At Youth Summit, Nigeria Youth Presents Health, Development Agenda to Political Actors

At Youth Summit, Nigeria Youth Presents Health, Development Agenda to Political Actors

The Nigeria Meaningful Adolescent and Youth Engagement (Naija MAYE) group is a prominent coalition of young people in Nigeria. The group, which is hosted by the Africa Health Budget Network (AHBN), seeks to: build the knowledge of members on the Health Sector (the MDAs, their mandates and current trends); build their capacity to engage and actively participate in decision making platforms; support members to occupy seats in Committees or Technical Working Groups of government MDAs and; promote access to national and international opportunities for career development. Naija MAYE is a rich blend of young people and youth from the Academia, Humanitarian, Government, Tech, Religious, Agriculture and Development sectors; about 200 and fast growing. They constitute the Community of Practice (CoP) which has a 14- member Steering Committee (SC) that coordinates the activities of the Group. A lot has been achieved within a short time, for instance; 4 seats have been secured for young people in all the RMNCAEH+ N Multi Stakeholder Partnership Coordination Platform sub committees.

Apart from advocacy and accountability workshops with key stakeholders, the group conducts routine youth assembly via social media where the young people discuss a plethora of health and development issues in the country.

Nigeria is treaty to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) among other commitments to end poverty and promote peace and development; however, close to 8 years down the line, many Nigerians are yet to connect their experienced rate of development and the lofty promises of the SDGs.
Knowing that young people are the most affected with Nigeria ranking 161 out of 181 countries in Global Youth Development Index, it is crucial to begin to interrogate and reimagine the systems in which young Nigerians exist in Nigeria.
With young people accounting for about 70% it is also instructive to note that solving young people’s problems in Nigeria is the first step to solving everyone’s problems.

The Agenda is envisioned to embody SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound) asks across a carefully selected range of thematic areas such as listed:

• Health
• Education
• Employment
• Human Rights
• Sustainability and Climate Action
• Inclusion
• Transparency and Accountability

Consequently, the MAYE Working Group is proud to be hosting a national summit for representatives of youth groups and youth-focused civil society organizations, such as Heroic Discovery ad Community Development Ceter, HEDCODEC among others across the country to brainstorm on the Nigeria Youth Health and Development Agenda. The summit which is a hybrid convening of young people across the country gives an opportunity to all young people to participate in the formulation of the agenda document. While strengthening the Nigeria MAYE presence and network across the country, the specific objectives of the Summit are to:

1. Identify a multisectoral range of issues and youth stakeholders across the country
2. Harmonize issues and form a national consensus for the advancement of the Agenda through the Summit
3. Escalate the developed agenda through press briefings, social media dissemination of infographic adaptation of the agenda, and subsequent engagement with the political actors and media

Some of the key issues raised from the panel discussion include:

1. Meeting up with the 15% Abuja declaration in our national and subnational budge
2. Review of BHCPF to recognize adolescent and youths as part of a vulnerable population
3. Fragmented Approach to financing of social health insurance for all young people
4. Adoption of public health approach to the issue of drug addiction
5. Optimization of primary health care for mental health intervention for young people
6. Meaningful occupational counselling structures for young people in secondary schools and institutions
7. The National Council on Health should approve the reduction of age of independent access to sexual and reproductive health services including HIV testing from 18 to 14 years.
8. A comprehensive range of sexual health services required by diverse groups of young people should be integrated into training curriculums of healthcare providers at all levels of training.
9. Policies supporting female engagement in governance should be actively implemented (from LGA to the Federal level
10. Micro finance banks sponsored by the government should be strengthened and interest rates reduced for young people’s mini and small-scale businesses

Charge

• Young people have also been charged to take part and engage with political leadership through the exercise of the electoral rights
• The government has been charged to include youth in decision-making from initiation to monitoring

The Youth Agenda is being developed and finalized version will be made available to the public in the coming days