EDITORIAL: Path to a true nation: The Nigerian Youth (2)

Recent demographics put the Nigerian youth population at about 130 million, averaging about 70 per cent of the total number of people in the country.

Whether in the north or in the south, in the east or in the west, Nigerian youths are exposed to the same sort of deprivations, the same sort of inclemency from the authorities, harsh treatment from the state security apparatus as well as harassment and molestation from the police for just being young, adventurous, vibrant and prosperous.

Whether they are southerners or northerners, Nigerian youths are badly neglected. This is not how to build a country!

Fortunately, the #ENDSARS protest by the youths directed against police brutality that rocked the country recently is a reawakening and a reaffirmation of their centrality in national development.

By this protest, the youths are presenting a mirror for the nation to see its nakedness and destructive capabilities.

We think that this process of reaffirmation and national rejuvenation should be allowed to play itself out for a meaningful reconstruction to be achieved.

This does not imply support for escalation and perpetuation of the protest. What is called for is the quick intervention of President Muhammadu Buhari.

He needs to concretely reassure the youths, as he tried to do in his recent address to the nation on the police brutality protest, that their demands deserve attention and that they need to retire to the safety of their homes and await expedited resolution of the crisis.

The states should apologize to all Nigerians for shamelessly mismanaging the COVID-19 palliatives provided to alleviate the hardship of the global coronavirus attack.

No attempt should be made to justify the misappropriation of what was donated to alleviate the sufferings that attended the pandemic outbreak and lockdown.

There should be assurances of massive job opportunities and employment for the youths all over the country, such as the proliferation of computer and IT villages or silicon villages.

The government should also expedite action on policy frameworks which can be monitored by youth associations for continual innovation and progressive empowerment of the people at all levels of the Nigerian society.

No further attempts should be made to violently break the protest as was dastardly and ill-advisedly done at the Lekki Toll Gate.

The young protesters are evidently firm in their commitment to change things in the positive direction, regardless of the attendant collateral damages provoked by state agents and the deployment of miscreants by mischievous individuals with sinister agenda.

The President should engage the youths constructively and with empathy and make a pledge to compensate families of the victims of the Lekki killings with a promise to ensure that justice would be done.

That would calm frayed nerves and restore sanity to the land. While it would be ill-advised and calamitous for the government to resort to more strong-arm tactics in reining in the protest, it would be tantamount to atavistic overkill for the youths who organized the peaceful protest to continue on a warpath, seeing the painful unintended consequences arising therefrom.

Nigerian youths have rekindled hope that the country can be rescued from the hands of the forces of disintegration.

They need to beat a temporary retreat, take stock, re-strategize and institute a culture of credible protests that hold governments and state actors to account.

The enlightened category among them committed to peaceful engagement with state agencies and institutions should do a re-evaluation of the different categories of the youths and the limits of the capacity of each category to constructively hold governments to account by identifying and articulating the palpable and local cruelties and insanities they are subjected to and specify their demands accordingly.

From the #EndSARS protest, four categories of Nigerian youths are clearly distinguishable.

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There is the educated category daily harassed, molested and brutalized by the police that planned the initial #EndSARS protest, admired even by the authorities largely from the southern part of the country.

There is the educated category that feels protected by the SARS but want a reformed and well-equipped police force to mitigate the daily killings by criminals and bandits in their environment; who are largely from the northern part of the country.

There are the hoi poloi used to unleash anti-#EndSARS protest violence in some northern parts and Abuja.

The final group is made up of the miscreants in some southern parts paid by devious politicians to scuttle and discredit the #EndSARS peaceful protest.