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The Youths Must Arise in 2019!

Whilst addressing stalwarts of his political party over dinner, the Nigerian President revealed an insight into his thought process when making the statement he was in no hurry to do anything.  He in one breath prised open a dissonance between him and the governed, his past promises of change and the reality. Whilst the President may affect imperviousness and lethargy masked as thoughtfulness and consideration, the youths of Nigeria are not fooled.  Some might suggest that It only goes to disguise his helplessness and the out of depth with national issues at hand and conundrum we face as a nation.

Now I let you into my own personal story.  After my father’s death, young and helpless, impaled by grief, immobilised by circumstances with odds stacked up in my path. Progress, development and chances of a break-through in life became greatly diminished. A Harmattan period laced with heavy fog filled the skies above and the Saharan fuelled dust choked out any hints of hope. But in the darkest of hours, something planted by my mother kept the flame of hope burning and alive.  

My own history challenged me that the walls of dissonance and insensitivity can be torn down but that task is never easy.  True progress will require constant work and sustained sacrifice. Today with the apparent concern of many youths about the progress of Nigeria I project my story on to its problems, its frustrations and its tragedies with an unstinting belief that it can and will overcome.

For twenty-three years, I dwelt abroad in my early youth, but not too distant from the scene of Nigeria’s devastating stagnation and pervading cynicism. My relatives and friends ensured that I maintained a watching brief through my regular visitations.

So today in this write up I sound a clarion call to the youths of Nigeria, those who are dissatisfied with the current status quo and raise the following rhetorically. With many doubting that this government can address the potential of the question called ‘Nigeria’, to those who assert that our country will only end in sorrow and tears and blood, this piece challenges that assertion.

In 20I0, I lost my beloved twin, Folashade Feyisara and was convulsed and imprisoned by grief, more traumatic than the loss of my father and it took me so long to recover from it. My life was in shambles and it took prayers and counselling to arrest my slow descent into depression and to set me free from its shackles. My work and ministry were affected and it appeared there was no way forward, as I stumbled around blindly and into a wall of darkness. Today I still continue to feel the effects of her absence, the power of the present silence of her voice, one so complete and assuredly speaking to us from the past.

My country Nigeria has also faces so many traumas, so many false dawns and is in a slow decent into anarchy. I believe it can draw a leaf or two from my present circumstance.  So today the ownership of this piece really belongs to the long suffering Nigerian youths, those who are subjected to the daily scandal of mis-governance, clannishness, to those who deserve better healthcare, to the child who has a right to decent education and also the family who simply want to live in security.

The pathway ahead for the youths remains hard, your ascent steep, and you may not get there with one election, but I am filled with more hope now than ever before that you will get there and you will reclaim our voice. I do not in a thousand years suggest that piece conceived in the depths of my anguish with this current administration should end in the social media.  But I am certain that this piece can create a space and awareness for the youths to challenge the status quo make the change Nigeria so badly requires.

So today to the youths I urge, realise the coming election of 2019 is your chance to reclaim your voice, to answer the call,  for this is your moment and this is your time. By default, you have had bad governments because you have allowed the past and present rulers to operate on the unending margins of despair and apathy. They acquired power not because they had a genius about them but because you were asleep in deep slumber and the coalition of progressives was fractured.

In the past, I have made reference to the template of President Obama, the improbability of a black man becoming the President of the United States. I have provided a nod and wink to the near impossibility that was overcome when the first man was sent to the moon. The obstacle that Apartheid presented and the dismantling of it without a bloodbath, the impregnability of the Berlin Wall which came tumbling down! I therefore lay down a challenge to the cynics who claim that Nigeria is an impossible case and that without your abject surrender to corruption and its accompanying violence you simply do not have a chance at mounting a challenge to the status quo, represented today by the duopoly of political parties.

I ask what do you have to lose by trying? I suggest you lose more in not trying at all. I go further to state today that by helping the people find their voice across Nigeria, from Sokoto to Lagos, Kwara to Taraba, Borno to Imo, Cross River to Kano, beyond tribal loyalties of the Hausas, Efik, Fulanis, Yorubas, Ibos, Ijaws, Tivs, etc., we will be able to proclaim with all certainty and voices soaring above the skies of Nigeria that your time has come! 

Ladi Lawanson - Hon Commissioner for Transport Lagos State - designate

Ladi Lawanson a distinguished King's College Lagos Old Boy, former General Secretary of the King's College Old Boy's Association and its former Vice President has been appointed the Hon. Commissioner for Transport-designate in Lagos State.

I have known and been acquainted with him for more than four decades, he has always had boldness embroidered with courage about his person. He has throd where many have feared to explore, he is a dynamo of ideas and a grass root activist.  He has succeeded in business and triumphed in other spheres.  Through all these he has remained accessible and shifted not one iota in his personae.

I am certain, that great things await him, that good fortune and blessing will accompany him through his tenure here and he shall become a by word for creativity and innovation.  

Floreat!

Mysteries in Fetal surgery | Oluyinka Olutoye MD PhD | TEDxRVA

Oluyinka Olutoye,  Unilag Staff School Old Student, King's College, Lagos Old Boy, Great Ife Alumnus....and my classmate and oldest friend...see excepts of my book..'I found my voice'.....

"As the years rolled by I became a regular feature on the Students’ Council but this was simply because many boys did not want the hassle of being a councillor.  I took an active part in its elections, and in 1981 became a campaign manager to Oluyinka Olutoye for the post of Assistant Secretary.  ....... Secretary of the Students’ Council but I would not be held back by convention.  I had studied the contents of the constitution and I was quite clear that the provisions did not debar me.  Prior to the time, I had been intimately involved in many campaigns either as a designer of posters or a campaign manager for Oluyinka Olutoye aka ‘Toy’.... At the 21^st birthday dinner party held in honour of Oluyinka Olutoye in January 1988 and attended by his father the retired Major-General Olufemi Olutoye, the second graduate to become an officer in the Nigerian Army, I managed to give a rousing toast to ’Yinka.  In response ’Yinka said that I would have been the next President of the Students’ Union if I had not been in my final year.  It now appeared my political fate was settled."   https://www.amazon.com/found-voice/dp/1500789216

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