I Fear For Nigeria —Dimeji Daniels

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, etc, 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 lack of conducive system, what excuse have the others?

Despite accounting for 70 percent of the population, Nigerian youths have failed to realise 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. They 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.

What we hear these days, especially from student unionists, is high-sounding English words that mean nothing. 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 lack of confidence 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.

• Daniels writes from 6, Fiyinf’Oluwa street, Adebayo, Ado-Ekiti.