Nigeria: The youth must face the challenge of IBB

Where’s the future?

A nation’s future can be measured in the dreams and aspirations of its young generation, once again a cabal of malevolent power brokers are ready to take away the new, fresh, invigorating and change that Nigeria needs to race into the 21st Century and claim a piece of national significance and pride in global history.

A great challenge has been thrown down to our future that faces a bleak, regressive and dark course of events if we allow ourselves to be subsumed into the fiefdoms of megalomaniacs who have no interest in the progress of Nigeria than to plunder its abundant mineral resources and frustrate its greatest asset, it people and most especially its youth which constitute the majority of her population.

Has-beens in wannabe clothes

These “has-beens” are the crux of our political class who have been ex-this or ex-that from the military hierarchy, old representative roles, crooked business people all of whose names we have heard before, time and time again; many have been around since before we were born and are still around hugging power, position, influence and process.

They were there in power before and their activities have done Nigeria no good, they are here now, and Nigeria is faring no better, if they were to be here in the future, they have no track record to give us any hope for improvement, progress or change – they are the forces of derogation, denigration, destabilisation, destruction and desperation that have plagued Nigeria since its independence.

A existential plague

It is time to eradicate this plague forthwith, this is time for something revolutionary, like excising a cancer with surgery rather than the palliation of pain with the administration of analgesics. There is nothing better of the devil we know, if we know that the devil brings evil beyond comprehension – a new force must rise and that force is amongst the youth – they cannot afford to be beaten down by the system and its protagonists as inexperienced and ill-equipped for leadership.

A sign that those leaders of the past have failed in leadership is that they have not been able to groom leaders from amongst their followers either for the better or the worse – their selfish, self-serving and conceited ways meant they have left legacies of the negative that have become the bad stereotypes of everything Nigerian that foreigners seem to see.

The past haunting the future

Chief amongst these is General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida [1] (retired, also known as IBB), once the president of the country between 1985 and 1993, a time that saw such radical change in Nigeria for the worse from the economy through the ascendancy of corruption as the life-blood of every faction of society, the mass exodus of its precious youthful talent to a botched electoral process that presaged the advent of the despotic Abacha era.

This man is planning a come-back to leadership on the ticket of the most inimical political organisation to Nigerian’s future, the ruling party and if he cannot buy that platform, one of the other parties would mortgage the future of Nigeria for a chance to have a plunderer in charge to dole out the largesse of Nigeria’s bounty like he has done before.

The biggest onslaught on the country has come from an interview he gave to the BBC News Hausa service recently where he said [2] “we have seen the signs that they are not capable of leading this country and so, we feel we should help them.”

He offers no new help too

That is too little too late, when he was in government 24 years ago, he had 8 years to help the youth see their great potential in future in a place called Nigeria, he had neither the wherewithal and persuasion give this vision to us as we entered our 20s with aspirations and dreams – in the end, he oversaw probably the greatest exodus of people for the great Nigerian dream who are scattered around the world now in their 40s and very few returning because they have significant ad laudable contributions building the economies and resource pools of foreign countries.

Just like ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo before, they have not been able to give way to the youth whilst doing nothing for the better of its assets – the story goes that when Obasanjo was Head of State he visited a primary school in 1976 and said to the pupils “You are the future of our great country, Nigeria”, in 2006, a pupil observer of that event said, 30 years on, we have that selfsame person in leadership.

That is where the future of Nigeria has been hamstrung, in the hands of the so-called experienced who have no new ideas, no vision, no mission and a personable inclination to convey a sense of aggravated entitlement to every decision-making process and position that matters in Nigeria so as to continue to thwart every progressive move and darken every light of inspired thought for change.

Time up for them and time now for the youth

Nigeria today however still has great youthful resources of successful, able, inspired and resourceful people; they have in all their endeavours in other walks of life shown themselves full of purpose and vision that a country like Nigeria needs at this time of her history – they can lead and lead the way to the promise of a country we are proud to call our own anywhere we live in this world.

Let us call time on these people and let us do it now.

Sources

[1] Ibrahim Babangida - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Nigeria: “My Regime Was Better Than Now” – Babangida | AfricanLoft