The Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic), Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Ogun State, Prof Bolanle Akeredolu, on Thursday, said Nigeria needs an “urgent and desperate rescue “in view of the myriad of challenges confronting the nation.
Akeredolu-Ale, a communication expert and researcher, spoke in Abeokuta while delivering a keynote address titled “Nigeria in turmoil, Nigeria adrift, Nigeria at 61” during the 2021 Independence Day Anniversary Lecture organised by the Nigerian Labour Congress in Ogun State.
She said Nigeria “is filled with corruption, injustice, conflict, violence, fear, anxiety, insecurity and terrible human suffering.”
The DVC also identified ignorance, impunity, greed, escalation of materialism and worldliness, as some of the factors contributing to the “predicaments of the Nigerian situation.”
Akeredolu-Ale also lamented that, Nigerian economy after 61 years of independence, “is ailing, in particular, and far from responding appropriately or adequately to the needs of Nigerians.”
She said, “The contemporary situation in Nigeria is very terrible, both in the scope and depth of the depravity. Nigeria today, more than ever before, is in turmoil and adrift. As mentioned earlier, it is filled with corruption, injustice, conflict, violence, fear, anxiety, insecurity, terrible human suffering The Nigerian situation is in need of urgent and desperate rescue, correction and rehabilitation, if the progression to total failure, collapse and ruin is to be stopped and reversed.
“The love of money, worldly gadgets and pleasures of the flesh and the resulting escalation of the desperate rat-race to acquire these things have overwhelmed our ethical concerns, in particular, the concern for justice, truth, compassion, harmony and peace.”
Akeredolu-Ale traced causes of Nigeria’s challenges to “the lapses which have occurred and are still occurring in the raising, guidance and grooming of children and young people or to the reaction of youth to prolonged abuse by the parent generation and by the prevailing economic, social and political order, or to both.”
She noted that young Nigerians have been “alienated economically, socially, culturally, emotionally and mentally.”
Akeredolu-Ale submitted further, “The youth situation is characterized by pervasive parental neglect and/or misguidance; acute shortage of opportunities for effective all-round development; full exposure of youth to serious value crisis, even as institutions and processes of moral education and guidance are themselves becoming weaker and less effectual.
“Nigeria is not only abusing its youth, it is harassing, frustrating humiliating and demoralising them, and in very large numbers too.
“Young people, in large numbers, in Nigeria and all over the world are bombarded with messages emphasizing competition, consumption and ‘the good life’ but most of them are finding that they lack a fair opportunity to compete successfully, just as they lack the wherewithal with which to participate in the consumption spree or in the good life which such participation is to bring.
“What is happening now, it would appear that young people in Nigeria have had about as much as they would take from an abusive and very frustrating life.”
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