THE FUTURE OF OUR YOUTH A KEYNOTE ADDRESS PRESENTED BY Onofiok Akpan Luke, THE MEMBER REPRESENTING ETINAN/NSIT IBOM/NSIT UBIUM FEDERAL CONSTITUENCY IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF NIGERIA, AT THE 32ND ANNUAL CONVENTION OF AKWA IBOM STATE ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, USA INC. (AKISAN) HOUSTON, TEXAS THE FUTURE OF OUR YOUTH Distinguished participants INTRODUCTION I consider it a rare honour and privilege to deliver this keynote address at this very important forum. It is both an exciting experience and one that humbles me greatly. Let me first congratulate AKISAN for sustaining this commendable yearly tradition of flying the Akwa Ibom flag and identity even in a foreign land. Worthy of note also is the great effort put together by the present leadership of this prestigious association which has culminated in our gathering today. Let me use this medium to specifically express our appreciation to AKISAN for the support given to us during the last election. We pledge to use the mandate to serve Akwa Ibom State, our heritage, diligently. The theme of this year’s convention "The Role of Healthcare, Education & Technology in Building a Better Community" is apt given that our families are daily threatened in Nigeria due to limited access to quality healthcare and basic necessities of life. It is equally very profound for a time where the social media has brought about unhealthy competitions, promoting a new dimension of bullying behaviours, which has led to the recent surge in cases of depression and suicide in an environment that such subjects do not occupy the front-burner of daily conversations. In a time we are faced with educational challenges, it is indeed impressive that we are holding this conversation at this convention. When we shall have critically considered all these areas of concern, it will then behove on us to make collaborative effort towards tackling these issues in order to bring about a positive change. Having given a preview of some of the challenges facing us, I will speak specifically as requested by the organizers on the topic “THE FUTURE OF OUR YOUTH.” This topic is indeed very dear to me because the youth is my primary constituency; the one I call “GENERATION NEXT.” The importance of our youth being the future is starkly captured by Eric Shikobela, a South African preacher, thus “A nation that fails to invest in the future of its youth is a doomed nation. The youth is a significant symbol of strength and persistence." Let me state from the onset that the topic of discourse is an inexhaustible subject. Ordinarily, it spans from parenting, education, career, leadership, technology and beyond. However, for the sake of this discourse, we shall attempt to discuss this topic from four perspectives, to wit, agriculture, technology, entertainment, and leadership. By way of giving a progress report, let me inform you that the youth of our dear state had come together to sponsor a Bill for the establishment of the Akwa Ibom Youth Development Fund. It is a Bill for a law to implement a sustainable youth policy framework. The bill crafts a legally established, independent and recognized institution saddled solely with the important responsibility of administering the programs of the fund. The youth program framework will empower youths who will stimulate economic growth, create more job opportunities, employ others and pay taxes to government thereby making significant contributions to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the state. It will drastically reduce youth restiveness and anti-social activities like armed robbery, kidnapping, and other vices. Under my watch as the Speaker of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly, the 6th Assembly saw the value and importance of the Bill to the Akwa Ibom youth and passed it into law. It is my belief that the future of our youth will be better positioned with the implementation of the programmes as envisioned by the Bill. AGRICULTURE Ladies and gentlemen, today, the global demand for chocolate is reportedly overwhelming the production rate of cocoa (as raw material for chocolate). The government of Akwa Ibom State has facilitated the cultivation of about 30,000 hectares of improved cocoa across the state. And at the last count, about 8,375 farmers across 24 local government areas are cultivating cocoa in the state. Available statistics have shown that the consumption of rice has outweighed that of every other common food in any locality. Hence, rice has become a global product with its demand increasing by the day. Through a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement, Akwa Ibom State is leveraging on the swampy terrain of Ekoi/Mbat in Ini Local Government Area to cultivate 10, 000 hectares of rice plantation. With the above effort and more, the youth have not found agriculture really appealing due to some reasons as I would love to think. One of such reasons would be the fact that farming is still done the manual way with no access to modern equipment available or maybe the craze for suit-wearing jobs. Godspower Tom a 30 year old farmer, feels that with access to modern farming equipment, fertilizer, hybrid species and land, he can boost his crop production, employ others and increase sales. Tractors are not even easily accessible. Fertilizers and other farm supplements are at an all-time high cost. In a hyper-connected world, our food also brings us together more than it used to. Food production has morphed over time from a local agrarian system to a global corporate, one replete with imports, exports, and shipments big enough to cross oceans and continents every day. Daniel Stone, a writer on environmental science, agriculture and botany is of the opinion that about 16% of the world’s population depends on food produced elsewhere. By 2050, that number will jump to 50%. With the exhaustion of farmland and the ways that climate will impact arable land half of the world’s population could rely on food imports. This is sobering. But it does not account for a few variables that could make the situation easier. By innovating growing techniques, either with better seeds, more effective pesticides, or more efficient ways to irrigate without losing as much water, farmers can increase their yields. They can even grow in places that have traditionally been environmentally off limits to agriculture. The farmer-herders crisis may impose a permanent shortage in animal production such as beef supply from the North. There will be need for innovative measures in establishing ranches and other facilities to cater for livestock business opportunities in Akwa Ibom State. The Akwa Ibom State Government is building the future for our youth in agriculture. Given its drive to diversify the economy, the state government led by Mr. Udom Emmanuel has taken a step to secure the future of the state through agriculture revolution. The government is working on creating food security. The government provides to farmers fertilizers and improved planting seedlings like corn, cassava stems, etc. About 600, 000 bags of fertilizers have been procured for farmers and 1, 000 bags of special cocoa fertilizers were imported from Ghana for optimal yield. The government has created 11, 000 hectares of coconut plantation with about two million stands of coconut already planted. It is believed that the plantation will feed raw materials to the coconut refinery, and at a full capacity, the refinery would process 300, 000 coconuts per day. This investment will provide huge foreign exchange to the state as coconut oil is a highly priced product in the international market. The state has also achieved 2,100 hectares of cassava plantation in 15 Local Government Areas under the FADAMA programme, and also constructed 33 cassava micro processing mills. Furthermore, 48, 000 rice farmers have so far been registered under the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Anchor Borrowers scheme. The state government is also into production of cocoa. 500, 000 improved cocoa seedlings were raised for distribution to farmers at highly subsidised rates across the 28 cocoa producing Local Government Areas in the state. The state has established Special Cocoa Maintenance Scheme (SCMS) for training of farmers and youths on pruning/shade management, under brushing, and tree care by fumigation. In poultry business, the Akwa Prime Hatchery located at Mbiaya, Uruan, has produced and distributed about 160, 000 birds to contract farmers across the state. The Hatchery has a capacity of producing 10, 000 day-old-chicks per week. To boost mechanised farming, the government has established a Tractor Hiring Enterprise Centre with the aim of making such farm equipment available and affordable to farmers. Agriculture is our area of comparative advantage so we need to leverage on that by getting our youth actively involved. TECHNOLOGY Technology has played a big role in developing the agricultural industry. Today, it is possible to grow crops in a desert by use of agricultural biotechnology. With this technology, plants have been engineered to survive in drought conditions. Through genetic engineering, scientists have managed to introduce traits into existing genes with a goal of making crops resistant to droughts and pests. This means that we do not have any excuse not to plant. We apply technology in almost everything we do in our daily lives; we use technology at work, we use technology for communication, transportation, learning, manufacturing, securing data, scaling businesses and so much more. Technology is dynamic; it keeps on improving because our needs and demands keep on changing. We have moved from the industrial age (industrial revolution) to an information age. During the industrial age, companies with large sums of capital had the potential of employing expensive technological tools to gain the competitive advantage; small businesses had less potential because they could not afford expensive manufacturing or processing technology tools.