Nigerian Youths: Misplaced priorities and wasted years

In life, many factors contribute to either the success or failure we experience at certain stages of our lives. The environments where we were bred is one of them as it determines the people we mingled with, the schools we attended, the social events or places we visited, and so on. 

Such an environment also tells to a great extent the kind of jobs or businesses that we may likely take up as our life career. More importantly, elders and leaders are the 'role models' children see while growing up as they accord them their respect and loyalty, hoping to grow someday to also practice what they learned from their respective 'seniors'.

This is what happens in many countries especially in Africa where the youths now follow the paths of corruption, ineptitude, nepotism, lack of vision and direction, misplaced priorities, etc, which they learned from their elders and leaders.

Sadly, my country Nigeria is one of them. With its abundance of human and material resources, the country is among those with the highest level of poverty in the world. A new set of leadership emerges after elections, with the President appointing Ministers and other heads of government agencies. Regrettably, these appointees do little or nothing to justify the confidence reposed in them as they come with the sole agenda of filling their pockets, not service to the people. Rather than solving problems of depreciating standard of education, poor economy, weakening currency, bad roads, and other dilapidating infrastructure, these 'square pegs in round holes' leaders who emerged by exploiting the existing extremely poor electoral system, end up plunging the nation into a very bad state with their actions and inactions which today has bred terrorism, herdsmen attack, kidnapping, rape, election rigging, and vote-buying, cultism, increased bribery and corruption, nepotism, corporate theft, treasury looting, dysfunctional judiciary, waste of resources, etc.

It is disheartening, however, to learn that the youths, the future hope of the nation, are towing the same paths that led to nowhere, like their elders. The youths abandon critical national issues for irrelevant activities. Their passive inclination clarifies their readiness to trade the existence of the nation for unnecessary, insignificant, and morally degrading activities like the recent BB Naija Reality TV program which has literally 'stolen the hearts' of the Nigerian youths, including adults. When well-meaning Nigerians protested against the bad governance going on in the country, millions of Nigerians of all ages felt indifferent, relaxing with their reality show.

On the same TV Show, parents comfortably watch the nudeness and every other nonsense that happens on it with their children, and they do not see anything wrong with it the same way a serving Minister did not see anything wrong in ceding the sovereignty of the nation to foreigners in the name of seeking for a loan - a loan the country does not need as it has all the resources at its disposal to comfortably internally generate ten times the loan amount sought.

With such an attitude, what future does the country hold for us?

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