The night crawled by gently like dripping raindrops, the moon set in place, birds chirping happily and the stars set in array in their galaxies. It was a cool and beautiful night with dark shades around the corners of the street. In one of those corners, a dim light revealed a tall,
muscular and dark figure in a frantic rush to get home. His name is John and from his looks, one would ascertain that he isn’t a happy youth. Having been raised in a poor family with no formal education, he grew up always feeling odd and different from other kids in his slum. In that little darkness, John managed to find his way home. With his heart so heavy and burdened with the daily challenges of life, he couldn’t sleep throughout the night. The sad
memories of his upbringing, poor family background and no formal education kept flooding his mind.
So frustrated with his poor life, he decided to take the rage on his poor father who laid peacefully in the sitting room in a deep sleep.
For a while, John thought to himself “ of what other way can I get out of this miserable life than ending the life of the one person who
brought me into it”?
He summoned up courage, took a bold step towards his sleeping father and with a cutlass in his right hand butchered the old man to death while he slept peacefully. It was only after his arrest and the pronouncement of the
death sentence penalty in a court trial did John realize that he was responsible for his own life and the direction it led him to. These were his own very last statement before he went to join his father
“ if only I knew what I know now, that I was responsible for the way I responded to situations around me, I would still have my father alive and I would have been a better
contributor to the society”.
As a young Nigerian youth and a potential leader, I sit quietly sometimes pondering and asking myself some questions about the fate of
the common Nigerian youth in this precarious times we are. As a growing leader who spends some time thinking about the fate of our future leaders, it never ceases to amaze me how things have suddenly changed.
What keeps me awake some nights is the level of moral decadence that has befallen us in our society, the high-handedness and corruption
in virtually all sectors of our economy. This leaves me asking one question; what happened to our values? What has gone wrong with the same good values we are supposed to uphold and pass on to the future generations? What has our schools and churches been teaching to our young ones? What has the family which is the basic unit of the society been doing to bring up our children in a rightful way?
The average Nigerian youth is taught to make it by hook or crook. Why the decay in our morals and values? Nigeria is a land flowing with
milk and honey, blessed with a lot of natural and Intellectual resources. But why do our Secondary schools have to engage in examination malpractices? Do our teachers also forget to instruct students of such schools that it is evil to indulge in such acts? Or do the School management indulge in this act just to promote the name of the School and make some money?
What about our University education? The misappropriation of funds, corruption in offices,
sorting of courses and the sexual harassment of female students by lecturers. One of my lecturers once told me of how good and peaceful this country used to be in the 1980s. Does any Nigerian youth feel the pain I feel
when I see things go the wrong way? I know there are some people who feel the same way.
This is a wakeup call to all Nigerian youths. The truth remains that we cannot become the great future leaders of tomorrow if we do not first re-examine our lives, our society, we need to take an inward look at our values. We need to have a rethink and ask ourselves if this is
the kind of country we want to leave for our children and great- grand children. This
is no time to recount blames. Even though some of our leaders in the past didn’t perform well and probably things got bad, does that
mean we will accept it whole heartedly? No, evil only prevails where good people do nothing.
I see a calamitous end for our Nation, our land, our youths and our children if something drastic is not done to remedy the current
situation of things. This is a call for effective leadership from the Nigerian youths, a call to serve our Fatherland, a call to move this
country to a higher ground and a call to have a happy end.
If you are touched as a Nigerian youth reading this, I think you need to act. This Nation is falling apart, it is up to the youths to assemble every facets. The idea is not to abscond from the country, but to stay back and fix it. We have to fix to fix back our country, we have to take
initiative. It is up to the Nigerian youths to move this country forward.
It is in us, we have to take the risk and make this Nation a great one indeed. Not just
for ourselves but for our generations to come. It is not enough to attend a university to earn a degree; it has to reflect in our daily lives, in the
way we relate with one another and also in our various leadership positions.
After all, in the end, the Ultimate question wouldn’t be how much properties, certificates or money we acquire but how we effectively managed the resources at our disposal to touch people’s lives.
Wake up Nigerian Youths! The time to act is now!
Compiled by Ochuehi Chukwuma Franklin.
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