“I dread the
events of the future, not in themselves but in their results.”
― Edgar Allan Poe
“The best way to predict the future is to invent
it. "
— Alan Kay
Judging by where we are, is Nigeria at a time for
littering wishes and theories? No! I reckon this is time to roll up our
sleeves for concrete action and practice; A time when young Nigerians, at our
most physical and creative zenith, ease the tension and apathy between our
collective dreams and the shoddy and poverty ridden reality; This is a time
when our desires shape the policy of our existence. This is potentially, and
quite simply: OUR TIME!
Alas, amidst the stark poverty in Nigeria, we are
confronted with a larger dose of poverty of consciousness within those who
should know better- YOU, the YOUTH! What one would imagine to be the least
complex constructions of reality, turns out to be the most difficult to grasp.
While we should be straining every fibre within us to re-adapt to changing
contexts, we are found hopelessly wanting.
Very simply, social consciousness evokes change.
We are at the crossroads of changed political and economic realities globally.
The Arab Spring and the demand for greater freedoms, chequered by an alertness
to the spread of extremism; climate change and the demand for an evolving
energy economy; freedom of global capital and the permeation of borders in the
global recession, are all distinct pieces of evidence in this reality. This
truth is merely descriptive. Laying the way for Nigeria’s ideological future and
practical existence lies in the heightening of our sociopolitical
consciousness, as young people. This is my prescription.
We will show that it neither suffices to just
live in this world; nor suffices to merely interpret it. The point for Nigeria,
must be to change it.
That the majority of Nigerians are disillusioned
and despondent is not state secret. That many generations to come will suffer
anguish is a source of collective shame. That the two phenomena are somehow
linked is the first realisation to be reached about the current state of
Nigeria.
One need only look out the window to see exactly
how waste and mediocrity has sustained a generation starved in the circle of
poverty of hope, ideals and the basic necessities of life. A generation
that has no business in the pursuit of a good life can but only worry about
daily survival from a short, nasty and brutish end. Our population, in the
overwhelming majority, lives on less than a dollar a day. Decaying and obsolete
infrastructure left by the colonialists is being replaced with redundant white
elephants. The railways built by Lord Lugard and his compatriots have
served generations of Nigerians far better than the budgeted trillions we read
have been “invested” in our railways by our recent leaders. With a crumbling educational
system, our children will not compete with their Chinese, Indian, Botswanian or
Ghanaian counterparts. A nation with abundant energy resources, yet its people
lack power. In extreme poverty, the ignorant are nurtured in social and
religious intolerance- our diversity becomes a brutal burden, and a harvest of
distrust, hate and blood. Our resources are a curse to us, yet prosperity for
few. This few, the ruling class, will ensure this blind prosperity is
sustained, while we the young majority will complain, again and again. But that
is today. What of tomorrow?
I like to take you to a GCE examination centre in
Lagos in September 2011. Forty candidates, most of them adolescents, sit in an
examination hall awaiting the Multiple Choice Questions (objective) for O’level
Mathematics- a test of arithmetic, basic geometry, and algebra. Two
invigilators saunter in, they have an announcement, “For today, the answers
will be two hundred naira each.” The candidates protest immediately and
profusely, they have earned a discount after five days. They insist on a
hundred and fifty naira each, or no bargain. The candidates play hardball and
it wins them the day. Only one in a class of forty truly gets to the task of
the day. He is mocked as mummy’s boy and goaded to turn in his answer sheets
quickly, so the invigilators can go home! You observe that these candidates
look like many tens of thousands of undergraduates being trained in our
universities and polytechnics. Suddenly you realise that it is really them- our
future leaders.
At the same time, in a classroom in Mumbai,
India, some grade nine students are getting acquainted with, and challenged by
the cutting-edge concepts of hadron and quark physics. Growing up in an
extremely populated society, these children learn very early the lessons of
competitiveness and relevance in a shrinking and globalised world. These are
the emerging leaders of the new world order.
Of these two sets of “leaders”, which will
understand the issues and challenges of tomorrow and develop and implement
appropriate responsive strategies? Your guess is as good as mine! The
only consolation- our future is our choice. Well it seems our future has caught
up with us in more ways than one. Being that just a few years back, it was inconceivable
that kidnapping could occur to anyone else but expatriates. Again, the notion
that extremism would manifest itself in suicidal expressions was also
alien. The chicken somehow found a way to roost. Didn’t it?
Today, what seems to be abundantly clear is that
Nigeria’s political leadership lacks the desire and ability to design and
protect the integrity of our developmental process. We have more traits that
associate us with Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti and Bangladesh and distinguish us from
our former peers, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, India and Ghana. I’m not one
for lauding the so-called good old days. If anything, our movement should be
looking forward, not back. Yet neither am I prepared to be ahistorical. I will
not summarily jettison conceptual modes of thought, which have validity beyond
the particular circumstances in which they may have been originally formed. One
such conception is that of being ‘different’. The historical examples are
numerous and we need only cite a few. Historically, the effective organization
of individual young people into a unified identity has been the most
significant push for sociopolitical change.
In Palestine, this held true for both the Zionist
movement, as well as for the Hamas political movement. The Civil Rights
movement in the 1960s in the United States was carried through by black youths.
Although to devastating ends, in Hitler’s Germany, the youth movement was
critical to his ascension to power and the articulation of the Nazi agenda. We
can elaborate on how the hippie movement shaped the political thought and
liberalism of the baby boomers. Equally awesome is how hip-hop, a musical and
artistic youth movement emanating from the Bronx, New York has in the last
thirty years gained significant global cultural influence. Fresh in our minds
must be the feat attained by the Obama campaign in re-drawing the Electoral
College map in the United States, of course by mobilizing the youth vote.
Compared to the situation and possibilities
facing us today, such examples may pale into insignificance. If the 1930’s-
1960’s was a period of rejection of colonialism, and the 1970’s- 1990’s, a
grappling with opportunistic militarism, the 2000s have presented a shaky
permanence with sham balloting and a complete dissociation by the ruling class
with the poor Nigerians underneath. If ever there was a time during which young
people could articulate a radical alternative to the contemporary Nigerian
approach to governance, it is surely at the present.
Our minds are not intrinsically inferior to those
of yesteryears. Our perceptual tools are not intrinsically more blunted. The
framework at our disposal is not intrinsically more closed. In fact, we are at
a much better advantage than any other generation. A generation that has
witnessed a mind-boggling revolution in social media must find a way to center
its focus more on its future than the next few vacation photographs or soccer
updates. Between the potential and the execution has fallen the shadow of a
fettered consciousness. That is what is different.
Our task in this country is to free this
consciousness and start it working furiously. It means raising our perceptions
to the point where they can pick up the political nuances of the day. It means
transforming these nuances into an eloquent sociopolitical consciousness. It
means providing a radical alternative to the sterile political system in
Nigeria. It means being the barking and biting watchdog against corrupt and/or
inept councilmen, governors, assemblymen and their ilk. It means organizing
young Nigerian people in the homeland and in the diaspora to create and
implement an assertive social agenda.
Nigeria will never be served in the knowledge
that people are merely transplanting themselves individually from gloom.
Anything devoid of collectivity is a recipe for disaster. Proper education will
only be available to few; the majority is armed inadequately for changing
times. A nation of simpletons cannot be productive. Effective healthcare will
only be delivered after a long flight overseas. Every house lives the
conglomeration of generated noise and power. Daily, the aspirations of millions
of young Nigerians are nurtured overseas or on the fast lane. In essence,
physically and symbolically, we are in the diaspora.
We cannot merely observe a diasporic Nigerian way
of life. The point is to change it.
3. At no stage during the 51 odd years since the
birth of this country, has she functioned against a backdrop of anything other
than the reality of the ruling class hegemony. This may therefore rank as a
turning point in the ideology of how young people can utilise their strengths
to effect sociopolitical change.
While the status quo elevated religious and
ethnic differences, we are less susceptible, albeit marginally, to the
stranglehold of this flawed outlook. Standards regarding integrity in
governance are completely absent, hence the indomitable leviathan- corruption.
However, poverty is common, oblivious of language or creed. Our national shame
and green passport is shared, regardless of federal character. All told, the
dictates of self-preservation demand prudent action. By necessary implication,
pragmatism demands a tolerance of a wide spectrum of opinions and
beliefs.
It is naïve to assume that a natural evolutionary
transition could refine or redefine our sociopolitical process. Power never
yields voluntarily. Power must be checked. We, the young people have a
choice to deploy our power and define our future today or just fold our hands
and complain. The demographics favour us- we are large, smart, and have a
bigger stake (more years and our children’s hope).
The question to be asked now is the following:
Have we not been able to be ‘general’ for all of these years, because we have
always capitulated subconsciously and permitted the dominant political, social
and economic actions of the ruling few? My postulate is a simple one. When that
which a youth movement desires, coincides with that which exists, a youth
movement will nonetheless seek out alternatives to the contemporary order. That
is the stuff of which great youth movements are made. Eternally critical and
positioning an alternative to every given, and a given to every alternative.
Negating every thesis and offering the negation of the negation in the manner
of the Hegelian dialective.
Today, we have in most governments in Nigeria
that which is in many respects is the very antithesis of everything that
promotes growth or tackles poverty. They advocate no social philosophy and have
a belief in the misconceived absolutes of resource exploitation. A commitment
to creating political fait accomplis through election manipulation. A lack of
introspective humility and ongoing questioning. Placing mere mortals beyond the
realm of criticism. Subscribing to a mantra that we know has not and will not
work in today’s changing and dynamic world.
I suggest that we can no longer be found
wallowing in a pool of generalities, secure in the knowledge that there is firm
ground on either side of us. That ground has given in. We now have to find
islands of social specifics and climb onto them.
The status quo has now changed. More hungry
boys and girls will swell the growing ranks of kidnappers, extremists and armed
robbers. Oil will be less relevant in the not-too distant future. Our critical
role therefore becomes a more urgent one. It involves creating a consciousness
where one has been hitherto non-existent.
We cannot boggle at the new realities. We cannot
only interpret them and wish their genesis. The point is to change them.
4.Let us feed a starving social and political
consciousness and let us vitalise what appears to be a docile framework. Let us
awaken our minds to specifics and let us lay mythical generalities to sleep.
The young Nigerian cannot merely observe the
world. That is too shallow. Nor can we merely interpret it. That is no less so.
Our existence is vindicated only when we change it. That is the point.
Written By Ikem Isiekwena
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