By Dan Amor
I am first and foremost a Nigerian child. Then I am a
depressed Nigerian youth. Depression obviously has its several roots: it is the
doubtful protection which comes from not recognizing failure. It is the psychic
burden of exhaustion, and it is also and very often, that discipline of the
will or the ego which enables one to continue fighting, continue working, when
one’s un-admitted emotion is panic.
And panic, it is, I think, which
sits as the largest single sentiment in the heart of the collective members of
my own generation. Today, I find myself in an overwhelmingly urban society, a
distinctly urban creature. Thus, I am adequately informed of current
developments in my country. I am anxious, angry, humorless, suspicious of my
own society, apprehensive with relation to the future of my own country.
Quixotic, yet optimistic, I am on
the prowl for the immediate and remote causes of our national predicament. My
nostrils fairly quiver for the stench of some injustice I can sally forth to
condemn. Devoid of any feeling for the real delineation of function and
responsibility, I find all the ills of my country, real or fancied, pressing on
my conscience. Not lacking in courage, I am prepared, in fact, to charge any
number of windmills.
But in so doing, I am often aggressive and
unapologetically critical of my own society, critical of what I need to live
by, critical sometimes of God’s own choice of creating me a Nigerian. You may
wish to call me names. But do not call me a crank or an eccentric. For, on a
very rough and ready basis, you may well see an eccentric as a man who is a law
unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is,
insists on laying it down to others, like some dictator of many a black nation.
What makes me this way? Certain
of the causes are external, temporary and relatively superficial. Certain are
religious, ideological and tribal. I do not intend to mention the devastatingly
unsettling effects of the military on the politics, the economy and the overall
destiny of my country, Nigeria .
Yet, underlying the very intensity with which I react to these things, there
are obviously far deeper and largely subconscious sources of discomfort to
other members of my forlon generation as well. But there is a sense in which my
anxiety is further aggravated by the current conspiracy of silence among the
youth in my country. And, of course, there is a disconcerting irony involved
here. Our silence has developed into a commodity market. I am therefore
compelled to ask: can’t we reflect faithfully, but in expanded, oversized
dimensions, like shadows on the wall, the bewilderments and weaknesses of
parents, teachers, employers, molders of opinion, leaders of government,
captains of industries?
I come from a nation that is affluent yet the people
poor and insecure. I sense in our rulers (looters), and they feel in
themselves, the material satiety without the balancing influence of any inner
security. Imagination, fears, hopes, desires all these are overstimulated, and
hopelessly stimulated by daily events in my country. Our nation is under siege.
Hence, there are no adequate countervailing sources of strength, confidence and
hope for the Nigerian youth. There is no strong and coherent religious faith,
no firm foundation of instruction in the nature of the individual man, no
appreciation for the element of tragedy that unavoidably constitutes a central
component of the Nigerian predicament, and no understanding for the resulting
limitations on the possibilities for social and political change.
The Nigerian youth is a victim of
the appalling shallowness, of the crooked religious, philosophic and political
concepts that pervade his society. Social evolution demands that the youth has
the sociological right and responsibility to inherit, improve and transmit
worth-while characteristics and values that would enhance and sustain social
development and security so that generation after generation would aspire to
better things. Yet, unfortunately, the present day Nigerian youth is evidently
and sadly over-weighted with short comings and disabilities- evidences of
undesirable heritage.
The average Nigerian youth of today has not inherited
enviable moral discipline which is the foundation of true citizenship whether
we operate at the family, village, ward, local government, state or national
level. Regrettably, we are all witnesses of the fact that we are today living
in a dangerously threatened country. We are viciously confronted with a
peculiar but violent and rapacious enemy-the old generation which does not want
to grow old-the evil past which wishes to dominate the present and usurp the
future.
We are here languishing in a ready-made and almost imported society of
falsehood and propaganda, of want, hate, insecurity, conflicts, injustices,
frustrations, vaulting and ungodly ambitions, corruption, stupid materialism,
political anarchy and jingoism, wars and advanced cannibalism, man-made
catastrophe and delusion. The youth must sincerely reflect on the background
and heritage with which we are armed to face the patriotic challenges of the
twenty-first century, a role which we do not even understand not to talk of
commitment to it. Much of the savagery that has engulfed Nigeria today
could be explained in the greed and base conduct inherent in the characters of
our elders. Look at how a cabal in the Executive and a cabal in the Legislature
are overheating the polity!
At this giddy moment when our country seems to have
set on a batty course of self-destruction, Nigerian youths must come together
and cut a deal and to react to this umbrage. We must not only reject any
attempt by those who stole our national patrimony into their private pockets to
use us to destabilize our country; we must hunt them down anywhere they are
found. We must insist that all the expired war-lords and looters intent on
further wasting the youths in another civil war to massage their fangled
ambitions and maladroit hues are given the Jerry Rawlings treatment and their
looted wealth retrieved.
We must stop
allowing ourselves to be used as agents of destruction by these shameless and
sadistic pretenders who have brought us to this state of arrested development.
There is a need for the youth to confer hope on this despondent nation to
demonstrate a common political savvy irrespective of our tribe or religion.
Nigerian youths who constitute over 60 per cent of the electorate must spare
the nation the ghoulish stare of insecurity and civil war in our country by
resisting any attempt by the political class to once more push us into the
abyss. Real liberation will come when we refuse to be manipulated by our
self-serving politicians.
*Dan Amor,
a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja
No comments:
Post a Comment