Taking the 10-year-challenge further

The social media has been awash recently with the ‘10-year challenge’ which requires that people juxtapose pictures dating to a decade to a recent one. It has been fun and we have enjoyed it. People are really fascinated by the evident changes their lives have witnessed. Too many people are carried away by the facial and physical transformations that have occurred to them. Not many people will look at it from a dialectical angle. There can be movement without progress; there can be growth without development. Let us take the challenge to our political scene and see what has changed. Let us consider the quality of our lives. What has changed?

In the next few weeks, we will take on a greater challenge. It is a challenge that will decide how the society will look like in the next few years. It is a challenge that will either endorse the continued looting of our collective resources or ensure the redistribution of wealth to the people who own them.

If you want to hold a device in the next ten years, and see a reflection of a transformed society, join the struggle to enthrone a socialist-oriented party that will ensure that ‘every man is a king’ in his own society. In the next ten years, we will still be here, if this space has not been consumed by greed and selfishness of capitalism, to re-evaluate how our last ten years have been. If we take up the challenge of electing credible leaders, you may not need to go to the fifth house waiting for when they will put on the generator. You may then go to school with the assurance that you will meaningfully contribute to the society’s growth after graduation. You may then be assured of a sound medical attention without leaving the shores of the country. We may then beat our chest that we have a territorial space uncontrolled by imperialist policies.

Let us take the challenge beyond a challenge. We must always remember that life is a ceaseless change.

Matthew Alugbin wrote from Oluyole, Ibadan, Oyo State