Never Again

“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation” –Nelson Mandela (Mundiba)

It was president of the United States of America Barrack Obama who said in his speech at the UN general assembly in 2009, “the time has come to realise that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people” how true is that word to young Nigerians and Africans in general, never again we our own children forgive us, if we fail to save a dying generation; our cities are filled with many who are not ready to die for a cause, anti-hero, religious hypocrites;  never again should we wait on the west to solve our problem, because they are beginning to have theirs waiting for us to come help them out, the tide is turning to Africa to save the world.

The on-going  economic recession, global warming, and terrorist concern around the world, though the situation looks terrible but we are not powerless against them, the strong forces of hope in the name of innovation and entrepreneurship  are showing us what can be done.

The assault of this bandit on human dignity and well-being demands a youthful response; they joy I have is that for the last decades I saw many young Nigerians and Africans, setting out to this challenges; the time of discussing conspiracy theory is over, time to leave tribe/religious sentiment is now, look at Southern Sudan for instance after getting the support of the rest of the world and were given independence, the next thing is to start fighting themselves at tribe level, haba! Africa for how long; If we fail at this point I do not know the excuse we will give to our children.

The above lines were from my work journal (I was Born here…So I live here…So will work for its Survival) for a decade (2001-2011); however as the struggle for fuel subsidy entered its second week today 16th January 2012, I thought it wise to add my voice to what some associates of ours in the social work sector/youth advocacy has said, we the young persons must now leave the larger crowd and decide what we want after this struggle, is it just to revert back to 65 naira pump price for PMS and leave out the bigger issues of creating an enabling environment for young innovators, social entrepreneurs to contribute their quota to Nation building. We are all talking now, in this huge crowd, where am seeing even the good, bad and ugly, worst-off is that oil importers, depraved politicians, and  their sons and daughters are our cheer leaders; those that brought us here in the first place.

Am not against the occupation, but my concern is with the way we are empowering hoodlums to have their Christmas party on our streets in the name of occupation, cyber activists hacking military network, when we are almost an end users of all social media tools(Facebook, 2go, Skype, twitter etc)#Just thinking!am joining my voice with the many youth leaders that have suggested that we as young persons, clearly sit down and make our own demand now before the ‘big boys’ settle themselves, they might revert back to #65 pump prices, but we our time, life lost, resources and energy have worth the struggle if the issues of enabling environment (Sanction functioning society) has not been created. Like I said above… never again we our own children forgive us, if we fail to save a dying generation.