Listen to me. Be it APC, PDP, SDP and other parties. The 60s, 70s and 80s in this country are the same. They fall into the same bracket of nonchallant attitude towards the youthful generation that is a commercial bank or their own micro finance bank.
They hate us, the younger ones in 50s and below. They disdain us. They have no plans for my generation because we allow them mess us up all over again and still clap for them. I am currently a part of Government, there’s an old Constituency that hates me not because I do not have the skill to square it with them but because of my age.
So all these fights you’re fighting, I will not pretend that we (myself) are the main victims.
And forget Goodluck Jonathan, he would not have been better. He still flies our Presidential Jet on our current budget. He was and is never out of power. In fact, in the arrangement he would have his own interests settled.
In the end, every old person in Nigeria has been fighting for their pockets, for their oligarchic Constituency and generations yet unborn. They have been fighting for their ethnic group (s) even though we know those who ruled this country more with a toga of their ethnic power boasts of the highest number of people with poverty dancing naked in their homes and streets.
What about the minority? It has served only the majority interests. When I say majority interests, I do not mean road infrastructure, water for life, food for feeding and economy for business – I mean, the “who gets what, why, when, and where” Constituency of politicians who are godfathers in their various dens.
They have broken our society. Turned my generation into beggars instead of leaders. They have turned my generation which lacks basic needs into internet fraudsters because their basic ambition for survival is in ruins of no sight of return. Whilst they hold laptops and scam others because our morality leash is different, the oligarchy unleashes a battalion of ruthless people on them to still condescend their humanity of simply wanting a good life because the governments succeeding themselves only provided money for votes and strikes for our education, arming the bad education unit in order to keep us slow-poke in making the choice of who rules us with quality.
When I talk of these young people, I am not talking of the Sowores, the Kingsley Mous, the Fela-sweet-talking-Duros, I am not talking of the Deji Adeyanjus – they don’t know shit beyond comparing us to a working system because they are privileged to also have benefited from the old oligarchy. I am talking of the young person who has demonstrated how to SPEAK FOR NIGERIA without speaking for his ETHNICITY AND POCKETS first. I am talking of the young person who has demonstrated that religion is your personal private property nobody should tax you for in dealing with other humans. I am talking of the young person who is currently in power without a godfather and fears no godfather. I am talking of the only person who is in power but can speak for the youths who are all victims like myself.
I am talking of the Young person who can speak for the women without placarding them as kitchen ornaments forever.
I am talking of the young Nigerian who is not a politician, an activist or a social constructionist who knows the dos and donts but only ends up speaking storey building grammars without any corresponding action.
I am talking of a young Nigerian who has never worked to install any of the old people we have sitting as presidents as an activist.
I am talking of the young Nigerian who is not a serial party decampee and political prostitute.
I am talking of the Young and healthy Nigerian who does not care of what the people say but what the vision says.
If you look, the 60s, 70s and 80s ruling us and the retired ones slapping their counsels at us are all products of the same age, time and guilt. They are all people who are in one way or the other accomplices.
Do not judge me, I cannot resign to be calling them names. I have a family and mouths to feed, a future to nurture because if I do resign so you clap for me, I will become another Yahoo boy with a dagger of SARS officers looking for me. They create us, then kill us for what they turned us into. It is a systemic crime. A generational crime.
Even yourself as you’re reading this, you’re confused. You’re confused because you do not know what to believe. You do not know what to believe because they used religion, ethnicity and other monsters to divide us the young people who are bigger in education and population. We are now the minority as majority.
So when I defend Governor Bello because he is young, you call me names without understanding why I do what I do. You expect Governor Bello as a youth who should know better according to you to transform his enclave into a national tourist center only because he is “young”, it means there is a collective agreement that the old has failed us. But has Governor Bello not even tried?
He has given me, the under 30s a platform to have a voice to demand our expectations. The same Governor Bello you crucify is like the Yahoo Boys who are killed by SARS officers due to the years of neglect from our Nigerian leaders who left nothing for the future. Even if they did, something basic for only their children. You then ask, what did they leave for Governor Bello to build upon? What fabric of system that works did they leave for the Yahoo Boys to hustle legitimately? You can shut your hypocrisy about your morality, everyone is not a Christian or Muslim, we are first Humans. Even the religion is just for form filling, we mostly don’t understand it because like poverty, our parents passed it down to our own generation. We run with it to appear good children even when it has ruined us than build us.
What did they leave for Bello? If they did, he came into power in 2016, that was the first time a Traffic Light would be installed in Kogi State capital, Lokoja.
You’re all complaining about Ganaja village road, Lokoja roads and all. If we have had a working government or system in Kogi, should Bello be fixing roads of our state capital in 2020 when he ought to be stretching governance to the village and rural areas of an almost 4.5million population of hungry and ambitious people?
What about religion, they’ve so used it to divide us that in some Local Government Areas, if you do not have long beards, you cannot be a Chairman. If you worship a certain God, you cannot govern.
The Audus, the Ibros, the Wadas who have ruled the state, their children, in-laws and friends are still the ones recycling to come back to power with funds stolen by the parents long years ago. They pinch a little, distribute Indomies when they want to mock you as “empowerment”. You hail at them because our poverty has become so miserable that only what we fight for our basic survival- food- regardless of the protein. We just have to live.
Again, the monsters fester. We watch on.
We disrespect our young people and respect the very old oligarchy and their offspring that have kept us in absolute poverty for years without knowing.
How can we know? When most of us graduated with paper certificates without real learning because ASUU strike helped us graduate on piece-meal amnesty.
We watch on. They bring Coronavirus on us. A virus the most sophisticated nations on earth did not understand. If we had leaders who understood that every continent was created with the education to protect their environment, they would have looked into our own peculiarities. Rather, they followed CNN. Shutdown our tip-toeing economy into a state of a lifeless young boy killed by SARS officers for the uncrime of just owning an iPhone.
We wear masks. We wear it in pretense because in reality, it is “mouth masks”. Who spoke for us, for Nigeria? Who questioned anything the West dumped on us?
Just one man, Governor Bello. Whilst they congregated their committees to spend billions on treating malaria symptoms, he rejected the billions they would have sent to him, unaccounted even if it would have made his 4th generation rich for life, albeit you and I still sleeping in our confusion.
He rejected the tag for the ordinary Kogite who has no infrastructure because regardless of what he does now, it would be in deficit as they was nothing to build upon. Do you know that until 2018 before Laws that should make a state function well was signed in Kogi state? He signed 42 of them, mostly executive bills, because we only had politicians who spoke for their ethnic and Senatorial ambitions in the past without anyone speaking for Kogi. None.
They hurl media at him. Make him a constant victim of bad press. Check the entire North Central Nigeria, Kogi is doing better on her fours when you mention education, poverty statistics, peace building, security, etc. A progress from the bedlam of chaos we were in 2015.
Don’t misunderstand me, I did not say we don’t deserve better. We do, every single Nigerian does.
But how can we understand the future without understanding the past? Our past has been a gory tale of misery. Ideas alone cannot fix it. We need healing- the conscientious type that needs efforts in the brutality of pain and consciousness of active essence.
I am proud today that I can defend his “clueless government” like many newbie generation would put it. In the past, if I was not 45, I cannot defend. I am not 30 today, I can defend. That is growth. That is not cluelessness. My touch down finances would be on a younger population who are more. That is my where heart is. He is helped us to have a voice to demand.
You see this old people? They have plenty degrees and names, they have no honor and dignity. They muscle us up and confuse us to mess us up again.
Think again, in the arena of Big Brother Nigeria that kept many Nigerians distracted from their every day pain, one winner emerged. Governor Bello, a young person who can relate with what it means to be young watched the final episodes. We saw clips on him congratulating the winner greeted by a strong criticism. Check, how many Governors have urged the Iconian Laycon to be a good ambassador of his struggle even if the foundation of Big Brother offends the pretend-morality-reality of many Nigerians?
Are you tired? Come with me. This is how they hide what would liberate us inside books then owe our lecturers so they don’t teach us well, then delay our education with incessant strikes Whilst their children school in Oxford.
Ozo and Nengi was hosted in Kogi again. In a small London Standard Bar in Kogi called Crest Karaoke Bar, welcomed by the Deputy Governor of the State, Chief Onoja, video called by the Governor of the State Alhaji Yahaya Bello. Young people, shown respect. Counseled to be good ambassadors so as to dine with power. Imagine what that action has done to the self esteem of these young people.
Check others, they condescend them. We misplace the argument and insult those who truly understand.
We are at SARS movement again. Who has spoken for you? How many of the sitting Nigerian Governors have dared to speak without using proxies to support your pulse because he can relate with your pains? Only Governor Bello. The rest do not want to offend anyone because of their life long political career and the imploding 2023.
Did he care about what his party thinks for standing for Coronavirus?
Did he not watch and support the youthful program of Big Brother Nigeria?
Did he not speak for you on the #ENDSARS movement?
Look around you, who has spoken for Nigeria as the West, South and North have been speaking for 2023 when Nigerian Youths are stuck in 1994?
It is painful, I will not talk. I might also be a victim of the Kano-media-aide reality who couldn’t control his emotions. Even though I know Governor Bello would not do that, I still need to be careful with the Nigeria of my reality.
Forget who is APC, PDP or CPC, we are all victims of the years of rulership from these old people who have been speaking for only their families, religion, region and pockets.
Let me advise, the youths of my generation have REFUSED to be toyed with. Treat this scrotum with care, if not, the future is so many many things.
I am a victim just like you.
I am forever a Rebel against anything that puts my generation down.
– Promise Emmanuel (Kogi Rebel) writes from Lokoja, Kogi state.
