There is no doubt that the youths are the greatest asset of any nation. According to Jose Rizal, ” The youth is the hope of our future” just as Nelson Mandela also once enthused that “The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow”.
It stands to reason therefore that any nation that treats her younger generation with contempt runs the risk of self-destruction. From education to security and the economy, the Nigerian youth have been at the receiving end of bad governance under the APC-led federal government.
Today’s celebration of the International Youth Day therefore affords us a unique opportunity to reflect on recent happenings in our country and attempt by the youths to force a radical change in the management and attitude of the Nigerian Police through the #EndSARS protest.
Before now, we’ve had President Muhammadu Buhari in a foreign land so imprudently and undiplomatically refer to the Nigerian youth as lazy. More recently, Mojisola Alli Macaulay, a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly also described our youths in very unflattering terms.
Yet, to borrow the words of Rachel Jackson, our youth are not the ones failing the system, the system is the one failing them. Ironically, the very youth who are being treated the worst are the young people who are going to lead us out of this nightmare that Nigeria has become.
It is obvious from the #EndSARS protest that a sleeping giant in the Nigerian youth has been aroused. Just as we saw with the #Arab Spring and, more recently, the #Black Lives Matters, there is a new wave of consciousness sweeping across the world.
As noted by the popular American actor, Harrison Ford, “There’s a new force of nature at hand, stirring all over the world.
They are the young people, whom frankly, we have failed, who are angry, who are organised, who are capable of making a difference.
They are a moral army, and the most important thing we can do for them is to get the hell out of their way”.
As we mourn the death of our gallant youths felled during the #EndSARS protests by bullets fired from the guns of a reactionary military, government at all levels must respond to current realities by meeting the demands of our youths headlong. To do otherwise is to court a disaster of unimaginable proportions.
