Nigerian youths are speaking and speaking emphatically, incessantly and increasingly trenchantly essentially the same things. Nigerian leaders need to heed what they are saying.
In totality, Nigerian youths from separate areas of Nigeria are saying profound and fundamental things. I don’t have to agree with them before I try to understand what they are saying. My profession as a media person conditions my mind to peruse what people communicate, what people say or write or do, and to seek to discern meanings and trends in them.
Various Nigerian youths from almost all parts of the country are questioning the validity, the value, and the existence of Nigeria and her leaders. Our leaders, especially our President need to stop, listen and ponder, not only our president, those whom God has elevated to the position of prominent citizens, leaders and rulers among us must stop, listen and ponder and then try to respond appropriately and with the best intention to produce the best results therefore.
Ignoring our youths is tantamount to great risk, our President no doubt ignored our youths and those that lost their lives as the protest for ‘Good Governance’ last, despite the loss of lives of innocent citizens who came to exercise their fundamental rights as enshrined in section 40 of the nation’s constitution, precisely the slaughter of youths in Lekki tollgate last Tuesday, Mr. President ignored their souls? Is it because they have no ‘big men’ from their family? Did our President mean well for the youths for our country?
We are taking grave risks by ignoring or trivializing the noises emanating from the ranks of our youths. If we laugh off these noises in the belief that they will peter off and vanish, we may be making mistakes that could prove to be of cataclysmic consequences. No, we cannot afford to miss the message in these noises. They do not look as if they will go away. I repeat: we need to listen.
Kparobo Ehvwubare, wrote via [email protected]
