Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Thursday narrated how he served the party for over seven years without appointment after his tenure as Attorney-General of Lagos State elapsed in 2007.
Osinbajo disclosed this while addressing young political aspirants of the All Progressive Congress (APC) at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Wednesday night.
“As a young person, I belonged to several pressure groups. I graduated at the age of 21. And when I graduated, I began to participate in various pressure groups, human rights organisations, anti-corruption, civil society groups of every kind.,” Osinbajo said, according to a statement by his spokesperson, Laolu Akande.
Osinbajo explained that his appointment as Lagos attorney-general by the Bola Tinubu administration in Lagos (1999-2007) was his first major political appointment.
“When political parties started forming, we could not aspire, but we remained involved. My first involvement in government was when I was appointed as Attorney-General in Lagos State.
“For seven years – after serving as Lagos Attorney-General – I was part of the party, I did not have a board appointment or anything, but I kept working for the party.
“I kept working for the party as a lawyer. Most of those cases, we were not paid a dime. But we went from place to place.
“Sometimes, we didn’t even have a place to stay when we went to court the next morning. So, there is a measure of paying the price, it depends on how serious or committed we are to some of the things we say we are committed to,” he said.
The vice president called on the young people to stay committed and make sacrifices.
He advised them to help build party structures and contribute to nation building in their various constituencies, through active involvement in politics.
“We are in a place where we are the ones who can make the difference; nothing is going to change overnight, but we can make efforts to change the process.
“We can do a lot more, but it depends on our commitment. I like the idea of young people getting a quota in the party structure to run for office on some level, such as the state houses of Assembly,” he added.
