First October 1960 was the year Nigeria got her independence as a state with the assumption of Nnamdi Azikiwe and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa respectively in a Parliamentary system of Government which inaugurated the first republic.
Yes! This little piece is worth celebrating, but the one thousand fundamental questions the youths of Kaduna state need to ask themselves Is that, what are we celebrating in times of achievement?
Are we thanking God for enabling us to cope with our inabilities to tolerate one another?
Are we celebrating the fact that we take pleasure in the indiscrimate killings of one another in the name of religious and ethnic differences?
Or is it our unusual quest for crisis in other to use such opportunities to vandalize one another?
This simple question underbellies complex and complicated answers that till date the youth have not been able to resolve. There are also many key terms associated with the question that have not been defined by them either.
I will give instances using the words of my father and Mentor Barrister Kanyip, “Some say they are the mouthpiece of a struggle to emancipate Southern Kaduna. That’s okay. Who appointed them to be the mouthpiece? What are the duties and responsibilities of the elected members of the southern Kaduna state extraction? Have they taken over the responsibiliy to speak out for the region from the elected members”? In this context I am not referring to the youth of Southern Kaduna alone but the youth of Kaduna state at large in respective of their religion and ethnicity.
In other words, the youth of Kaduna state must first know or define who or what imprisoned them in the first place. Who is holding them enslaved or captive? Is the enslavement or captivity within or outside? What do they really want to emancipate themselves from? Do they want to emancipate themselves from political, economic, social or cultural enslavement/bondage? How do they want to emancipate themselves?
To me, the best way the youth can actualise their struggle of emancipation is through direct and practical participation in the political process; and not solely and wholesomely through the social media. Unfortunately, those among them that even attempted to bring in the real change by delving into politics were roundly and loudly rejected by the same youth at the primary elections. They rejected their peers for transient material benefits.
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The youth have the numerical strength to change any political tide, but they prefer to be used as pawns in the hands of the older politicians againt their peers. Thereafter, they will be the first to complain against the same politicians that used them. The experiences in the last primary elections are still fresh in our memory. The youth failed to get it right then. That blunder is begining to haunt them now.
Mentorship which is supposed to be a strong tool for political emancipation and empowerment has now been monetized by the youth. Any politician that gives monetary handouts to them is seen as a ‘mentor’ irrespective of the source of his income. Mentoring, to them, is no longer about learning from the mentor, but about material benefits from him.
Those among them that left certain political parties and joined other political parties in search of political relevance and greener pastures so as to broaden the political prospects and horizon are being labelled as ‘traitors’, ‘betrayers’, and ‘sellouts’.
When hunters go out for hunting, the form themselves into groups and take different routes. At the point of convergence after the game, they share the animals amongst themselves and then go home happily. What is wrong in affiliating with different political parties for a common and collective good? In this time and tide of political dynamism, mono-political culture is no longer fashionable.
I have always made the point clear that the vexed question of the youth can never be wholesomely resolved on social media; more so through fightings and insults among themselves. True change cannot be effected through this channel alone. It merely proves that the problem among the youth is not external, but internal. They are the problem among themselves, to themselves, and by themselves.
Our political elders and heroes past had their own internal wranglings and squabbles amongst themselves, but they never degenerated to the level we are presently witnessing among our youth.
Social media have been turned by the youth into instruments of self-destruction; and not instruments for self-determination.
The irony of it all is that the youth are not getting younger, but older. In the next 4 years or thereabout, most of them will no longer be youth in the true sense of the word, unless they choose not to grow in capacity and content.
Many years have gone by without any meaningful progress achieved or recorded in their quest. Instead, what the youth have been consistent and recurrent in achieving over the years are: in-house fightings, back-stabbings, insults, and self-destruction, among many other negatives.
Unless the youths of Kaduna state, come together and begin to see themselves as one. The insurgency we are experiencing has just began and will never be brought to an end.
The Kaduna state youth are still at a loss. Till date, they are yet to define their problem; and thus have no solution to it.
Time will tell…
Ahmed Usman Valentino
Department of masscommunication BUK
