I was privileged to attend a Stakeholders’ event recently organized by the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in Abuja where the issue was the need to fashion a people’s Constitution. I stirred the waters when I challenged the organizers to emphasize on more advanced roles for the youths and stop beguiling us with the leaders of tomorrow mantra. I became the subject of virile attacks from all and sundry. One even challenged me to say what the youths who were given opportunity to lead achieved, citing examples of the likes of Honourables Dimeji Bankole, Farouk Lawal and Herman Hembe, youths indeed. In other words we had lost our opportunity.
As events continually unfold in our beloved country with massive implications for the viability for our continued peaceful co-existence as a sovereign political entity, one mind boggling rhetoric that recurs in my sub conscious is, “when will tomorrow come?”
The youths in Nigeria have over the years been beguiled by our more esteemed elders that we are the leaders of tomorrow and hence should bid our time and await tomorrow. However, events of the yesteryears have clearly pointed to the contrary. Accordingly, the focus of this piece is to x-ray the socio-political goings on in the country, with particular emphasis on the role so far played by the youths, with a view to exposing the underlying motive behind this greatest chicanery of our time.
Nigeria’s political culture is perennially characterized by a system where the youths who ought to be major stakeholders are considered as outsiders. What we have on ground is the current practice where the country’s democracy holds practically nothing for the youths, a situation once aptly captured in the words of Peter Clever Oparah as, “a grand travesty of the ideal democratic system that treats the country’s youths as mere carpet beggars, to the profligacy of the so called political class that has run the country into a dangerous cul-de-sac”.
Our youths have continually remained at the very fringes of the political system. We are continually manipulated and exploited for ethnic, religious and selfish ends by the political class. We are made to see each other as enemies that must be regimented and not as partners in the democratic project who ought to work together for common interests, easily incited and mobilized to attack and injure one other because it suits the long term interests of the political class who appear ready to employ any mechanism to maintain their tenacious hold on power and perennially shut the youths out of the corridors of power.
The average youth in Nigeria today lacks adequate food, shelter, quality education, employment and other fundamental amenities that can enhance his independence. With all these out of his reach, he is at the mercy of the ruling political and economic class who can inveigle him with peanuts and cajole him to destructive ends. What should ordinarily inure to the youth as of right is offered to him as a favour and a bait to entice him to do evil. Today, the only job a politician can offer a youth is that of a thug or ballot box snatcher, while urging him to tarry till ‘tomorrow’ when his turn will come.
It is my humble submission that Nigeria’s political leaders will never be quenched of their perpetual thirst for power and will do anything to cling on to it. In other words, this tomorrow may never come. And the consequence will always be youth restiveness, militancy, kidnapping, terrorism and their likes as we have witnessed in recent times.
Whoever is in doubt as to the perennial nature of this futile wait for tomorrow should cast his mind back to the 2005 Political Reform Conference, the aim of which was to chart a course for the Country’s future. Majority of the delegates were already aged and past their prime. As a result, several of them were caught on live television napping during the course of the deliberations. Or can one easily forget the infamous third term saga where a former Nigerian Head of State in 1976 addressed a gathering of youths where he referred to them as the ‘leaders of tomorrow’. Fast forward thirty years to 2006 and you will see the same leader using the Nation’s resources and entire state apparati of governance to perpetuate himself in power, albeit unsuccessfully, for another twelve years.
Look at the appointments made by the immediate past Umaru Yar’Adua Administration: Pa Rilwan Lukman whose children are old enough to govern the country was appointed a Minister of the Federation, over thirty five years after busting into the political scene. Or is it Obong Ufot Ekaette? If you think we are done with the likes of Alhaji Bamanga Tukur or Mallam Jerry Gana, wait for the next administration. Contrast this with the scenario in the advanced democracies of the world like the United States where age is neither a criterion nor a barrier to occupying political office.
The present administration has not fared any better and this clearly lends credence to the perpetuity of our wait for tomorrow. While the so-called affirmative action of the present administration has seen the increase in the participation of women in governance, the same cannot be said of the youths, I mean the proper youths and not the likes of the National Youth Leader of the People’s Democratic Party, who I can bet witnessed not just the Civil War, but possibly our Independence.
While I do not envisage in any way a repeat of the American, French and Industrial revolutions of the past centuries, I feel strongly however that there is an urgent need to build a strong and virile democratic culture which will outlive the contradictions of the system practiced for the past fifty years and counting. I sincerely wish our youths would learn, pull resources together and tap positively from their vast God given potentials for their maximum benefits. Above all, while I am no Martin Luther King Jnr. I dream of the time when all youths will rise to the challenge, grasp the bull by the horns and resist all attempts by the ruling class to use us as mere tools, and instead act with the conviction that the Country is rightfully ours.
Finally, and possibly more importantly, I do hope that as we gradually approach the make or mar election year of 2015, we would have a situation where the young ones can stand their ground and reject the peanuts often offered as the price for our votes and support. I hope that by then we would have had a genuine and virile government institution that will work to improve the lots of the Nigerian youth, for only then can we really look forward to tomorrow when the youths can shout ‘Uhuru.’
Follow Orji on Twitter: @OrjiUka
No comments:
Post a Comment