Whither the Nigerian youth? There comes a time in the life of a people that they must take ownership of their situation and aim strongly to paddle their canoe to a safe harbour. Nothing is more annoying or an excuse more nauseating than to see a nation perpetually engage in attributing its woes to forces beyond its control. It is not only irritably escapist but perhaps the highest form of collective irresponsibility. Walter Rodney brilliantly espoused reasons for his conclusion that the West has been largely responsible for the woes of the African continent. While this is not absolutely incorrect, one cannot but find fault in the continued validity of this conclusion. Agreed that colonisation was evil and that slave trade satanic. Yet, these evils couldn’t have been perpetrated without internal connivances. There needed to have been a “Baba Lagbaja” who lured his brothers and kin into the waiting arms of the ruthless “slave-catchers”; there needed to be a Chief Tamedo who usually prized a candy bar or a mirror more than his subjects. The point here is that the West has never done to us what we haven’t done to ourselves, after all a lizard doesn’t crawl into an uncracked wall. All through our history, we have always been the ones killing ourselves. It is only shamefully deceitful that we are always quick to point fingers whenever we discuss the real culprits behind our stymied development. From the health sector to power, from education to security, from infrastructure to energy our main problem has always been our insensitivity to the plight of our suffering masses and our inability to frontally tackle the real issue bedevilling us as a people. How can one explain the fact that there are about 18 million dialysis patients in Nigeria but there are just about 76 functioning dialysis centres? It costs about $10, 000 –to $15, 000 to purchase a dialysis machine yet as a nation we have less than 500. It means that Stella Oduah’s bulletproof cars which cost about $2.5m would have procured between 170 and 250 more machines. It means more lives could have been saved had some people chosen to be empathetic. A senior presidential aide openly stated that it costs about $1.5m to produce a megawatt of electricity. Assuming this figure is not exaggerated, it means the stolen $20bn would have successfully produced over 13,000 megawatts, enough to power Nigeria and even the whole of West Africa on an uninterrupted basis. Examples of these hapless and hopelessly-helpless cases of financial recklessness, blatant wickedness and moral bankruptcy exist in almost all facets of our national life, yet the people are not without blame. Unfortunately, the Nigerian people have always been the ignorant “accomplice” in the destruction and violation of the nation by these unrepentant jobbers. The characteristic “siddon look” nature of the average Nigerian is legendary. Push a goat to the wall, it turns back at you; push a Nigerian to the wall, he breaks the wall, keeps shouting “all is well” as he runs for his dear life. Yet, as unfortunate as our helplessness appears, it is the indifference and the political apathy of the average Nigerian youth that amazes me. It is his penchant for conjuring ethnic and religious bunkum as premises for his political leanings that really sends hurtful spasms down my spine. The scary alacrity with which he draws from history that he knows little or nothing about to arrive at faulty conclusions, how he bandies hatefully-concocted fallacies to malign those with whom he disagrees or holds different opinions- these ought to worry anyone. Shortly after the Peoples Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress announced their presidential candidates, social media went agog with all sorts of permutations and conversations. The fact that our youths are having political conversations, in itself, naturally ought to be applauded, except that the nature of these conversations are unintelligent and lacklustre. These conversations make it seem like religion and ethnicity ought to be the bases upon which these candidates should be accepted or rejected. I see youths on a daily basis cursing one another needlessly because they cannot agree as to what should form a common ground as far as the good of the country is concerned. It seems all that makes a candidate endearing to the South is that he is a Christian and to the North, a Muslim, and not that his senses are still intact or that he posses the required resume to lead us through these difficult times. We don’t seem to understand that there is no Christian hunger or a Muslim hunger, or that insecurity has no religion. We don’t seem to understand that there is nothing as ethnic joblessness, we don’t seem to really appreciate that poverty doesn’t profess any particular faith.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 07:39:00 +0000
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