I Fear For Nigeria

Numerical strength is one effective
tool that has been used the world
over to negotiate terms and also to
achieve success in almost all human
endeavour. China and the United
States of America are good
examples of nations which did not
allow their high population to
become a burden, but rather a
blessing. In these countries, their
youths form the largest part of the
population and were efficiently
instrumental to the success
recorded by their countries.
Like all these nations, Nigeria too is
blessed with a high population and
in fact the eighth country on the list
of countries with the highest
population. With a population of
over 155 million in 2011, Nigeria’s
population is expected to be over
264 million by 2050. Nigerian
youths account for 70 percent of
this population, but unlike the other
nations with high populations,
Nigerian youths have not really
been able to get off the ground, in
terms of productivity and brilliant
harnessing of their God-given
potentials.
So many factors, most of which
have been pinned on government,
have been largely blamed for this.
The falling standard of education,
which can be traced to lack of
quality teaching and instructional
materials, decaying infrastructure in
schools and unemployment. Of all
these, none is as lethal as the
disinterest in learning and self-
education as exemplified by the
youths. One can blame so many
external forces for one’s misfortune:
government, parents, poverty e.t.c,
in the end no one solely takes the
blame for a man’s failure, but the
man himself. The system may be
bad; as bad as it is some
determined people would still rise
above it, working daily to turn out
better no matter what is thrown at
them.
They say a bad teacher makes a
bad student; I disagree. The student
who daily interacts with the outside
world can smell a bad teacher from
afar and therefore can make his own
decision to rise above the ineptitude
of his teacher by daily poring over
books to learn the ways of the world
and the art of patient stewardship
which is the ingredient of effective
leadership. Stories abound of well-
learned people in the farthest
corners of the earth where the
synonyms for government are
deprivation and suppression, and
yet the determined people in these
regions have drawn strength from
their situation to take their place in
the scheme of things.
The position of your university on
the World Universities’ Ranking does
not matter; your school doesn’t
make you neither do your parents. I
have met men and women whose
parents cannot spell a single word,
yet they turn out well irrespective of
whether they attended ‘sukuru’ or
‘school’. ‘Sukuru’ is the
transliteration of school where I
come from and we use it to denote
an ill-equipped school, while ‘school’
is the well-funded and equipped
school attended by rich kids. The
zeal and hunger for success with
which some products of ‘sukuru’
self-educate themselves is awe-
inspiring, so much so that they
become very intelligent and incisive
that it becomes difficult to reconcile
them with their background. If this
category of people can get it right
despite the inconducive system,
what excuse have the others?
Despite accounting for 70 percent of
the population, Nigerian youths
have failed to realize their place.
The few ones that have been able to
organise themselves are either too
impatient to study the system by
consciously rising through the
ranks. The have lost their sense of
reasoning to immediate
gratification, to the extent that they
cannot sincerely be part of anything
except for the money. Good
intentions are readily disdained if it
would not grease their palms. As
such they become ready tools of
violence and mud-slinging in the
hands of politicians who would
caress their greed with crumbs.
The Nigerian youth has lost his
pride of place, which would have
been serving as the engine room of
change in the country. If not, why
would the Peoples’ Democratic Party
(PDP) choose a man on the
threshold of sixty years as its
National Youth Leader? If not, the
Minister of State for Education,
Nyesom Wike, would not in a recent
interview say the Manufacturers’
Association of Nigeria (MAN) are
complaining that graduates of
Nigerian universities are not
employable? I cried at the recent
outburst of Ogun State Governor
Ibikunle Amosun at a group of
tertiary students of the State origin
who were protesting the non-
payment of their bursary allowance:
“You are stupid; what type of
students are you? You lack
discipline. We were once students
like you, even what you wrote in
your letter does not portray you as
students; you cannot write good
and correct English,” he lashed out.
This is a testimony of the disrespect
of our leaders and an open
confession of their disbelief in the
ability of Nigerian youths. Even the
ones they dole out appointments to
are only kept around as thugs who
might be needed in the time of
trouble, not because of the quality
of their arguments. The arguments
and submissions of most Nigerian
youths on facebook is a clear
evidence of this. Some of their
readings of issues are so immature,
uninformed and malicious that you
would sometimes want to puke.
No one will change this situation for
the youths, except themselves. To
hope for such is to deceive oneself.
We, the youths of Nigeria, are the
ones who would bring about the
change. We are the ones who would
reclaim the respect we desire by
displaying strong analytical and
probing intelligence that cannot be
overlooked by the society, and this
can only be attained through useful
content-driven self-education that
would put us in good stead with
overseas-trained kids. Failure to do
this would consign us permanently
to the fetters of disrespect,
unemployment and irrelevance, a
situation that precludes us from
decisions that greatly affect our
lives.
The ruling class and the corporate
world should lend a helping hand
too, through effective mentoring,
without the thought of immediate
gain, but as their contribution to the
future of Nigeria, for these youths
are the future. To leave them un-
attended to is to pre-empt doom for
our dear Nigeria. Every well-
meaning Nigerian leader should be
concerned about this. The situation
is so bad that what we complain
about now may be nothing
compared to the decadence that
awaits Nigeria in future. As a youth,
I fear for Nigeria if events are not re-
ordered to consciously mentor the
youths for leadership in every
stratum of our national life.

‘Dimeji Daniels writes from number
6, Fiyinf’Oluwa street, Adebayo,
Ado-Ekiti.