by Unwana Umana
In Nigeria, we have leaders like President Muhammadu Buhari who orchestrated military coup d’etat, governed states, became ministers, and caused the civil war in their 20s, 30s and early 40s, ruining the country with mismanagement of resources, corruption of tribalism and religious politics.
Today, the country is ruining young persons (teens, 20s, 30s and 40s) thanks to having the same circle of leaders for 50 years, who have championed selective development and industrialization, an example is the issue of (lagos sea port monopoly and generational oil theft).
Grandfathers, who ruined the country as young men. Today, they will tell you the young Nigerian is lazy, senseless and sturbborn but how can you wake up to a job that does not exist?, why should you respect the status quo that deserves to be insulted and discarded like a badly concocted non inclusive constitution.
I know millennials with double honours and still depending on pocket money. Everyone can’t be an entrepreneur, some are to build systems, some to manage, some to start, some to market. Africa’s problem had been two evils, the evil of colonialism, using force to remove African leaders who meant well for the country, replacing them with greedy evil coup masterminds.
When you wake up to blame the African youth for living in poverty today, for not having the right education, for being a fraudster, ask yourself again, who prepared the future of this generation, who determined the privileges of this present youthful generation.
To this youthful African generation, we must rise up, discard our mandates to political parties, we must choose amongst the youth, our next leaders, with the aim of creating an all inclusive constitution, a political party by the status quo cannot save us, only a people revolution can and a life ban on self imposed generational leaders from politics.
I borrow a paragraph from this article, Africa: A Continent Drenched in the Blood of Revolutionary Heroes published in the African Cradle.
“Lumumba’s death in 1961 followed on from that of the opposition leader of Cameroon, Felix Moumie, poisoned in 1960. Sylvanus Olympio, leader of Togo was killed in 1963. Mehdi Ben Barka, leader of the Moroccan opposition movement was kidnapped in France in 1965 and his body never found. Eduardo Mondlane, leader of Mozambique’s Frelimo, fighting for independence from the Portuguese, died from a parcel bomb in 1969.”
Unwana Umana is a writer, lawyer, and entrepreneur. He works with start up companies at the Roothub.
Visit his website, www.unwanaumana.com. Connect with him on Facebook.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
