A one-man youth protester and national president of Youth Mountain of Hope Development Center, Chikezie Erege, has explained the reason he is still demonstrating alone around the country in the past months, saying his intention was to attract the government’s attention to the plight of Nigerian youths.
Erege had last month declared a hunger strike to protest against the current unemployment situation ravaging Nigerian youths.
Speaking with journalists in Owerri, Erege explained that he embarked on the one-man non-violent demonstration to demand better condition for the youths of the country and good governance from various state governments.
According to him, the news of 16,400 Nigerians serving in UK prison and more than 1000 languishing in the Chinese prisons as well the about 350 Nigerian roasting in different prisons in Germany drove him to embark on the daily demonstration.
“I have been demonstrating peacefully for 398 days, asking government at all levels to do their best to engage our youths and restore the lost glory of Nigeria. No attention has been given. As a result, I declared a hunger strike”, he said.
The youth activist lamented that most of the Nigerian youths in the various prisons abroad, were mostly picked on the streets and borders while searching for means of livelihood.
This, he said, is because they do not have much better opportunity at home, where he said the youths face more serious hardship.
“In many states today, many of our youths hawk in the traffic while some girls have taken to doing bus conductor and those who couldn’t bear the hardship enter other countries while many others run into different crimes like kidnapping, prostitution etc”.
Erege appealed to President Goodluck Jonathan and the leadership of the country to restore Nigeria’s lost glory by eliminating corruption from the nation’s system, saying “This is the major predicament of Nigeria’s development today. Provide job opportunities to our youth”.
