2019 And Lost Generation Of Nigerian Youths By Bayo Oluwasanmi

Take Nigeria Back Movement led by the aspiring presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore breathes the needed oxygen into the problem of one of the most endangered species of Nigerian society – Nigerian youths. Nigerian youths have long been marginalized, long abandoned, long abused, and long disinherited by the political leaders. Nigeria is a country that devours its youths. It's a country that terrorizes its youths. It's a country that offers no hope, no life, no dream, and no future. It's a dead country full of dead youths.

Whenever I read blogs and comments of President Muhammadu Buhari's social media propagandists who spin lies and launder the image of Buhari for political make over for 2019, my heart swells and tears come to my eyes for their ignorance, miseducation, and misinformation. Their propaganda reflects a depressed and despondent, sad, confused, and a lost generation of youths. They don't know what they want, where they are coming from, and where they are headed. They can't differentiate between their political enemies and political saviors. Their propaganda is full of illuminated sadness, intellectual poverty. They are victims of ethno-religious allegiance blindly following for a lazy president for another term.

Think of this: How can any suffering and unemployed youth support Buhari for second term who in three years made Nigeria more inhospitable, unwelcome, and dangerous to its teeming homeless, hopeless, lifeless, disposable and dispossed youths? How on earth can any youth with a sense of rage and rebellion support Buhari for another four years of misery, given the injustice, neglect, and tyranny they are subjected to under the regime of Buhari? How can any rational youth support Buhari who doesn't care about them?

How can any youth support Buhari whose children are not among the suffering legion? How in the world can any youth support Buhari whose children are stowed away in comfortable palaces scattered around the world? How can any youth who cannot afford to be sick, or when sick is taken to a hospital without medicine, equipment, doctors, nurses, support Buhari for second term? How can any youth support Buhari whose son during a fall on a jolly bike ride costing millions was airlifted to Germany for treatment when youths with ordinary malaria are dying like flies?

How can Nigerian youths who are struggling in record numbers to find work, leave home, and start a family serve as propaganda sheriffs for Buhari's second term? How can youths who are stuck in N18,000 unlivable minimum wage who should be in the highest-earnings years of their life fabricate cases and causes for supporting Buhari?

It's disheartening and discomforting that some youths with poisoned opinions forced down their throats by their old oppressors questioned the experience, the readiness, and preparedness of Sowore to be the next president of Nigeria. Some out of juvenile foolishness advised that Sowore should start as a councilor or as a senator as if Buhari started his political career as a Daura council man or senator. Did Abubakar Tafawa Balewa our first Prime Minister, all the military dictators, Shehu Shagari, Babangida, Shonekan, Obasanjo, Ya'radua, Jonathan, served as councilors or senators before they assumed the presidency? Hell NO!

The brains of youths supporting Buhari's second term are notoriously more receptive to short-term rewards. Some of them reveal that people without education are like weapons without bullets. Because they lack education and political consciousness, they can't choose and seek their interests. They can't choose their ways and directions of life. They can't set goals for themselves and strive to achieve them. They can't propel themselves in the right, proper, and straight direction. That must change. The youths must be in charge of their life. The youths must decide their future. The youths must stop living like strangers and refugees in their own country.

The youths are merely being used by Buhari as political pawns. Buhari don't represent their interests. The youths are once again presented with a unique opportunity in 2019 to shake off their restrained spirit of compromise and conformity. They should refuse and reject immediate gratification of stomach infrastructure that will prolong their suffering and servitude. It's within the capacity of Nigerian youths to alter the political arrangements and government policies that work against them. The youths must be ready to liberate themselves from the compassion, complacency, and solidarity with their oppressors. In 2019, the youths have the right and power to end their decades of suffering by getting their PVCs and vote out Buhari out of office for a fresh leadership.

Nigerian youths must resolve to unleash the raw energy of youth in organizing not agonizing, and rally round a common cause that will ultimately produce Sowore as the next president. I believe it's a romantic illusion to expect Buhari to bail Nigerian youths out of their abbreviated life. The salvation of the youths lies in their hands. The lost generation of Nigerian youths must retrieve their stolen mandate from the Old Thieves. It's now or never.

Let's go there!