Opinion: Consolidating the struggle: Nigerian youths and the need to rally across all divisions
By Ebere Onwudiwe
In the #EndSARS protests, we have just had a glimpse of our youth’s possibilities for nation-building; the determination to create a functional country out of a dysfunctional one.
When the politicians of a country become divided continuously in terms of how to move their country forward (by amending the Constitution or restructuring), that’s a sign that the disease of dysfunction has crept in.
In Nigeria, division among our citizens is perhaps the most critical obstacle to national progress and development.
But we are not the only country in which people are divided by wealth, class, or politics.
It’s just that the elevation of the politics of cultural identity complicates our situation.
What is suitable for all of us, viewed through cultural identity (ethnic and religious identity), suddenly becomes an Us vs Them issue.
The promotion of an Us vs Them mindset is the biggest obstacle to youth unity in Nigeria and our political elite’s biggest trick against the country’s youth.
As one member of the elite political class recently argued, there is an egotistical pan-Nigerian coalition of ruling elites that is not public-regarding.
Osita Udoka, a former minister of Aviation in the Goodluck Johnathan administration, beautifully illustrated the dynamics with two personal examples that most people can relate to during this year’s October 1 talk at The Platform.
He revealed that when he was doing business with high government officials as an Exxon Mobil official, all the government officials requested oil jobs in Exxon for their children.
None ever asked for Exxon’s high paying jobs for members of his constituency.
However, when he became the Federal Road Safety Commission commander and was able to dish out only menial jobs, the same ruling elite asked for jobs for their constituents.
There is no surprise here. But it exposes a unique variant of state capture birthed by the excessive self-absorption of Nigeria’s elites.
This type of systemic corruption is evident in the near-total exclusion of the children of non-elites from the choicest positions in all the top agencies of government from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to name just a few.
While all these suggest a type of systemic political corruption, it cannot mean that the children of the elite, who are beneficiaries of it, are in any way unqualified.
Far from it, they are usually very qualified professionals, the type who led the highly organised and disciplined #EndSARS protest.
Besides, that is not the essence of the minister’s worry. It is that the ruling coalition in Nigeria does not mean well for Nigerians.
He implies that their selfish conduct contributes to a class division of Nigeria’s youth, a group already divided by geography and cultural identity.
During the recent #EndSARS protest, the divisions played out when the so-called hoodlums and thugs (the unemployed children of the poor) were used to disrupt the peacefully protesting youth (including the children of the elites).
The leadership of Nigeria’s youth, who want change in Nigeria through protests, cannot succeed without forging a national unity of Nigeria’s young people across geo-political zones, cultures, and across education and economic classes, the haves and the have-nots.
The resultant common purpose is a prerequisite for Nigeria’s youth to take over political power through the democratic process in 2023.
The instrument of divide-and-rule or divide-and-conquer should be familiar to our educated youth.
It was the very successful policy of British take-over of Nigeria in our history books.
After the scandalous shooting of protesting youths at the Lekki toll gate, some Nigerian government officials made a mea culpa in the media, apologising for that crime against democracy and development.
My advice for the youth is to move on, and in the spirit of the late Dr. Tajudeen Abdulraheem: organise, don’t agonise.
READ ALSO: Opinion: #EndSARS: What did our leaders learn?
In the division of Nigerian youth between the educated and uneducated, the employed and unemployed, it is the burden of the knowledgeable and the employed among Nigeria’s youths to put heads together and figure out how to build concrete solidarity with their less fortunate brothers and sisters across the cultural and geographical divides of this country.
In a nutshell, I say to the young people in our six geopolitical zones: Seek ye first the unity of all Nigerian youths, and the kingdom of Aso Rock shall be added unto you.
