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Stakeholders without Stake
By Chido Onumah
Newsdiaryonline Thur Aug 11,2011
August 12 is
International Youth Day. It is the culmination of a year-long
celebration to highlight the important role youth play in our
world and in the life of every nation. This role was captured in
the 2010 International Youth Day message of UN
Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, when he noted that “Young people
are making important contributions to our work to eradicate
poverty, contain the spread of disease, combat climate change
and achieve the Millennium Development Goals. I call on Member
States to increase their investments in young people so they can
do even more."
Nigerian youth will join
their counterparts around the world to mark the International
Youth Day. As our youth celebrate, it is also important that
they reflect on the state of the nation. Nigeria is making
international headlines for the wrong reasons.
Poverty is still widespread in the country
notwithstanding its huge human and material resources; diseases,
including many that are nonexistent in other “developing
countries” are still common; and at the rate we are going, we
may need a millennium to achieve the Millennium Development
Goals.
We still rank high on
the global corruption index. According to reports by Save the
Children, “Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and also
has the continent’s highest annual number of newborn deaths.
Each day over 800 newborns die. Many of them die at home,
unnamed and uncounted”. Nobody knows the number of graduates in
the country, much less how many are employed.
But this is no time for
our young people to lament and raise their hands in resignation.
What an occasion like today’s offers is an opportunity for the
much talked about leaders of tomorrow to reclaim today. And
unless they do that, that tomorrow will be a mirage. The history
of modern African States is a rich narrative of the heroic
struggles of visionary youth, inspired by their opposition to
colonialism and imperialism.
During this period, the
legendary commitment of youth all over Africa led to the speedy
end of colonial oppression. Many of these young people who did
not have the luxury of information and communication technology,
met the historic challenge of their time: decolonization. Five
decades later, it looks like Africa may have to call on the
power of its youth to effect the second liberation of the
continent. Frantz Fanon, the Martinique intellectual,
psychiatrist, and revolutionary, is often remembered for these
famous lines: “every generation must, out of relative obscurity,
discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it”.
To bring it home, one
can ask: what is the historic civic challenge of our time as we
navigate this disorderly and impoverished political and social
ambience called Nigeria? If decolonization was the agenda half a
century ago, we can correctly conclude that the historic
challenge of our time is none other than leveling the huge
misery wreaked by mass poverty in the midst of plenty.
Clearly, the Nigerian
youth have their generational challenge cut out for them.
Today’s youth, in the milieu of the new information and
communication order and social media, can be said to enjoy an
advantage. Events around the world have shown that social media
can alter the social and political order of nations. Youth power
can therefore deploy social media as a ready channel for
liberation in a country where citizens still grapple with the
guarantee of basic rights.
The challenge here for
our youth is to get involved. They must see themselves as
stakeholders in the quest to build an egalitarian society and as
stakeholders there can’t be room for complacency for their own
sake, and the country’s sake. They must rekindle the spirit of
popular struggle. Even in the midst of pervasive hunger and
deprivation, they have to organize, organize, and organize.
Granted that our youth
have been de-civilised and brutalized by years of misrule, there
can’t be any justification to remain an onlooker in the task to
liberate Nigeria. Where is the outrage against the egregious
corruption in the country? Why are there no protests and marches
against the political ineptitude and destruction of our national
psyche by our so-called leaders? Why has a once glorious
organisation like the National Association of Nigerian Students
(NANS) become a mere shadow, engaged in inane shows, its leaders
content at giving awards to State governors and acting as
sidekicks to all manner of politicians.
The foregoing, to me,
encapsulates the reality and dilemma of the Nigerian youth. But
it doesn’t have to be so. The political and social indifference
must end. Nations are built through sacrifice and struggle. As
the harbinger of the glorious dawn, our youth can’t settle for
anything less. Our youth can’t leave the struggle for the heart
and soul of this country to the Achebes and Soyinkas and
Balarabe Musas, who have put in more than five decades of their
lives to redeem our blighted land.
For Nigeria and its
youth, there is “the fierce urgency of now”. That is why we are
gathered here today under the auspices of the African Centre for
Media & Information Literacy, to look at social media and the
African youth and set an agenda for the 21st century. The
Nigerian youth must reclaim this country and our humanity.
The question every young
person under 35 years ought to be asking each passing day is:
what is the mission of my generation? Am I going to fulfill that
mission or betray it?
conumah@hotmail.com
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