Nigerian youths at the Barricades: By Dele Momodu

The article below is a must read by ALL Nigerians. Both in Nigeria and in the diaspora.

The only people who cannot see that the times are fast changing are those fat cats who are feeding fat on public funds all over Nigeria. And they are eating with impunity and without any iota of shame. In the process, most of our youths have been left despondent, hopeless and helpless.

Many generations of unemployed and possibly unemployable graduates are roaming the streets, rudderless and defenceless. In deference to the laws of stimuli, they are forced to take to all manner of crimes. The natural instinct of man is survival. Not everyone can stand the scorching heat of suffering.

Meanwhile our men of power continue to behave as if nothing would ever change. All it takes is to go through endless charades of elections, and declare whosoever they endorse as winner. They are already warming up for another round of rigmarole. For them, elections must be treated as a theatre of war. All, they say, is fair in war. But must it always come to this? Why must an attempt to serve the people become a matter of life and death? Why must a tiny minority, and not even the best amongst us, continue to hold all of us to ransom?

The reason is simple. For too long, we have considered politics the exclusive preserve of never-do-wells, upstarts and nonentities. It was the same attitude that made us to send the dregs of our society into the army and police for so long. We didn’t realise that one day soon, the falcon would no longer hear the falconer, and everything would fall apart. We have now reached that state of Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease. Accordingly, anarchy is reigning supreme.

What is worse is that our children living abroad are not able to return to the old kingdoms, where they can visit their aged parents, eat organic meals that are washed down with original palm wines. In the modern kingdoms, the Obi Okonkwos are not able to return to the ancient villages of Umuofia because the kidnappers are hovering in the wings and ready to pounce on any careless returnee.

Such is the tragedy of our land overtaken by the pestilence called politicians in our clime. We are governed by people who obviously hate their country with uncommon gusto. Nothing seems to work and it matters not to our tin gods. No one seems to know these leaders and where they come from. I was stunned to no end exactly two weeks ago in Ibadan. I was a speaker at the RISE National Youth Interactive Forum, a very powerful initiative of a young lady, Toyosi Akerele. The event was well attended by very smart youths. One of them had asked me to tell them my credentials and qualifications for thinking I could govern Nigeria. I was deeply touched by the innocent question. How I wished we had had the opportunities in the past to ask such questions of those who led us.

I decided to answer a question with a question as a true Nigerian would. I gave any member of the audience some posers that could earn him N50,000. The first was that I wanted someone to mention the names of 18 out of the 36 governors in Nigeria. None could mention more than five. None knew the names of up to five Deputy Governors. None could say with a degree of certainty what our current president did or where he worked before venturing into politics. I was greatly alarmed.

Please, don’t blame this on the fact our schools no longer place a premium on history and civics like it was in our own time. My theory is that our youths have tuned off completely from worrying their brains about those who have messed up their collective future and destinies. They have chosen to follow the instinct of how to survive in the jungle. Whoever is in power is believed to be there for himself and his family. He’s not likely to contribute anything meaningful to the development of his society.

The new local champions are often handpicked by the godfathers. Yet, for some curious reasons the godfathers and their godson always fall out. Even the public often gets to know about the fisticuffs that go on behind-the-scenes. It is always a show of shame.
My Ibadan experience opened my eyes to the ugly realities of the Nigerian state. If I thought our youths were uninformed or ill-informed, I was indeed in for a rude shock. On my return to Lagos, I later sat down with a group of elites that same evening. The ignorance they displayed about the Nigerian state was astonishing. Most of them hardly knew a quarter of the governors. The deputy governors were not even known by those from their own states. The speakers of state assemblies were virtually unknown to most people not to mention the commissioners. It was unbelievable. But I refused to give up hope about Nigeria. Rather I was convinced that something good would come out of this cloud of darkness.

On a positive note, I was encouraged by the renewed interest Nigerian youths are expressing in the Nigerian experiment. Despite our many disappointments, the level of patriotism is rising by the day. All around the world, Nigerians are not just praying and leaving everything to God, they are discussing the possibilities of effecting the much needed change. The internet is practically on fire with Nigerian blogs. Nigerian youths in particular are expressing their frustration with a vengeance. In the process, everyone is abusing everyone. The cyber war that is going on is worse than the battle of Fallujah. Nothing is sacred anymore. Words are exploding like bombs. If it continues like this, something is bound to happen.

The youths are back at the barricades. They are chanting war songs, and beating the drums of death. Our leaders must pause and listen. They must return from their perfidious journey. It is in their interest to know when the market is over. They have tried their best, unfortunately they have failed. The youths are angry. They are not happy that their fathers and grandfathers are still dictating the pace and the tune. They have lived the lives of several generations combined.

Those who have been in power since their twenties are still the same faces we see everywhere. The smooth faces of those days have yielded ways to wrinkles. The stamina is gone. The mental alertness has diminished. It is the natural law of diminishing returns. That is why we no longer have Pele or Maradona playing the game they love most passionately. Every living organism must wither sooner or later.

The youths have been stupidly patient. Now they seem to have exhausted that patience. And they are expressing it in different forms. The elders think it is a joke. They are saying they are yet to see good examples among the few ones in their midst. But they forgot that they handpicked their godsons, and that a reptile would always give birth to a reptile. It is in the nature of all reptiles to crawl. Besides, most are harmful and deadly.

Many of our youths are world class. They’ve conquered the world. They have been flying like Angels. But back home the demons of democracy are making it impossible for the eagles to soar into the skies. They are frustrating every attempt, and thinking the ravening clouds would always be victorious. They have forgotten the sonorous words of Albert Luthuli in Let My People Go: “No nation can live perpetually in servitude”. There was an end to slave trade. Apartheid collapsed before our very eyes. A black man became not just an American president but the most influential man on planet earth.
So tell me who can stop the eagles whose time has come. It is time to unfold those incredible wings, and begin to fly higher and higher. These eagles are ready
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Posted by Cos "UnderDaRock.com" Canino on Aug 23 2010. Filed under Featured, Gossip, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry