africa, Asia, Europe/Eurasia, the Americas, and the Middle East and North Africa regions under a supervising Advisory Council.

The election that will place new young leaders on the Leadership Board of WYMD begins today 07/02/2014 12:00noon EST and ends on 11/02/2014 by 12:00noon EST on www.wymdonline.org. Seven young Africans, Four Asians, One Latin American, One European and One Middle Easterner that are interested in taking Democracy in the world to a new horizon will be contesting for positions on the board and the power to decide is in your hands. Who will you be voting for? Click here to find out how.

I am Abidemi Oderinlo a young Nigerian, contesting to represent Africa on the Leadership Board of WYMD. 

Youths in Africa have been yearning for an opportunity, a platform, a medium through which they can express their views, air their voices, become a part of the process and bodies that creates the policies and make decision that affects their lives, they want to be involved in building the world they live in, be heard and respected, be saddled with more responsibilities and not sidelined by the system on the grounds of being inexperience, incompetent or too young to be responsible for a lot. This is what WYMD is offering, and this is why I am standing to represent Africa on the board, with the prospect of opening young Africans to youth empowerment opportunities and the best practices of democracy that are applicable and practicable on the African continent, through my direct interaction with young democracy activist and leaders represented on the board.

The challenges facing democracy in African countries are similar, therefore it is important for young African to come together find a common ground to analyze, define, and strategize on how to tackle these challenges, towards a more democratic Africa. Given the opportunity to serve on the WYMD Leadership Board, I intend to use the platform to broker relationship that will strengthen and unify our voices, opening more young Africans to opportunities that will increase exchange of ideas, and proven youth driven democratic practices within and from other countries of the world, that will improve our polity as a continent and build for all a more vibrant and productive society.

The Arrowhead of Change, Growth and Development.

The Young Change Makers

All over the world, the youths have always been the strength of every nation both in times of peace or war, they define the fate of nations, directly or indirectly, for good or bad either by their actions or inaction.

History, across all classifications clearly shows that the strength or weakness of the young and energetic population of every nation and people defines her success or failure. Africans as a people have experienced tremendous change through the strength of her youths, and her freedom from colonization was largely engineered by her young population.

Kwame Nkrumah started the movement to liberate Ghana before his 30th birthday, Thomas Sankara liberated the Upper Volta from the French colonial, renamed her Burkina Faso ("Land of Upright Men") and launched one of the most ambitious programmes for social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent at the age of 33. Mandella's long walk to freedom started in his youth at the age of 19 in 1937, while Martin Luther King, Jr. started leading the Civil Right Movement at the age of 25.

In business, John D. Rockefeller started at the age of 20 and rose to become the first billionaire in the history of America, and at the age of 21, J.P. Morgan introduced a process of taking over troubled businesses to reorganize them, and the process was renowned and dubbed "Morganization". Bill Gate started Microsoft at the age of 20, Steve Jobs started Apple at 21 and Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook at 20. Throughout history, the greatest achievements of man that has changed the way we live were initiated by young people who reached beyond the limits of the norms.

To be young is to be without limits in thoughts and in action, to innovate and to create, to build and sustain and not otherwise in all things and at all times. It is a wrong ideology to see the strength in youthfulness as a ready catalyst for  political violence and siege, and if the vitality of the youth were to be used in a siege, it must be a siege for positive change and not selfish political conquest as it is currently experience in some parts of Africa and other developing countries. This destructive design, craftily masterminded by the unthinking political elites, most of whom started their political careers in their youth, in their bid to hold onto power instead paving the way for the creative energy of the youths to come to bare and rule. As youths, we must eschew this vices, become conscious of our strength and realise our potentials. We must synergize our essence which is of good and growth, and use it to neutralize the hold of the old, feeble, frail few who are working to change the purpose of youthfulness from good to evil.

To be young is to be a tool for positive change, a problem solver, an elixir of hope and a catalyst for a better today and tomorrow.

NB: I am joining Leadership Board of World Youth Movement for Democracy and I need your support to make it a reality. visit www.wymdonline.org to register and be eligible to vote. 

Voting starts from 7th, Feb. 2014 -- 11th, Feb. 2014. Winners will be announced 12th, Feb. 2014.

For more information, click here! >>> Read More

When Will Tomorrow Come? (The So-Called Leaders of Tomorrow, The Youths)

I have asked myself this question over a million times and today, I choose to ask again. When will tomorrow come in Nigeria? I am sure this is a question on the lips of millions of young Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora. It has been a dream, always a dream to see young Nigerians grow into position of leadership, strength and power, into positions that will justify the world famous line from the rhyme that we sang as kids. "…Parents listen to your children, we are the leaders of tomorrow…".

A good percentage of the children that were born in the year Gen. Muhammad Buhari was usurped from power are no longer in the rank of children today, they are daddies and mummies, either by choice or force, in subjection and response to their natural hormonal growth and bodily development that has committed them to going familiar. Even for those that are still in charge, they are Godfathers to so many children that they can hardly go in any direction without being called daddy. I am a good example. The eldest of my Godchildren will be ten in November 2014, I am still single but it's almost unbelievable because if I was a girl turned woman, I would be regarded way beyond my prime, and would be in the class of the so many praying by fire in the various camps of Pentecostal churches adorning the Lagos-Ibadan express way.

I remember writing in my essay that won Africa Regional prize at the World Youth Movement for Democracy contest in 2010.

"The youths have been a major part of the problem for too long, now is the time for us to become an integral part of the solution."

I was also forced to site an expression that was more of a truth than joke that I found on a friend's Facebook page during the build up to the 2011 election that same year when Buhari rolled out his campaign under the banner of CPC in the essay.

 “In 1984, my teacher told me that Gen. Buhari was a past leader, Gen. IBB the president, and that we are the leaders of tomorrow. Now it is 2010 and they are still leading. It is either my teacher is a liar or tomorrow is yet to come.”

That got me thinking in 2011 because the two men he mentioned were planning to contest again for presidency in the  general election that year.  I found a chronicle of  the rulership/leadership history of the unrelenting, fruitless reign of Bamanga Tukur spanning over forty years of Nigerian history on Rise Network Facebook page and it bore a hole in my heart. I began to wonder, what else has this old cargo got to offer that our forever clueless GEJ named him the chairman of Nigerian Railway Corporation NRC, after he was ousted as the PDP BOT chairman. He once held a similar position forty years ago, became the governor of old Gongola State for three months before the coup and dilly-dallied through politics for over forty years, causing numerous destruction and decay along the way, and he's still being fixed to continue his stealing streak. I'm bleeding!

This is 2014 and Buhari is still in the picture, a Bamanga Tukur is holding on with his teeth, Atiku is playing the gentleman in the background, OBJ wants to be relevant for ever as the Godfather and king maker, Yerima is shuttling between governorship and the senate like his cohorts, while a retard by design "Suntai" is still being put up as a puppet in Taraba, all of this men, not younger than 60, but they are still struggling and grubbing for political offices after 30 to 40 years of political careers that has seen them bring Nigeria to her lowest ebb, fruitless and devalued, even in the oculi of the nations she once fed, clothed and secured.  I kept pondering on the situation and concluded that truly, recycling must stop, but how do we stop it? 

We have numbers and strength but yet we put it to the wrong use, the big excuse is the lack  of the most basic of the needs of an average human been. Poverty as ridden the system off its hoof and the value of the life of an average youth is N5000 for his life, and N500 for her vote at the polls. The young, strong and agile force of this nation Nigeria has been the power grabbing and maintenance tools in the hand of the old, unworthy, never-retiring politicians of Nigeria. Our wrong participation in the polity of our dear nation as youth has remained the bane of our society and there must be an end to it. It is this shared force that we generate to do evil that we must synergized to win back Nigeria, BUT the question still remains "when will the proverbial tomorrow prophesied for the youths of this nation arrive?" When are we waking up from our dark nights to see that we are indeed the sunrise, the power and the rule of law, and not the fattened, frail and weak politicians that comes with a purse to dangle before us like a carrot, in an attempt to sit on the whole bank of treasure and resources that belongs to the nation as a whole alone?

I found this detailed analysis of our strength in numbers  by Tolu Ogunlesi , on the 20th of Jan. 2014, on the pages of Punch newspaper and here are some excerpts:

"If you think about it, there are millions of Nigerian teenagers who have come of voting age in the last three years, since the April 2011 elections. Let’s break it down. The voting age in Nigeria is 18. This means that anyone born after January 1993 would have been ineligible to vote in the 2011 elections (considering that voters’ registration was last done in January 2011). In 2015, those born in 1997 will finally be eligible to vote. What this means is that there’s a mass of Nigerians born between 1993 and 1997, who could not vote in 2011 but will now be able to vote in 2015.

In the mid-nineties, an estimated four million children were born annually in Nigeria. Even accounting for child mortality figures, the size of that 1993 – 1996/7 demographic should still be in excess of 10 million. That’s a sizable number, for any political party seeking to target new demographics. (This is where we have to give a nod to the Nigeria Tragedy: The fact that, going by our school enrolment rates, a sizable number of those young people will have never stepped inside a classroom; that they will be illiterate, destitute, frustrated, and completely uninterested in partisan politics outside of the context of thuggery and banditry). "

This statistics shows that we've increased by over 10million between 2011 as youths but it has been the same number of Babangida, Tinubu, Buhari and Obasanjo that are still running Naija dry. The numbers hasn't changed for them, in fact it has reduced because quite a number of this menace in our society already died during the course of this years that we've increased greatly, putting us at an advantage if we act right. Do we then sit down again and wait to be used as thugs or do we decided to participate at every level by all means necessary? Even if we have to fight and bite, let's be caught fighting for us and not for this over blotted thieves who are hell bent on draining Nigeria to the bone as they amass wealth at the peril of every average Nigerian, on their way to hell.

We can redefine tomorrow, we can make it NOW, we can stop singing the songs as we did in primary school, and secondary school. We can change rhymes and sing a new song as we move towards a new Nigeria. We've failed to see with our eyes open, the facts steers at us directly but we are too frail to focus even though we are the strongest and most advantaged in this equation. This men and women  we now worship got the first taste of power in their youths, but they preach the gospel of 50something to us and we smile. Gowon, Obasanjo, Buhari, Babangida, Murtala and others became presidents and Generals when they were barely thirty years of age so what are we waiting for, it is time to snatch it out of their old, feeble hands by contesting, participating and voting for ourselves instead of dying and waiting to be fed from the money they steal from us on a daily basis. Force is not required, tactics is all we need. I know it might be a challenge to find a credible youth in this time and age, but I believe that there is still more value left in us than them so I choose to be the change I want in 2014 to 2015,  from Ekiti to Osun and to other parts of the federated Nigeria. I will rather vote for an inexperience Tolu Ogunlesi, a fragile Japeth J. Omojuwa,  or contest as the undisputed Abidemi Babaolowo Oderinlo. Will you?

While we stand in joyful hope as we await tomorrow, let us lift up our holy hands in preparation for the coming elections. It is never too early, it is never too late to be the change we want to see. It is time to become the leaders of today instead of waiting for tomorrow that will never come, let us dare to be the change and become the tomorrow today.