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Democracy & Governance

The Change I Want To Make -By Emmanuel Onyekwere

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I have discovered that the only problem bedeviling my country, Nigeria and the world is our perception of the world. We (youth) have misconception about everything that goes on in the country, it is not entirely our fault anyway but the orientation we were given as young people. Our elders constantly tell us historic events that will nurture hatred against the whole nation in us. For instance stories of how one ethnic group had mistreated another year ago (example how people of the Igbo community were killed by Hausa people etc.). These stories are not meant to be didactic rather inciting, it aims at making the youth harbour hatred and seek revenge. This is why we may never agree as a country. But if I am able to win the youth over, they would understand the rationale behind everything they are told and refuse to act in that manner for it is said: if the youth does not go to war, then no one will;  and there will be no war.

Our elders/leaders are not interested in the unity of the country, they only pretend (because they know the world is ours, not theirs, if we destroy it they have nothing to lose after all they had a wonderful time during theirs), we (youth) need to understand that the destiny of our country is in our hands and unless we make it better we will be the ones to suffer. Our elders sit at home inciting us to hate and fight one another, those in politics use us as thugs to commit all kinds of social vices and end up blaming us and even laugh at our folly. Our world keeps getting worse by the day not because we are irresponsible but because of wrong orientation that we have received and for our own misconception of our society and people, there’s no hope of bettering things except the mind is changed, to understand the reality of our world and place it beyond everything even the hate speeches that have permeated our ears right from childhood.

The youths are constantly used as instruments of mass destruction, penetrating every sphere of our world through terrorism, hate speech, and all forms of killing humans both locally and internationally. These crimes are committed by the youth but not planned by them. They are deceived along religious and ethnic lines forgetting that humanity is older and greater than ethnicity, even religion. Religion is just one of the social institutions that were supposed to make us better and more tolerant but unfortunately, it breeds hatred and bigotry causing able-bodied men to carry arms against one another calling it a religious war. Unfortunately, our elders who had practiced religion before us already knew the vanity of the fight they instigate us (the youth) to fight.

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To this end, the change I wish to make cuts across changing how we perceive religion and ethnicity, if we understand the sanctity of the human life we would not shed any more blood, we would hate no more. Also, if we come to the understanding of the real essence of religion we would become more tolerant and kind for it is by so doing that we can better our world.

Another point worthy of note is the misconception about politics. It is incontrovertible that the politics of our nation, Nigeria is very rough and characterized by corruption and hegemonic power tussle but these and even more are not enough reason to deter any responsible youth from making an impact in the politics of the country through an honorable participation in the electoral process. It is quite unfortunate that a country which statistics claims to has over 60% of its population as youth does not have even a meager 5% of that number in active politics. This is attributable to the fact that there is corruption in the land and no one believes in the country anymore, the youth hardly go to the polls during elections alleging that votes no longer count, but the unanswered question is ‘if the youth does not change the world, then who will?’.

Conclusively, if our aim is to change the world, then we must change our mindsets.

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