By Bashir Hassan
Bauchi youth have been challenged to stop waiting and start building. At the BUILD 2026 Summit convened in Bauchi on Saturday, August 29, 2026, by Youth Adolescent Health Initiatives and Counselling (YAHIC), young leaders, mentors and youth groups were urged to shift from passive potential to active community ownership.
YAHIC Executive Director, Eswayi Ikpi Polycarp, framed BUILD not as a one-off event, but as a platform for converting ideas, relationships and opportunities into practical solutions that drive sustainable development.
The summit deliberately confronted the mindset that communities are helpless and leadership is about titles.
Guest speaker Mrs. Titi Yakubu charged participants to see leadership as responsibility and to trust their lived experience, noting that those closest to a problem are best placed to solve it.
In his keynote, “From Potential to Impact: Young People Driving Sustainable Development,” Dr. Lucius Andee Iheme reinforced that call, urging adolescents and young people to replace apathy with organized action, collaboration and innovation.
BUILD will not end at the summit hall. Through the BUILD Fellowship, mentorship, innovation labs and community action, YAHIC is sustaining a pipeline that equips young people with leadership skills, promotes healthy choices, and channels their creativity into measurable change.
Goodwill messages from government, development partners and non-state actors affirmed the model, but the loudest outcome came from participants themselves – a renewed resolve to learn, connect, challenge limiting narratives and BUILD Bauchi, and beyond, from the inside out.