Can our youths birth the change they want? -By Taiwo Ajai-Lycett

I trust your week went well and was as packed full of fun as mine was. I started the week, appropriately enough on Sunday, as a guest of suave and sonorous Soni Irabor on Inspiration 92.3FM’s Soni Irabor Live. The phone-in by listeners was spirited, humorous, lively and life enhancing. I thoroughly enjoyed and felt sure the participating listeners, as well as those who couldn’t get their chance to ask questions because of time constraints, also enjoyed the party. I had a swell time. Thank you everyone, including the crew in the studio, especially La Bella, BellaRose. I am grateful for all the participations and for the compliments. It was glorious to share with me that cool afternoon of yabbis and music. Truly, you are the wind beneath my wings.

I left Inspiration 92.3 FM studios and popped in one week late to an event at the Oriental Hotel, Lekki! So much for multi-tasking! It seemed about time, eh that I got myself an assistant, capable of whipping me and my diaries into shape at the least. That’s what happens when you multi-task. You’re bound to drop a ball or two more often than not because you are not the woman of steel. Even the man of steel is vulnerable and sometimes faces his own lump of “Cryptonian” nemesis, his own personal challenge. So it was that it was at the hotel that the concierge Doyin broke to me the sad news of the death of the mother of the former Governor of Lagos State, Ahmed Bola Tinubu.

So many years into civilian rule, and Nigerian fledgling democracy appears still-born and stubbornly stuck between its past and future. And as the government struggles to wade through the country’s numerous fiscal, social and political problems, Nigeria’s festering education system is stuck, stranded, and moribund, leaving a growing youth population, its key to the future orphaned.

Understandably, our children are angry with a mighty rage. They appear rudderless, lost and seem to be on the verge of exhaustion rather than bursting with inspiration. This is a great tragedy because this is a generation that needs desperately to learn how to critically think; to learn how to be in the 21st Century; to learn how to be loyal citizens with dignity and integrity. It looks like an almost hopeless picture. The answer is a search for inspiration. There is a need to create room for creativity, innovation towards a push for productivity.

The government’s fiercest critics are, understandably, young people. Young people believe they are not given a chance to project their ambitions and so feel they must assume a greater role in the country’s affairs. The essence of democracy, as it’s generally understood, is that the right to make laws rests in the people and flows to the government, not the other way around. Freedom resides first in the people without need of a grant from government. If there is a time when youth groups in Nigeria should work together as a team and a potent force, it is now. Their country needs them. I was very glad therefore not to miss The National Leaders’ Summit of The National Youth Alliance which held at the Protea Hotel GRA Ikeja.

The sessions opened with the delegates required to sing the National Anthem and recite the National Pledge. I can report that they all passed with flying colours… I think! The Mission Statement of the National Youth Alliance is: Equality, Justice, Peace, Truth and Progress. Its Vision is to be a participatory umbrella body for Nigerian youth groups and individuals that are passionate and committed to enthroning positive and lasting change in the Nigerian polity.

The event was worth attending, if only to have the pleasure of encountering and hearing Professor Tam David-West, the former petroleum minister and a professor of virology, University of Ibadan telling the assembled youths what misconception it was to believe themselves leaders of tomorrow rather than those of today. He said their leadership role began there and then, as they prepared for tomorrow. He regaled us with rather indiscreet funny stories of incredible political shenanigans and peccadillos in the corridors of power.

In his address, the Vice President of the National Youth Alliance, Mr Paul Odafe Utho, said the organization was seeking to serve as an umbrella body for youth groups in Nigeria, unifying groups and galvanising them into complementing one another in the task of nation building. The theme of the Summit was Today’s Leader, Tomorrow’s Future (Synergising and Harnessing our Strength for a Better Tomorrow).

Utho reminded the summit that political and opinion leaders were wont to admonish the youths of the period that they were the leaders of tomorrow. He proceeded to ask many pointed and passionate questions. When, he asked spiritedly, would the tomorrow of our youths come when our leaders were busy recycling themselves and grooming their own children to take over the reins of power from them? When would the tomorrow of the youths come when 65-year-old men paraded themselves as youth leaders? When would their tomorrow come when political parties created ‘youth wings’ to silence the voice of the youths in the society? He said the same names he heard of the people in power while growing up as a young man were still the same people being recycled in the corridors of power today.

“When we celebrated the return to democratic rule in 1999,” he said, “I was 14 years younger. I am now 14 years older without much to show for it.” It was alarming that youth employment continued to rise despite the claim of growth in the economy. And while over 50% of Nigerian youths were unemployed, he said the collaborators in government continued to loot the treasury and flaunt their ill-gotten wealth in our faces. He spoke of his feelings of outrage over a media report at the obscenity of a man spending over N2Billion on his daughter’s wedding in a foreign land, and the insanity of having one hundred and fifty private jets in a country where the average Nigerian could not boast of three square meals a day.

Finally he said that it had become obvious that for any progress to be made as a nation, change must occur, and that was why they were all gathered there; to be the change they craved, and to make the change. They could all stand around, stamping their feet and protesting that the government was failing them, or they could go out and offer the solutions. That was what the National Youth Alliance was trying to do; not wait for another removal of fuel subsidy before their voices were held, but to rise up to the challenge of nation building, put away ethnic and religious sentiments, and chart a new course for the nation by closing ranks and working together to see the Nigeria of everyone’s dreams.

But until those solutions are offered, a whole generation in-waiting will continue to linger around, hanging about useless utilities and near broken down infrastructure dreaming about the future they could have, not in their country, but rather in the United Kingdom, Canada, United States of America and now, Australia, regardless of the cost of their visa bond!