The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila said members will reconvene for plenary to address youth-related bills next week.
Gbajabiamila made the announcement on Saturday in Abuja, at a national strategy retreat organised by the Young Parliamentarians Forum (YPF) of the National Assembly.
The retreat had the theme, “Rethinking Youth Development in Nigeria”.
Gbajabiamila said that the retreat came at a time of a new and intense wave of restiveness sweeping across every part of our country.
The Speaker said that there is a large majority of young people who are tired of the way things are going.
He said the youth want to see rapid and progressive change in the structure of the country and in the practice of democratic government.
“We all know the House suspended plenary to consider the Budget which is a yearly thing we do to give time to pass the budget to maintain our January to December budget cycle.
“But I do intend to reconvene the House to consider a couple of very important things that will affect Nigerians such as the Electoral Law, the PIB and more important the Bills that are already in the system concerning the development of the youth.
“So we will hopefully by next week take one or two days to consider those bills and others.
“I will also want to encourage the young parliamentarians that we will give you all the support necessary.
“You will agree with me that many times when we talk about the constitution, the makeup of Nigeria, when we talk about the structure, when we sing the National Anthem, when we talk about the pledge, we always refer nostalgically to our founding fathers.
“Many of them were not even fathers at that time, they were extremely young in their 20s.”he said.
The Chairman of the YPF, Rep. Kabir Tukura, said following the #ENDSARS protest the forum took some steps to ensure that the demands of the youth were met.
He said that the demands are genuine saying that there is a need for a general overhaul of the way things are done especially in the security sphere.
Tukura said that the forum visited the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives and it was agreed that the YPF should come up with a white paper to be submitted to President Muhammadu Buhari.
According to him, young persons deserve a voice in this country, they deserve to be heard and treated fairly.
He said that treating young people fairly is to treat the citizens fairly as the youth constitute 70 per cent of the population.
He said the YPF had taken it upon itself to see that police brutality is brought to an end and to see that the ever increasing need for youth inclusion is addressed.
