SIR: Recently, the Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, delivered a lecture titled “Reflections on Values and the Building of A Successor Generation in Nigeria” at the Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti where he talked extensively about the need to build a successor generation and the values befitting of such a generation.
Going through the text of the lecture, I couldn’t but present the position of my generation – the younger generation. The truth is, my generation is not aware of any successor generation in the making.
My generation knows three (3) generations in Nigeria:. The first is the real generation. This is the first generation of educated and prominent Nigerians, the generation of the likes of Herbert Macaulay, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikwe, Anthony Enahoro, Tafawa Balewa…This is the generation that worked for and witnessed the birth of the entity called Nigeria. This generation loved Nigeria and Nigerians so much so that it gave the next generation free education, first Television station in Africa, Cocoa House Ibadan and many more. This generation carefully planned for its young by ensuring that education became a right and not a privilege. Unfortunately, the military did not allow this generation to finish its good work.
The second is the their generation. This generation rates itself as the best in everything while shrouding its activities in secrecy and creating the impression that my generation (the younger generation) is unfit and out-of-place. Ironically, this is the generation that the likes of Baba Awolowo gave all to mentor – the generation that goes to class in the morning only to return and find its room swept and its bed laid. This is the generation that enjoyed free education, had enough freedom to indulge in campus politics and from there found their different leanings whether as marxists, capitalists, socialists… This is the generation that Nigeria gave almost all to make comfortable, but is now giving out nothing to the generation after it, save hardships, stifling poverty, mental degradation…
Reknowned playwright Wole Soyinka tags this generation a wasted one, but I’d rather call it a wasted and a wasting generation.
My generation feels the hard sole of the boots of the members of this generation. Rather than mentor, they are taming my generation to act and think like zombies. My generation remains a boy at 30 because he still stays with his parents and because no one asks his opinions even in matters that solely concern him. Erudite Professor Jide Osuntokun during the lecture noted that the problem with his generation is that it plans for my generation without making us (youth) stakeholders in such plans.
The question is, how would they know what my generation knows when they never ask or involve us? Instead, they mock us for attending ill-equipped schools which in fact were made so by the several unworkable greedily conceived policies of their generation.
My generation has been left to founder and flounder. While the thugs among us are being rewarded by their generation, we, the good and cultured ones, watch helplessly, hoping hopelessly against hope that someday someone somewhere would remember and honour our talents, potentials and loyalty.
Let us continue to question, challenge and reject the decision of their generation to keep rewarding the thugs among us while the cerebral ones are daily scorned.
• Fola Davies
Ikere, Ekiti State
