Thursday, October 28, 2010
About Team Ribadu
12:44 PM | 
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Team Ribadu
Team Ribadu is a youth driven, flagship volunteer movement for the Nuhu Ribadu 2011 presidential bid. It is “a political movement, founded in recognition of the legitimate thirst of Nigerian youth for a new kind of leadership marked by integrity and competence. It seeks to harness and support the tidal wave of young people, who are eager to get involved in the electoral process, in order to create political and social change”.
To achieve this, Team Ribadu is building a groundswell of motivated, committed and capable volunteers to not only ensure that the right leaders are voted into political office in 2011, but also to ensure that these leaders are held accountable for their promises once elected into office”.
Clearly, more than anything else, the 2011 election will be a battle between the old order and the emerging; between whether we want change or more of this present order. What we at Team Ribadu – some of us are professionals, many of us are students, and many more unemployed -- are saying is we want to reclaim Nigeria and we have the capacity to do so.
We, young Nigerians, are calling 2011 the Year of the Nigerian Youth Voter. According to a post on the team’s Facebook, “in 1993, IBB and his cabal annulled the popular will of Nigerians. Many of us were too young to vote then. But not anymore! We are conscious of the task that history has placed on our shoulders. Task of our grandparents, many of whom were much younger than we are now, was to liberate our nation from the evils of colonialism, the task of our parents was to build a strong, prosperous, and united nation, an egalitarian society founded on the principle of social justice and freedom. Unfortunately, the latter woefully in that calling.
“But it is not enough to bemoan our situation or to perpetually play the blame game. We have the future of Nigeria literally in our hands. The question is: do we want to live the second half of the Nigerian century in darkness? The world is now electing young and visionary presidents with broader foreign policy perspectives, with notions and ideas of integrity, and above all with models of the future.”
At Team Ribadu, we see in Nuhu Ribadu, former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to confront our problems as a nation. Ribadu brings compassion, integrity and a strong vision of the future. What else can one ask for in a country where the bankruptcy of leadership is the rule rather than the exception?
Team Ribadu is poised to be the most elaborate and sophisticated attempt by Nigerian youth to be a part of the democratic process. Understandably, it is gradually turning into a pop culture phenomenon. Recently, about 400 volunteer members across the country gathered in Abuja, the first of its kind in our tortuous political history, to parley with the man, Nuhu Ribadu, and we were able fine-tune strategies for our roles in what will be, for most of them, the greatest opportunity as well as challenge of our lives.
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About Me
- Team Ribadu
- Team Ribadu is a youth driven, flagship volunteer movement for the Nuhu Ribadu 2011 presidential bid. It is “a political movement, founded in recognition of the legitimate thirst of Nigerian youth for a new kind of leadership marked by integrity and competence. It seeks to harness and support the tidal wave of young people, who are eager to get involved in the electoral process, in order to create political and social change”.
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