Samson Akintaro The Chief Executive Officer of New Horizons Nigeria, Mr Tim Akano, has bagged awards from three major umbrella bodies of Nigerian youths organisations, namely, the Council of Students Union Presidents (CSUP), Northern Youth Council of Nigeria (NYCN) and Odua Youths Parliament (OYP) for his relentless commitment and unparalleled passion for youths empowerment.
The groups, combined, have over four million strong students membership in all the higher institutions across the 36 states and Abuja, 19 Northern states and across nine Yoruba speaking states came to recognize and honour the CEO with various awards. While NYCN conferred the title of Barkuwan Matasan Arewa Najeriua, ‘ the Shield of Northern Nigerian youths’ , the OYP and CSUP presented awards of Excellence for his numerous youth empowerment projects across Nigeria, especially in the area of ICT.
The New Horizons CEO was recently named by the federal government as Nigeria’s ICON of Youth Empowerment through the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Skills Aquisitions and Empowerment Department (SAED). In addition, Akano was named by two national newspapers during the recent celebration of the University of Ife@60 as one of the best 60 alumni of the university while Osun State, during the 30th anniversary of the state, included Tim Akano as one of the 30 Living Legends from the state. Receiving the awards from the groups, the elated Akano said he appreciated the thought and the thinking that went into it and assured them that it would challenge him to do more. “Helping youths to shape their future is the reason I exist and outside of that there is not much meaning again for me in life,” he said.
“Whatever I do, I do it not because of an award but to bring out light to another youth that would be far bigger than me tomorrow. That is what gives me joy. My second motivation is my desire to bequeath a good name for my children so that in the future my name will continue to be a precious key in their hands that opens doors,” he added. Akano, while urging Africans all over the world to use their talents and huge numbers to create African wealth, using the instrumentality of 4.0 technology as poverty-killer.
“Through the One Africa Initiaves (OAI), we are working on transforming Africa by creating African wealth among Africans all over the world. Right now, we have Arab wealth, they have so much money from oil, and they use it to empower their youth. We have Jewish wealth and also Chinese money. The secret that we have not understood in Africa is that except we consciously build and empower the youth, Africa will continue to move like a barber’s chair in circular crises,” he said.