A few days ago, youths across the world celebrated world
youths day, a day set aside globally to celebrate the impacts of youths on the
globe.
In the Nigerian space, one event that got Nigerians talking was
the speech given by the former president Olusegun Obasanjo. He asked Nigerian
youths to flush out the old generation of leaders out of the system. The
response that greeted Mr. Obasanjo’s speech wasn’t unexpected. Nigerians youths
are familiar with the political terrain and they brought their knowledge of the
past to bear. The general consensus of thought on social media and other media platforms
was that though Mr. Obasanjo made a great speech, he wasn’t the one Nigerians
expected to give such a speech seeing his antecedents one of which was the fact
that he pushed for third term during his tenure as president while he was
already past seventy.
That aside, the call by the former president for the youths
to salvage this nation has been consistent with the former general since Mr. Mohammadou
Buhari stepped into office as president. It seemed his calls had failed to fall
into the right ears.
We have grown up believing the cliché’ that youths are the
leaders of the tomorrow. Sadly, the youths have come of age only to realize
that there is no future with the youths. Today, we find old men who should be
retired and resting still holding on to power, offering nothing but misplaced
direction with a lack of creativity and purposefulness.
Nigerian youths have been shown the door out. We had once
heard the current president condemn the youths to being lazy. Such statement should
have gotten youths thinking about the direction their future is headed seeing
the leader who should motivate them to get more from themselves is actually the
one lowering their morale.
Who are Nigerian youths by the way? It seems Nigerians don’t
know who a youth is. Isn’t it amazing to find men who are past fifty years
still vying for the position of youth presidents in many of our local communities
across the land? Imagine been fifty and still a youth? How old is our minister
of youth and sports? He is nearing sixty years. It seems that those who are
within the age bracket of eighteen and forty who should be rightly termed
youths are probably still adolescents in the Nigerian context.
Nigerian youths aren’t even aware they are youths. They only
claim to be youths when there is a marriage ceremony where drinks, cigarette
and football will be shared, when there is a burial ceremony where they will
have their full of goat meat and palm wine or when an old politician is looking
for an opportunity in government and the youths present themselves as political
tools for him to achieve his political ambition. This seems the average
mentality of the Nigerian youth.
I’m glad however that there are Nigerian youths who have
chosen to stand out and be counted. They are goal oriented, versatile, creative
and influencers. These set of youths are the ones who have eyes, who threaten
our papas who roam around Aso rock and state government houses across the land
so that our papas have continued to lock the doors to leadership against them.
Do Nigerians believe her youths can lead this nation? This
lack of believe is what has kept us where we are. We don’t seem to believe the
capacity of our youths because our old leaders who should have set the ground
running by the development of a leadership based education system to raise
leaders failed to do that. They can’t see how the current whack education system
can produce quality leaders so they hold on to power in the name of “golden
generation”.
Even our youths do not sufficiently believe in themselves to
empower themselves. They keep waiting forever for government largesse and
political empowerments of those old politicians. This is why our old men will
waylay us at every turn and still sit on positions that their brains aren’t
capable of taking responsibility for.
It is because youths don’t believe in themselves that they’d
allow a man past fifty or even sixty run for the office of youth president and
win. They think it is normal to be controlled by our old leaders. If youths do
not learn to trust themselves, there will likely be no opportunity for them to
take the mantle of leadership of this nation.
Mr. Obasanjo has said well, youths should take
responsibility for where this country is headed. But which youth can afford the
party forms to run as even councilors when a councillorship form goes for six
hundred thousand Naira. Don’t even talk about chairmanship, governorship or
presidency.
If the youths will ever get a chance, it is because the comity
of youths is vowing to stand behind their own. They are deciding to stand
behind a youth they can trust and defend. They should be willing to put in
their little funds together to pick a political ticket for a youthful candidate
on a major political platform. They must be ready to die for their candidate whether
he has money or not.
But no! This won’t happen when our youths are satisfied with
been personal assistants to personal assistants of personal assistants or
social media assistants.
Nigerian youths are sadly drawn along political lines of
these old political god fathers and they claim so much loyalty to them that they’d
never see the need to form a common front. Let’s check out the statistics. At least
sixty percent of all votes are from those within the age bracket of eighteen
and forty five. Imagine if those votes were cast for a youthful, goal oriented
and visionary youthful presidential candidate. The youths would have changed
the landscape of Nigeria’s politics forever.
Nigerian youths can rule this nation and give her the
leadership that she requires at this time. Our fathers today often spoke of the
good old days when they were young and they had young leaders who had
foresight. We’ve had several leaders in this nation who were in their thirties
and we’ve even had one who was in his late twenties, General Gowon who led
Nigeria through a civil war and defied the odds to keep Nigeria one. We will
always remember his bold statement “to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be
done”. This generation of Nigerian youths shouldn’t lack leaders now that we
are better informed and enlightened.
As an elder statesman, Mr. Obasanjo has let us in to what
direction Nigeria should head as 2023 arrives. While it seems the easiest thing
to do is banter him, he is seeing Nigeria from a point of view our old
political figures do not see. If Nigeria continues this way, we may be heading towards
a big mess.
Aren’t you baffled that the moment you got through with
school, your parents thought you were big enough to take care of yourself and
they expected that you’d also take care of them. But the same parents will think we aren’t good
enough to lead them. They are not willing to tell us the whole truth.
Youths, this is not the time to be contented with your one
hundred thousand to two hundred thousand naira jobs. Its great to get a good
pay back home, but nationhood is beyond your paycheck.
We don’t need a bloody revolution but we do need some form
of evolution. We need to evolve from this bureaucratic system we are running
into an all-inclusive system where youths can have a say, seek political
redress, air their voices, be heard and run for political office.
Been youth shouldn’t just be for empowerment programmes of
politicians who seize the opportunity to steal our commonwealth in the name of
empowerment while they throw peanuts at us. Nigerian youths must arise and
fight against these politicians.
Nigerian youths are creative. They need an enabling
environment to groom their skills and talent. Thanks to our youths, what we’ve achieved
as a nation is due to their creative instincts and goal orientation. Check out
the internet, the music industry, the movie industry, the creative industry and
all the other industries that youthful people are getting involved with.
Nigerian youths can recreate politics just like they’ve done to other
industries.
Youths don’t relegate to the background. Arise! Let’s get
Nigeria working the way we want it. If the old folks won’t give us a chance, we
must create the chance. Arise Nigeria needs you.
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