Journalist-activist, Lanre Arogundade Wednesday urged youths to imbibe the ideological orientation of the students' movement of yester-years which boosted its determination to confront   military dictatorship.

 Arogundade, Co-ordinator of the  International  Press Centre, IPC, Lagos while addressing youths at a Youths Camp maintained that the students movement in his time  made tremendous impact due to such ideological orientation, which energised it to confront and triumph over military dictatorship of that era.  He thus charged the youths to be vanguards for democratic rights, and advocates for peace and progress despite the challenges.

 The former students leader who was a Guest Speaker at the camp organised by a group, Activista, also urged other Nigerians suffering from different assaults  by the government to rise up and defend their rights. 

 “All of our success doesn’t mean we were saints or angels but the ideological orientation  in the students’ movement at that time made it easy despite the ban on students movement under military dictatorship and  we were still able to confront the military regime headed by General Muhammadu Buhari on issues of commercialization of education”  Arogundade said proffering  details of the concession won under his leadership as a president of National Association of Nigeria Students, NANS in 1984. 

 While responding to questions from the audience, he argued that  “the suffering under the present dispensation is for everybody except the ruling class and their cohorts,  but the people need to rise to fight together in other to find solution to the problem facing Nigeria. Because nobody was born to be an activist and it is the responsibility of all oppressed people to rise up and fight on issues affecting their lives without bothering about their tribe or religion, because poverty and hunger has no tribe or religion” 

 "The  Nigerian political system is crowded with too many political office holders which invariably increases the cost of governance" insisted Arogundade, adding that it  will be better to adopt parliamentary system of government and a sovereign national conference to determine the method and political system that Nigeria can adopt to make life better for the poor. "All of these will reduce padding and other corrupts practices in Nigeria”, he affirmed.