Everyone these days seems to have suddenly acquired the rank of statesman and renowned diplomat. Everyone seems to know the answers to all matters of state and are fully equipped to handle delicate matters that have troubled regions for scores of years. Everyone seems to know how it should be done except of course those who we have elected to carry out the said job. It is indeed surprising that a man who seems to know what the problems of his community are would rise up and bequeath his future, mortgaging the development of his children by electing and re-electing a well known criminal to handle the affairs of his community.
Is this a curse, is it just ignorance or wilful stupidity? Like most things politics, there is no definite answer. Except of course that somehow God would deliver us from the shame we seem so anxious to throw ourselves into every four years.
Social media has revolutionized the way we communicate, news is now stupendously incandescent and its sudden flash can and would be seen thousands of miles away in an instant. Rather than enlighten and make literate it seems to have brought to the fore the sheer stupidity of some.
Reading blogs, news clips and interviews these days is one thing, reading comments underneath those blogs, news clips and interviews you come into a totally different world. A world populated by self acclaimed physicist , Doctors, Economist and Prophets.
Reading the comments left by these people is extremely worrying as it is sad. It is one thing to listen to a veteran politician try to defend his corrupt practices, it is quite another to listen to a youth in his late twenties/early thirties argue mindlessly about how there isn't anything wrong in embezzling state funds, and who mindlessly applauds impunity and corruption.
Progress and the future of a nation to a large extent depends on the calibre of its youths. Their literacy, state of mind, objectivity, hunger and desire for progress comes to the fore and from what I have seen and heard from my fellow youths I can only shudder in horror.
Our illiteracy is deep, lack of objectivity is legendary, dependency on God to do everything for us from buying us soap, to fetching us water, to giving us a bath and even drying us up afterwards and all we have to do is go to church on Sunday, and attend midweek service if we want Him to bless us by doing our shoe laces for us after He has dressed us up.
We seem to have given up the gift of thought, we have sold away our right to common sense, all we aspire to now seems to be sudden piles of money, everything else is secondary even the right to life and the right to spend that money. The Nigerian youth seems to be held enthralled by corruption, lack of an appetite to ask questions and most annoying of all the insatiable desire to recognize buffoonery with loyalty and credence as long as the buffoon in question is an elected official.
We have problems, and the least of these problems is the state of the Nation at present, compared to the mindset of the youthful population who; as is gradually being recognized, are inadequately equipped to take on or handle their own affairs.
Domination by a foreign entity is one thing, domination by ones own kind is sad. It leads to a deep seated lack of confidence, a gulf in reality slowly builds up and then the inevitable castration of ones desire and drive to be progressive.
In this 21st century, the Nigerian youth is held enthralled by corruption and recklessness. Shock therapy is one way, albeit a crude way to bring a man back to his senses. But then, would you shock vitality back into a gelded stallion? How do you suddenly inspire a rush of blood in the veins of an Eunuch? I sincerely fear what may be when we are inevitably shocked out of this comatose state, if ever we are..
The gelding process is a one track road, and for each right we give up or each method of suppression we give into we take a step further down that path of inevitability. From then on what used to be a roar would be a whine, what used to be a neigh of freedom and accomplishment would become a grunt of contented delusion.
Whatever it is, it is ours to decide.
