Nigeria: The youth must face the challenge of IBB

Where’s the future?

A nation’s future can be measured in the dreams and aspirations of its young generation, once again a cabal of malevolent power brokers are ready to take away the new, fresh, invigorating and change that Nigeria needs to race into the 21st Century and claim a piece of national significance and pride in global history.

A great challenge has been thrown down to our future that faces a bleak, regressive and dark course of events if we allow ourselves to be subsumed into the fiefdoms of megalomaniacs who have no interest in the progress of Nigeria than to plunder its abundant mineral resources and frustrate its greatest asset, it people and most especially its youth which constitute the majority of her population.

Has-beens in wannabe clothes

These “has-beens” are the crux of our political class who have been ex-this or ex-that from the military hierarchy, old representative roles, crooked business people all of whose names we have heard before, time and time again; many have been around since before we were born and are still around hugging power, position, influence and process.

They were there in power before and their activities have done Nigeria no good, they are here now, and Nigeria is faring no better, if they were to be here in the future, they have no track record to give us any hope for improvement, progress or change – they are the forces of derogation, denigration, destabilisation, destruction and desperation that have plagued Nigeria since its independence.

A existential plague

It is time to eradicate this plague forthwith, this is time for something revolutionary, like excising a cancer with surgery rather than the palliation of pain with the administration of analgesics. There is nothing better of the devil we know, if we know that the devil brings evil beyond comprehension – a new force must rise and that force is amongst the youth – they cannot afford to be beaten down by the system and its protagonists as inexperienced and ill-equipped for leadership.

A sign that those leaders of the past have failed in leadership is that they have not been able to groom leaders from amongst their followers either for the better or the worse – their selfish, self-serving and conceited ways meant they have left legacies of the negative that have become the bad stereotypes of everything Nigerian that foreigners seem to see.

The past haunting the future

Chief amongst these is General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida [1] (retired, also known as IBB), once the president of the country between 1985 and 1993, a time that saw such radical change in Nigeria for the worse from the economy through the ascendancy of corruption as the life-blood of every faction of society, the mass exodus of its precious youthful talent to a botched electoral process that presaged the advent of the despotic Abacha era.

This man is planning a come-back to leadership on the ticket of the most inimical political organisation to Nigerian’s future, the ruling party and if he cannot buy that platform, one of the other parties would mortgage the future of Nigeria for a chance to have a plunderer in charge to dole out the largesse of Nigeria’s bounty like he has done before.

The biggest onslaught on the country has come from an interview he gave to the BBC News Hausa service recently where he said [2] “we have seen the signs that they are not capable of leading this country and so, we feel we should help them.”

He offers no new help too

That is too little too late, when he was in government 24 years ago, he had 8 years to help the youth see their great potential in future in a place called Nigeria, he had neither the wherewithal and persuasion give this vision to us as we entered our 20s with aspirations and dreams – in the end, he oversaw probably the greatest exodus of people for the great Nigerian dream who are scattered around the world now in their 40s and very few returning because they have significant ad laudable contributions building the economies and resource pools of foreign countries.

Just like ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo before, they have not been able to give way to the youth whilst doing nothing for the better of its assets – the story goes that when Obasanjo was Head of State he visited a primary school in 1976 and said to the pupils “You are the future of our great country, Nigeria”, in 2006, a pupil observer of that event said, 30 years on, we have that selfsame person in leadership.

That is where the future of Nigeria has been hamstrung, in the hands of the so-called experienced who have no new ideas, no vision, no mission and a personable inclination to convey a sense of aggravated entitlement to every decision-making process and position that matters in Nigeria so as to continue to thwart every progressive move and darken every light of inspired thought for change.

Time up for them and time now for the youth

Nigeria today however still has great youthful resources of successful, able, inspired and resourceful people; they have in all their endeavours in other walks of life shown themselves full of purpose and vision that a country like Nigeria needs at this time of her history – they can lead and lead the way to the promise of a country we are proud to call our own anywhere we live in this world.

Let us call time on these people and let us do it now.

Sources

[1] Ibrahim Babangida - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Nigeria: “My Regime Was Better Than Now” – Babangida | AfricanLoft

Nigeria: New Blood NOT Incredibly Bad Blood

Selling bad blood

I remember using public transport facilities in Lagos where snake-oil merchants and charlatans invaded our comforts with remedies that they portended would wipe out every disease.

What most people seemed to want to get rid off was bad blood, not so much the emotion but the belief that there was some stream of blood in their systems that was bad and could be urinated or excreted out after consuming one of these many concoctions.

Since none of the potions came with any scientific study or traceable detail enough to accost the peddler in case of poisoning or injury to self, I found it strange that anyone would be persuaded to buy the stuff.

Persuaded they were and God only knows if they lived to see the next day after taking the “right” dosage, but then the medicine was not necessarily a cure for death.

Bad blood leaders

When in comes to leadership in Nigeria, there are many of those leaders of the past who have been streams, rivers, if not oceans of bad blood and rotten influence in that country.

The only remedy to which is a complete venesection with the infusion of new blood; it goes without saying that Nigeria needs new blood, in thinking, direction, vision, opportunity, leadership and future.

The thought that one of those old leaders of yesterday can contend to have a second bite at leadership is deplorable and unwarranted – it is amazing that these same people have not been able to raise capable lieutenants that convey a sense of greatness for Nigeria.

It is really the height of hubris that some of these people do not think anyone else is able to do that job except themselves but as Nigerians have seen their track records and they have nothing good in store for Nigeria.

Gallons of bad blood

Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida [1] is incredibly bad blood; his ascent would only poison the already weakened state of Nigeria, hastening it to an avoidable death but we must rise to ensure that his quest is foundered on the rocks of retribution and justice long before he finds a platform to stand on.

This is the man who inflicted on Nigeria the worst possible travesty of popular suffrage; if he had cancelled the elections before we voted, it would have been understandable, in fact, if like Myanmar he annulled the elections after all the results had been declared at least we would have known where we stood on that matter – he cancelled the election with half of the results released leaving us all in a quandary about what might or might not have been.

There is no way that we should stupidly be oblivious of history and allow this nasty man to earn the rewards of democracy when he himself when he had the power to ensure its validity abrogated the wishes of Nigerians like some omnipotent demigod beyond the passions of mere humans.

Demand new blood

It is time for all those oligarchs, kleptomaniacs and political jobbers to go and be a closed chapter of our history; they have been recycled so many times that no more useful purpose can found of them, it is like what once could have been used beneficially as manure has completely lost that function for destructiveness of life and soil.

Nigeria deserves better than the old, tainted, failed and wanting, we demand the new, the refreshing, the hopeful, the visionary, the able, the honest, the fair, the just, the competent, even the young – in short, new blood.

There should be no doubt in every living Nigerian’s mind that Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida has failed to live up to any of those aspirational standards and there is no redeeming factor that indicates he has the ability to offer us something beyond machinations of his “evil genius”.

Source

[1] BBC News - Former leader of Nigeria Babangida to run for president