OPINION: How Do I Rescue Nigeria, My Country? By Dan Amor

I am first and foremost a Nigerian child. Then I am a depressed Nigerian youth. Depression obviously has its several roots: it is the doubtful protection which comes from not recognizing failure. It is the psychic bur­den of exhaustion, and it is also and very often, that dis­cipline of the will or the ego which enables one to contin­ue fighting, continue work­ing, when one’s un-admitted emotion is panic. And panic, it is, I think, which sits as the largest single sentiment in the heart of the collective members of my own genera­tion.
Today, I find myself in an overwhelmingly urban so­ciety, a distinctly urban crea­ture. Thus, I am adequately informed of current develop­ments in my country. I am anxious, angry, humorless, suspicious of my own society, apprehensive with relation to the future of my own coun­try. Quixotic, yet optimistic, I am on the prowl for the im­mediate and remote causes of our national predicament. My nostrils fairly quiver for the stench of some injustice I can sally forth to condemn. Devoid of any feeling for the real delineation of function and responsibility, I find all the ills of my country, real or fancied, pressing on my con­science. Not lacking in cour­age, I am prepared, in fact, to charge any number of wind­mills.
But in so doing, I am often aggressive and unapologeti­cally critical of my own soci­ety, critical of what I need to live by, critical sometimes of God’s own choice of creating me a Nigerian. You may wish to call me names. But do not call me a crank or an eccen­tric. For, on a very rough and ready basis, you may well see an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having deter­mined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others, like some dictator of many a black nation. What makes me this way? Certain of the causes are external, tempo­rary and relatively superficial. Certain are religious, ideolog­ical and tribal. I do not intend to mention the devastatingly unsettling effects of the mili­tary on the politics, the econ­omy and the overall destiny of my country, Nigeria. Yet, underlying the very intensity with which I react to these things, there are obviously far deeper and largely subcon­scious sources of discomfort to other members of my for­lon generation as well. But there is a sense in which my anxiety is further aggravated by the current conspiracy of silence among the youth in my country. And, of course, there is a disconcerting irony involved here. Our silence has developed into a commodity market. I am therefore com­pelled to ask: can’t we reflect faithfully, but in expanded, oversized dimensions, like shadows on the wall, the be­wilderments and weaknesses of parents, teachers, employ­ers, molders of opinion, lead­ers of government, captains of industries?
I come from a nation that is affluent yet the people poor and insecure. I sense in our rulers (looters), and they feel in themselves, the material satiety without the balancing influence of any inner securi­ty. Imagination, fears, hopes, desires all these are overstim­ulated, and hopelessly stimu­lated by daily events in my country. Our nation is under siege. Hence, there are no ad­equate countervailing sources of strength, confidence and hope for the Nigerian youth. There is no strong and coher­ent religious faith, no firm foundation of instruction in the nature of the individual man, no appreciation for the element of tragedy that una­voidably constitutes a central component of the Nigerian predicament, and no under­standing for the resulting lim­itations on the possibilities for social and political change. The Nigerian youth is a vic­tim of the appalling shallow­ness, of the crooked religious, philosophic and political con­cepts that pervade his soci­ety. Social evolution demands that the youth has the socio­logical right and responsibil­ity to inherit, improve and transmit worth-while charac­teristics and values that would enhance and sustain social development and security so that generation after gen­eration would aspire to better things. Yet, unfortunately, the present day Nigerian youth is evidently and sadly over-weighted with short comings and disabilities- evidences of undesirable heritage.
The average Nigerian youth of today has not inher­ited enviable moral discipline which is the foundation of true citizenship whether we operate at the family, village, ward, local government, state or national level. Regrettably, we are all witnesses of the fact that we are today living in a dangerously threatened country. We are viciously confronted with a peculiar but violent and rapacious enemy-the old generation which does not want to grow old-the evil past which wishes to dominate the present and usurp the future. We are here languishing in a ready-made and almost imported society of falsehood and propagan­da, of want, hate, insecurity, conflicts, injustices, frustra­tions, vaulting and ungodly ambitions, corruption, stupid materialism, political anar­chy and jingoism, wars and advanced cannibalism, man-made catastrophe and delu­sion. The youth must sincere­ly reflect on the background and heritage with which we are armed to face the patri­otic challenges of the twenty-first century, a role which we do not even understand not to talk of commitment to it. Much of the savagery that has engulfed Nigeria today could be explained in the greed and base conduct inherent in the characters of our elders. Look at how a cabal in the Execu­tive and a cabal in the Leg­islature are overheating the polity!
At this giddy moment when our country seems to have set on a batty course of self-destruction, Nigerian youths must come together and cut a deal and to react to this umbrage. We must not only reject any attempt by those who stole our national patrimony into their private pockets to use us to desta­bilize our country; we must hunt them down anywhere they are found. We must in­sist that all the expired war-lords and looters intent on further wasting the youths in another civil war to massage their fangled ambitions and maladroit hues are given the Jerry Rawlings treatment and their looted wealth retrieved. We must stop allowing our­selves to be used as agents of destruction by these shame­less and sadistic pretenders who have brought us to this state of arrested develop­ment. There is a need for the youth to confer hope on this despondent nation to dem­onstrate a common political savvy irrespective of our tribe or religion. Nigerian youths who constitute over 60 per cent of the electorate must spare the nation the ghoulish stare of insecurity and civil war in our country by resist­ing any attempt by the politi­cal class to once more push us into the abyss. Real liberation will come when we refuse to be manipulated by our self-serving politicians.