Nigerian youths should refuse to be led by their noses (I)

I have always advocated for Nigerian youths to not allow anyone make their minds up for them.

It is true that old Nigerians have done themselves many injustices over time. But given the relative age of our union, I believe the young people of today should first ask to be given a chance at running the country or to organise themselves to so do, rather than listen to old tales of woe and betrayal from some old people who will not tell the whole truth about the past.

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I have come to realise that we Nigerians have some basic problems. We get easily carried away especially when things do not go right for us for a while.

I look around the big cities of Nigeria, at all the mansions and other possessions of our people and then I wonder why so many people are complaining. People own these assets. People have made money from this country. But how come many – millions – perhaps most people are stuck in bitter complaint mode?  Is it that we easily dump the blame for our personal mistakes on the country?  Are we attuned to the fact that life is about ups and downs?

This is a subject for current and aspiring leaders to ponder, for without understanding the psychology of the people no one can lead successfully. As things stand, almost all leaders get disgraced out of office in Nigeria and their lives often turn to hell on earth. Sometimes I wonder whether it is a worthwhile venture, to try and lead here. Perhaps that is why only charlatans are successful; they know they don’t intend to achieve anything for the people.

The other day, I saw a news item about Nigerians whose monies are stuck with MBA Forex, a Port-Harcourt-based company that had been at the forefront of forex trade in the country. These smart boys collected hundreds of billions from Nigerians, young and old, under the promise of trading foreign exchange. When we hear that there is free or easy money to be made somewhere, we should be wary. These boys even sold the idea that Nigeria could curb unemployment through forex trading.

The kind of asinine ideas one hears in this country is mind-boggling.  But Nigerians rushed in en masse and as we read this, the Central Bank of Nigeria is trying to see what it can rescue from the company’s operations in order to compensate the customers who were taken for a ride, with perhaps tiny fractions of their investments.

The real news for me was that Nigerians could afford to gamble with N171 billion in a single company! Many of these ‘investors’ chasing huge interests and returns had families whom they ignored while they stashed monies in get-richer-quick schemes. Some had friends whom they declined to assist. Go to them with a business transaction that could add value and some of them will launch into long tales of woe, cursing the leaders and the country and everything in between. Yet they had staked such amounts which they eventually lost. I concluded that quite a number of us are actually mean. It seems we are more interested in acquiring to pose. Not even the gloom of the COVID-19 and the flimsiness of life that we have seen have taught us lessons.  Many of these people will even continue to curse Nigeria!

Seeing the positive

As a corollary to calming down on all the cursing of the country and permanent complaint mode, I also want the youths to give themselves a chance and see if they can still make something good of the diversity of Nigeria.

You see, it may not be as enjoyable as we think it will be if we create countries where only our type of people – same language and same religion – exist. The logistics of achieving that is a different ballgame anyway.

Whereas it seems that the Yorubas will easily create a mono-cultural society and maybe a nation therefrom (barring protests from outlying ethnicities within Yorubaland who don’t speak Yoruba such as Badagry people), religion is another platform for division. Given how militant many Yorubas are on either side of Christianity and Islam, there is a likelihood of tensions arising in an Oodua Republic based on religious differences. We can see what is happening in Kwara presently.

The camaraderie we used to enjoy in the days of innocence has been replaced with suspicion. Many people input all sorts of spiritual meanings to everything these days. If your neighbor gives you meat or food from their religious festival, many Yorubas now believe the food is contaminated with some sort of spiritual poison. Back in the day, we looked forward to such gift.

Nigerian youths must go back and find that mutual trust. And they may find out in the process that they do not need to begin the process of cannibalising the country as proposed.

I recently returned from Kano where I spent a longer period than I ever did there and learnt so much.

When I got a Bolt taxi to take me to Igwe’s Palace (a restaurant run by Igbo people obviously), at Sabongari, I ended up with one interesting guy named Salisu. Very articulate and forward-looking, this Salisu, who is also a student at the Bayero University, Kano. He is even a class representative.

Do not begin to imagine some smooth ‘aje-butter’ or middle-class person, because when he picked me up for the airport as arranged the next day, I found out that Salisu left Kano at 17 after his School Certificate exams, to become a shoemaker in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State. From Yenagoa he went to Port Harcourt, where he lived on Warri Street. He sold off his shoemaking business and began a business selling used cement paper which he said are bought by companies manufacturing mosquito coils up north.

I learned from him that the coils are made from paper pulp soaked in some mosquito-repellent chemicals. Now, Salisu in his accent-laden English is extremely intelligent. Someone from this kind of background is using words like ‘getting the dynamics’, and so on in a regular sentence. I’ve seen a lot worse elsewhere where there is claim to literacy.