What started as an alternative to the Bonny Youth Federation (BYF) group on Facebook, set up to provide an interactive platform for youths of Bonny Island in Rivers State, Nigeria has now graduated to a thriving discourse platform where issues affecting the island community are receiving global attention and consequential changes.

The group, which has metamorphosed from BYF 360 to Bonny Youths 360, has over time been retooled for social media activism, governance oversight, philanthropy, community engagement, political discourse, and bonding platform for indigenes and residents of Bonny, among several other positive uses.

Set up on Sunday, March 31, 2015 by a United Kingdom based entrepreneur, Tamunoforiokuma Tobin, popularly known as Redman or Redd Awanta, and promoted alongside his kinsmen, Dr Abarasitamunopirim Abbey, a Research Scientist at University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, and Ibikunu Gift, the group has come to play critical roles in social change, affecting several persons within and outside Bonny Island, driving change in institutions in Bonny and attracting positive developments.

Described as “the place where e dey happen for Bonny”, Bonny Youths 360 is where the social vibe of Bonny as a society and polity boils over, from intellectual discourse to full blown quarrels, and much more.

For politicians, this platform is a place to watch closely, as one party chieftain hinted Kristina Reports, “I don’t know what those youths are doing there but going by what I hear happens there, the youths are truly helping this community. Any politician who wishes to succeed in winning elections or in public office needs to pay close attention to that group”.  

Recently, when the Federal Polytechnic of Oil and Gas, Bonny, was on the brink of dipping the abyss, the Bonny Youth 360 came to the rescue. Daily heated discussions, name calling, arguments for and against the institution’s management, eventually led to the first matriculation ceremony almost seven years after the Polytechnic was established.

Several other positive developments were witnessed in the Polytechnic due to the activism of the Facebook group, including the recent intervention of the Governing Council to restore sanity there and get the school back on track.

In February 2022, the now demised Karibi Tolofari, a young native of Bonny, who was diagnosed of acute leukemia, needed about N25 million for a life-saving operation. The platform frantically mainstreamed the fundraising drive and in less than two weeks reportedly realized about N22 million, only for the news of his death to break out, leaving so much pain and anguish across the Bonny society in its wake.

Also, when the spate of sea pirates’ attacks reveled the Bonny River and other adjoining waterways around Bonny LGA, Bonny Youths 360 rose to the occasion and forced the hand of the authorities to act and restore calm on the seas.

The height of this was the killing of two Bonny youths, Macdonald Banigo and Kingsley Allison along the creek close to Dema-Abbey Community; the group mobilized its members who in turn mobilized their friends and associates and everyone else for a dual protest in Bonny and Port Harcourt.

This move led to the current sustained patrols, upscale of security infrastructure and mobilization of personnel that has seen the quiet seas in about a year now.   

These and many more interventions in the polity are trending credentials of what the group has come to represent. Little wonder, some politicians who are interested in contesting one position or the other in the forthcoming 2023 elections have chosen to register their aspirations on the platform, posting pictures of their achievements and statements of vision for group members to chew on.

To a large extent, the group, which has inadvertently become the debating platform of Bonny LGA, may decide the direction of the political permutations for the 2023 elections in the area. Going by its celebrated antecedents, the hostile scrutiny of the aspirants, their vision postulations, personalities, individual prospects and crystallization of the likely good that would come from their clinching the offices they would be contesting for would all happen on the platform.

In many cases, projections made by the group on certain issues have manifested as predicted. These include the predictions of the inaugural matriculation of students of the Federal Polytechnic of Oil and Gas; sanctioning of the management of the Polytechnic; unraveling of certain fake accounts being used to disparage community members; and outcomes of 2015 and 2019 elections, among others.

It is strongly believed that as discussions begin soon on issues surrounding the elections the eventual clinchers of party tickets, winners and losers of the imminent 2023 polls, and occupiers of various political offices in Bonny may soon be unveiled on the Bonny Youths 360 Facebook group. Watch out!