FEATURE ARTICLE

Thursday, October 15, 2020
[email protected]
Arizona, USA
NIGERIAN YOUTH MOVEMENT: SPEAKING WITH ONE ORGANIC VOICE #strongertogether!

n unity and popular parlance, any attempt to show muteness or forcefully halt an idea whose time has come may boomerang. In a nutshell, when people speak with one collective voice, the voice is amplified beyond the rhetorical statement. This is the more reason why President Muhammadu Buhari, the current president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria must be swift and upcoming to respond to the grievance of the youth in Nigeria. The clamor for good governance from the plebeians must not be taken with levity or for granted.

With the admission of truth and no equivocation, President Buhari is sitting on the a keg of gunpowder! No power or mightiness can stop an idea whose time has come. Police brutality against its citizens is a crime against humanity. Corruption is a crime against citizens. Nepotism is a national and moral crime against other people in the united states of Nigeria, and Nigerian geopolitics. Consistent power and electricity failure is an abysmal failure of any government. Famished roads are crimes against the taxpayer's citizens and users in any country. Poor education is a crime against the future of every poor Nigerian.

Reassuringly, the youth seems to be speaking with one voice. That voice must not be stifled or suppressed by the state machinery or be discouraged by the cynics' pessimism. There is nothing people can't do if they do it with unwavering togetherness. When people speak with one voice to make an undeniable statement, the collective voice becomes powerfully uncrushable. The Nigerian youth is currently taking their future into their hands. This is what we have been consistently preaching and clamoring for our youthful population in Nigeria over the years. Nigerian youths constitute 75 percent of the Nigerian population. This is huge to dismantle any stalemate and maladministration in Nigeria.

Rightly and auspiciously, this is the time for the youth to jettison the past; come together to etch forward and reclaim their future. Gowon was approximately 32 years old when he became the Head of State of Nigeria. The youth has the power and desire to make real change. With the ongoing organic protests all across the geopolitical spectrums in Nigeria, and without anyone (leader) to corruptly target for corruption and enticement of recipes of corruption, the Nigerian youth is making a quantum leap to recoup its future! I feel encouraged and reassured. How I wish I could be among the protesters!

Meanwhile, the expected change we labored and sweated for this administration seems to have been thwarted by the power-that-be and the muting attitudes of the President Buhari to amplify his successes and failures. Yes! There is little Buhari can do constitutionally, but there is much he could have done justly, morally, and reasonably to meet the yearnings and aspirations of the Nigerian youth. There are general decadence, hopelessness, and despondency in Nigeria. People are suffering needlessly amidst the aplenty. They must come together to move forward. The recipes for successful protests: there must be an expectation, enforcement, and consistency; one collective voice, no naughtiness and bickering, no open-wall for political intruders, and avoidance of all other ingredients of failures. The youths must begin to believe in themselves; forget accidental differences in religion, politics, and tribe.

Going forward, the youth must be undeterred in its demands to move from this hyped "wasted generation" to a promising future. The future leadership of the Nigerian youth should be (today) now---as we must resolve not to buy to the deceitful slogan of "leaders of tomorrow." The current agitation is a wake-up call for the complacency of Buhari's administration to meet the reasonable but good demands for good governance. It is a legitimate protest being carried out by a collective voice. The youth must avoid their protest from being hijacked by the hoodlums and crooked politicians preying on the current situation in the country. Candidly, the long-term anticipatory success of Buhari's administration is being consumed by the shoddiness and complacency of his handlers. The president must refine his catatonic state of mind and react swiftly and favorably to the sufferings of the hapless people.

Conclusively, the youth in Nigeria constitutes the chunk of victims of police brutality, poor conditions of living, squalor, nepotism, and ostracization from participating in the government policies that affect their lives, etc. Nigerian youth must form a coalition of responsible leaders to form a formidable group to wrestle power from the political elites and class I have been calling as "the men of yesterday." It's heartwarming that the Nigerian youth movement has evolved from a slumbering stance to reclaim its mismanaged and mangled future. Let's encourage and commend them. The current freshly awakening youths are the magnificent representation of the progress of Nigeria.

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