I am a messenger to my world but I speak to the youths of my country today. It is so important I do. I wrote this article two weeks to the 2019 presidential election in Nigeria, and I posted it a few days after the election for reasons nobody needs to understand actually, and I will not care to explain. I am not angry, but I am highly burdened. I see that in fighting bondage in my country and continent, a new type of bondage laced with honest and zealous deception is forming a new type of oppression and bondage.
Now, this maybe a complex consideration for many, and others may choose self-denial in dealing with it, but I encourage you to be open to the idea that key young leaders of civil society and so many unguarded frontline motivational voices are unwittingly a big problem to young people in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. Angry most times, and sincere almost all the time, they are however primarily responsible for the untransferable zeal and the loud, unintelligent, unstrategic, misdirected and apathetic exudation of the Nigerian and African youth energy. This is the new bondage and If I lose a battle, this will not be one—not on my watch! The young people of the 2000s are so central to the transformation of 50years from today that we cannot afford another zealous but misdirected energy of the young people of the 50s, 60s and 70s. I mean, the Nigeria we reject today, is the Nigeria they led.
Never in our history as a nation has the concept and ideology of a “New Nigeria” been abused and adulterated as it is today (by both the young and the old). Young people are tools, and Nigeria is the victim. History and posterity will judge this better than a frail and flawed human as I am can ever attempt to explain. What I know for sure is this; while godfathers use our young people to run their socioeconomic and political fiefdom, young leaders also use our young people to drive their inordinate and spineless ambitions. It all comes down to self-aggrandizement. The imperative is that young people must know the difference between noise and true revolution, they must know the difference between religion and faith, they must know that mere intention is completely a different articulation from true change; and that change is needed, does not grant the license to make a weak call or toothless representation of it; neither does it compel us to take a stand with any form of it, regardless of its seeming veracity.
We are for God sake a nation with one of the youngest populations in the world and getting younger each day. It is a hubris we should maximize but is now becoming endangered. It is now becoming clearer and clearer that we have a new lie to resist, the torture of a lie trying to sit deep in my conscience and in my soulical contents; as it has already sat in the heads of so many unsuspecting young people. Since election is over, it is easier to then say the argument for the emergence of young leaders, as the “saviors” of the nation is a hoax!
Some actually want us to pretend to be unaware that every old person we do not want to see in leadership were not the young people of yesterday. Wake up young people, embrace your true freedom as represented in the Usable Independent Thinking and Credible Independent Actions you must engender. The Nigeria we reject today is the outcome of the youth leadership of the 60s and 70s—no old person was in power in those years. We must however forgive the people of 1960 and the 70s for the naiveté of their appreciation—templates and models for creative nation-building was not only missing at the time, they were almost impossible to even imagine. However, the young people of the 2000s are not suffering the nescience of the 60s. We now live in a world of options and elasticity. We should now know better, as models for creative and progressive development are now very much available, and zeal is not on the list at all, neither is anger, and stratagem is the new weapon, not just strategy!
And let no small mind ask me what I am doing about change. I don’t need noise to justify the depth of my patriotism or commitment. Too late! As critical as public office is, it is at best the calling of some, not of all. It is shallow to assume that taking a stand politically by running for public office is the only legitimate way to drive needed socioeconomic and political change. It is also sad to observe in particular that those taking a different type of stand are cheaply and ignorantly labeled as taking no stand at all! We know better and we will sound this till necessity makes a different call.
What the people want 50 years ago is what they still want now: THE ATTENTION and RESOURCES our INDIVIDUALITY and COLLECTIVE ASPIRATIONS truly DESERVE! That’s all! The youths of the 60s did not deliver it; but they wrestled power from the colonial masters and they took office. They were called freedom fighters, but 50years after, what they fought for has not changed, in fact, it has gone worse. Yet, the lives of their so-called freedom fighters was better; they became more famous, they had more money, bigger investments and top reputation capital earned at the expense of the people’s social and economic peace. They got richer, the people they fought for got poorer. It will sure take more than hope for the youths of today will deliver this change. No fact actually exists that says value is the productive reserve neither of young people anywhere nor of the old. Value is simply a possibility in the working heads and lively hearts of a willing human life, at any age. And globally, experts generally agree that age alone cannot determine someone’s health or ability to work; no matter how young or how old. We do not need the old nor the young; no! Rather, we need working heads and breathing hearts regardless of when they were born.
Those who have ears should hear. There are still a lot to say, much more to do, and this is sure not the last from me on this. I will rest here today though, and conclude this by stating that where I sit, I work daily in the truth that in 20 years, my 7 year old son will be 27, and my 16 year old niece will be 36. I’ll be 68 and a lot of other people I know will be at the departure lounge of life in their 70s, all things being equal. And surely, anyone above 70 years today would most likely have taken the flight including most of the action figures we know today in the public and private sector. Nature is simply setting a new dawn for our nation. The objective is to plan with nature to ensure the leaders of 2039 and beyond, are free from the blind prejudice, unproductive anger, visible cluelessness and unstratagemic positioning that plaque most of today’s young people!
The visionaries that dance to this unpopular beat of nature are the ones to take seriously, and rally round. And it is in this, that the flames of freedom, unity and progress will burn as high as it can. Yet for what it is worth, I should say that I WILL NEVER RUN FOR PUBLIC OFFICE. A reason for my existence is to stand with those who will, and not just those who are sincere in this. Sincerity is not a factor of production, LLCE (Land. Labor. Capital. Entrepreneur) is. God bless Nigeria and may our continent flourish. #AfroWays
