Lilian Ezejelue
There is no gainsaying that the quality of our future as a nation is determined by the quality of the youth today. No nation can ever achieve anything without the strength of its youths.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, aware of this called on young people at the McGill University to join hands with the United Nations in order to end four of the major threats in our world: Unemployment, climate change, armed conflict, and humanitarian crises.
Unfortunately, while on an international level youths were being exhorted to rise up to the responsibility of protecting our world, on the local level our young people were busy flexing their muscles, fighting an inter-tribal war.
One would think that we have advanced and left that behaviour in the nineties and early two thousands to embrace our diversity and work together to combat the ills in our society. But no, in the midst of the economic crises and the fuel scarcity our youths could still afford to destroy properties and lives like savages. Precious lives that could have been assets to our county or birthed children who would. And we wonder why the rest of the world is progressing while we are diminishing from being the giant of Africa to being the church rat always in need of Aid from the rest of the world.
Thinking of the future of our nation is enough to send a shudder through one’s body. As soon as your hope is revived by stories of a few young achievers within our nation it is immediately quelled by stories of an even greater number of youths who are representing us poorly.
But should this be a thing of surprise? The Igbos have a proverb that translates to; The offspring of a snake cannot not be long. When we have law makers who take pride in using their fists to fight in the National Assembly rather than using their heads to think of ways to bring about progress, what then do we expect from our young people? Do we expect them to take heed to these same lawmakers when asked by them to quit fighting and maintain peace and order?
Do not be surprised that some of those who took part in fuelling the chaos yesterday will be the faces on posters running for public positions come 2019. And they will win. And the cycle will continue. Except our leaders heed the words of Ban Ki-moon who while addressing the students at McGill University said that it is important for young people to be invested in in order to be able to help solve the problems of the world.
As usual, God bless Nigeria.
