Toxic Youthsphere: Building Authentic Legacies (2) -By Oluwamayowa Lala

I wouldn’t want to continue with the recent bashing of culpable youths who have misdirected energies carelessly, I think enough bashing has been done in the first part of this write up, to balance things up, I think we should further this discourse in the spirit of practicable steps towards recuperation towards prosperity.

We Nigerian or even African youths at large have been through a lot, we are operating under a very harsh environment and yet a remarkable number of us are pushing ourselves on through the thin and thick of life successfully. We keep making things happen among ourselves despite the visionless leadership we have had in government over years and if you come from our kind of background (I see myself as a semi-ghetto sort of social breed who to an appreciable extent lived through the heart of typical Nigeria reality.) You will unarguably know that we don’t like what we see in our towns, in our kind of lives, we have inevitably one time or the other gone through different mental or physical torment, why? If you have traveled through the rural areas, I have seen and worked with my peers in harsh conditions and I know what I see. Some of us will talk about that shame, the shame that screams all over you when as a graduate you are overstaying your ‘family-house’ or somebody’s house, it shrills shame in your head, shame! Shame!! And it is all written over you. You have to struggle to retain your social license, you most times have to shuffle and switch routes when you are going out or coming in because you want to avoid being seen by the same set of people all the time before they label you what you are not. You had to play some hide and seek game. Is it to sleep hungry? before I invoke the wrath of some people, let us admit that there are others who have milder or tougher stories to tell. We’ve been through a lot and yet we functioned. We have to be proud of that.

BUT BEFORE WE MAGNIFY THE EFFECT

Seeing those youthful energies, the resilience, creativity, strong-will that we youths have built in hard times. It’s time to show the toughness we’ve built over the years and I believe it will produce multiple effectiveness when we organise ourselves now and hopefully later under a favourable environment that we all hope to have. As much as it is glaring that we can magnify the effects we want as youths, the caveat here is that we need to have our energies guided properly, We must refine our operations before we set out for work.

“The first rule of any technology used in business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second rule is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency”- Bill Gates

Some people quibbled with Bill Gates as regards this statement but I won’t have time to evaluate their arguments, the lesson in the statement is important, In the light of this profound statement by Gates, I see youths as technology, we are automation working at the “speed of light”. An average youth can work 8- 10 hours making an average of 9 hours everyday, that’s a lot multiplied by millions of seriously guided youths in this economy, we should be applied to build authentic Africa, Nigeria and personal or Corporate Legacies, the only things remains that there is a need for us to perfect our operations, we need to refine, design, redesign, realign, plan the processes such that we don’t pour ourselves into bad operations to magnify more inefficiency. In January 1966, some unguided youthful energies were poured into a bad political operation- that bloody coup, it produced a very big inefficiency for this country, I maintain the opinion (until I see superior arguments) that the 1966 coup culminated into what occasioned the birth of that unfortunate process that gave us rogues, kleptomaniacs, thugs who have ever since perpetuated themselves in the corridors of power to serve themselves and their own people at the expense of the whole country, we have suffered that inefficiency over the years, it gave us most of those systemic rots we find nowadays in government agencies and the society at large.

We have to guide our efforts to ensure that we magnify efficiency by allowing serious patriotic elders with brilliant pedigree help us refine the processes or operations we are involved in, those swathes of operations we need to pour our energies into in political, business and private legacies need some elderly touches, I think it is by so doing that our persistence in investing our youthful energies can make one sure that the efficiency will be magnified to give us a prosperous society.

The new broom can sweep the room clean but the old brooms know the corners.- African proverb