Are youths leaders of today or tomorrow? by Saidu Baffale
NEWS DIGEST – More often than not, you hear people say “Youths are the leaders of tomorrow”,
the tomorrow that never comes, however, in such statement we find the hope to
linger and justify our problems as the making of the older generation whose
tomorrow has come when they turn old.
In my opinion, I resent this popular statement and I tend to agree more with a modified statement that “Youths are the leaders of Today” a simple modification of the former statement but with an
in depth meaning of purpose. The youths in Nigeria constitute a large portion of
the active population in Nigeria, such large population of youth is a great asset
and a potential that can be harnessed to yield good results. You see, when you
look at all the ramifications of our daily life, it is we the youths that move the
country, because we are the physical power that implements the policies of the
government, however, the influence and impact of the youth is overshadowed by
a myopic sense of reason of the populace. We look to the highest ranks of
influence and rant about our exclusion while on the lowest ranks; we see our
inclusion that has made greatness and prosperity a norm. In my opinion, a
Nigerian is the most creative person in the world, capable of transforming the
worst of situations into the best of situations, with such thought; it gives me the
basis to arguably say that unemployment might after all be a blessing to Nigeria
rather than a curse. You see, it is the fear of unemployment that has motivated a
vast majority of our youths to venture into entrepreneurship be it small scale or
large scale, it keeps one alive and pays the bills. You look at the textile industry,
the technological industry, the philanthropic aspects, the political atmosphere,
the economic enterprise, the educational sector, in fact all sectors, you would see
the footprints of millions of Nigeria’s youth, it is high time we look at the good
aspect of our achievement rather than dwell on the blame factor, the blame does
no good, but do not misunderstand me, unemployment is bad, but in the bad we
must make good. We are not where we want to be but we are on track, they say a
journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, the Nigerian youths have
long passed the single step. We as a people that aspire and work for a better
Nigeria must have the wisdom and capacity to reconstruct established and
accepted norms that have retained our inferior sense of mediocrity and construct
a new paradigm of a new youth who sees him/herself as a model of a proud
history and an aspirer of a Nigeria of his/her dreams. When we were in school, I
remember, we were asked to write a composition about the Nigeria of our
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dreams, come see the pure words of good Nigerian children, the good aspirations
of sound and unbiased minds of children of idealistic hope.
The youthful stage is and would always be the heartbeat of a nation, it is one
stage that we all must pass through to attain old age if God gives us long life. As
such we must define our epoch of youthfulness with meaningful quests to be our
legacy for Nigeria’s posterity and a springboard for future achievements.
As we clamor for greater participation in the affairs of our country, we youths
must pause and ponder on the role we are to play, are we ready yet? Or are we
just trying to go with the trend of the 21st century, following the footsteps of the
likes of macron of France or Trudeau of Canada, we are a different people and the
youth may have less relevance in our society due to the dominance of our political
space by the older generation. we Nigerians are an ill-defined people with regards
to political ideologies, our politics is dominated not with the tone of sound
character and morality but with the tone of financial capabilities, he who gives, in
most cases wins, though there’s a little shift within that lane of thought as we
have seen in the elections of president Buhari, he’s politics Is that of love and
integrity. We have made our politics very expensive and the average youth of
Nigeria has little or no means to amass a great deal of wealth in his youthful age,
though they are exceptions. With regards to the not too young to run bill, it is a
welcome development, it shows how far our so called democracy has manifested
and indeed the justification of the dividends of democracy, but looking at it
critically, is age and youthful exclusion the reason behind our national failure and
developmental stagnation. I think not, our problem remains that one problem we
all know which is bad leadership and it would continue to be so for as long as I can
foresee because our systems and institutions do not produce leaders or show
how to be an ideal leader, our educational system is somewhat only a repetition
of already known facts, a repetition of ancient words, not that repetition of
knowledge and facts is wrong but the lack of creativity in the educational sector
stagnates our progress as a people, a house must have a solid foundation before
it can stand the other stages of building, for Nigerians, our primary institutions of
learning have a shaky, outdated and Ill-defined foundation.
There have been a number of youths that have summoned the courage to clamor
for the position of the president in the upcoming elections, for better or for
worse, they are convinced that they would usher in a new paradigm of political
development and for that we say thank you. However, in my opinion, it is an
utopian aspiration for the young contenders to occupy the highest office of
Nigeria, the reason is simple, they have not proven themselves worthy of our
trust. They might have achieved greatness in their various fields of work but our
society is not yet ready to accept that sort of utopian aspirants. For most
Nigerians, I feel they are idealistic in nature, they believe human nature is good
and linger to the rope of hope that tomorrow would bring more grace than today
by providence, they want change but not at the expense of their luxury, they
want change but lack the patience to survive the trials, they want change but
always have a pessimistic perspective of our republic. It’s time for Nigerians to
align their thoughts with the propositions of realism and believe our society is on
the fence of anarchy and order and for we to join the right track of development,
we must accept our dark side as architects of our problem and aspire for a greater
Nigeria where we must sacrifice our local attachments to trivial causes and think
like the great minds of contemporary times and become action oriented.
We think the older generation of Nigeria has failed us, that they are the architects
of our contemporary doom and political stagnation, well, it might be arguably
right or wrong. But despite this, they still remain the custodians of our cultural
norms of morality and we arguably must look up to them for guidance, that is
how the African society has been built. Yes, there are bad eggs among them but
that does not contaminate the other good ones amongst them. The young
generation of today that aspire for greatness and power are filled with a sense of
duty and purpose, a sense of ushering in a new dawn of political revival or
revolution where the youth comes and leads us to the promise land. As bright as
the dreams of our youths are, the dreams are far from reality, in fact, the youths
of today might be worse than the older generation, for the youths have been
exposed to much materialistic ambitions and are familiar with latest devious
means to defraud a cause. I should not be misunderstood; the youth is a vessel of
a new age, an embodiment of the ideals of contemporary society and an
embodiment of so many diverse and great virtues. But for this embodiments to
be harnessed in our republic, it takes time and patience, you have to fit into the
system of power, understand the intricacies and dynamics of power allegiance
and existing power blocs, compromise terms and buy the power you need, then
bring out the good plan in you and change the system at the expense of your
most valuable treasure if you do not play according to the rules of power. This is
it.
So, realistically speaking, the youths in Nigeria are far from the presidency
because our society is not ready to welcome such. However, idealistically, the
youths in Nigeria are ripe for presidency, in fact the youths are even late. But you
should know this, the fact that you have read extensive literatures of power,
discussed the dynamics of power with sound minds, participated in conferences
about power and dreamt well of power in its ideal way does not make a person
ripe for politics.
To be continued …
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