THE NIGERIAN YOUTH OF TODAY: A SICK GENERATION
Youth life is the best, the rest of life is useless, once it is gone, it’s never coming back. A young mind, they say, is a wonderful mind. It is full of powerful kinetics strong enough to drive a nation to her greatest height and her deepest doom if wrongly directed. At young age, you lay foundation, set goals and achieve your dreams because you have a strong body, mind, soul and spirit to do it. The rest of your life, you spend trying to perfect your achievements and make up for your mistakes. I take a look at every male and female Nigerian between under the age of forty-five and my heart bleeds. Because to say we are bad is an understatement, to say we are not reasonable is not enough for we are sick.
Oh my God…….. Sorry I couldn’t hold back the tears. It is very painful and disturbing, realizing the fact the youth of today are leaders of tomorrow and the future we get is product of the today we build. To talk about the future is rather too far because our action today determines the present situation of our father land. You are not getting me, right? Take a look at the it from this perspective; the fashion, clothes, hairstyles that are in vogue twenty, thirty years ago are no longer there. Why? Is it because the people that did it are no more or does not like it anymore? No, it is because the youth of today no longer accept it. What is in vogue is what you and I accept. The status of a country is a direct product of the mind set up and action of that country. Thus, I weep for my dear mother land.
I wonder every day and night the kind of nation we are building when the outrageous, insatiable, uncontrollable desire of our youth for ‘glamour and glitters’ have become a cankerworm eating deep into our societal base and destroying our moral existence. Nigerian youths of today live in the fantasy of a regular cash flow and crazy glamour that they no longer know the differences between a good cash flow, riches and wealth. Neither do they know how to go about it. What a sick generation?
Twenty years ago in Nigeria, young graduates might want to take to crime due to inability to get a means of livelihood or unemployment but today many Nigerian youth have become full-blown criminals even before they have a credible certificate or try a means of livelihood. Scammers, drug traffickers, petty thieves and armed robbers roam our street and they all want to blame it on two things; poverty and unemployment. Is it? I think not, because if it is, I wonder what level of poverty would make a seventeen year old secondary school leaver invest thirty thousand naira month on browsing the internet all in the name of scamming. And what unemployment are we talking about here? He is not even old enough to be gainfully employed.
Political thugery is now a popular means of survival among the youth. Some of these thugs will even proudly tell anyone that they are trying to build a successful political career. But, is there any politician in the world today that made to the top through political thugery? I don’t think so because a natural born leader will not stay among the crowd. Some would say I don’t have a option, but I always tell them; you do, you are only making a wrong one.
Teenage pregnancy, teenage sexual molestation and child labour are but a popular topic round the world but I am not too sure of teenage prostitution------ That is in vogue in Nigeria. Or what do you want call a seventeen years old Nigerian girl that will lay with sixty-five years old man all for money. I used to pity them because I believed it was born out of frustration and poverty. I was wrong because getting close to a good numbers of them I realized all they spend their earnings on are expensive jewelries, phones, and clothing they are not due for-----Greed.
People want o blame the wayward way of life of Nigerian youth on stars on television but I say it is the Nigerian youth that do not know what to learn. Jim Iyke spent weeks in the location perfecting his act as a wayward notorious cultist to teach Nigerian the effect of being one but Nigerian spent their precious time importing the act into their way of life. Is that Jim Iyke’s fault? Criminals, drug addicts,ex-cons turned rapper in the U.S are not sagging because they want anybody to emulate it but because they are used to it. This is an act reputable young Nigerians from good homes believe to be civilization.
I cannot but cry day and night thinking about it. I could not find the ‘why’ why Nigerian youth are like this. I pray every time to God for divine intervention. I could see nothing but a doom of a future when our generation becomes leaders or else something is done. Nigerian youth are sick, we need a cure! ! !
My Grandpa once told me a story that long time ago, a very wealthy man called his son that he would like to send him on an errand to a neighboring kingdom. The kingdom was about three day’s journey from their kingdom. The child agrees to go on the journey the next day. Early in the morning the next day, the son went to the stables and pick one of his father’s horse and set to leave but the father ask one of his to stop him. He asked why and the father answered “return my horse and go on foot”. The boy returned the horse and left on foot. 
