Of Days, bread and butter – Nigerian youth as the villain

By Tosan Blessing Harriman FCODESRIA

There is a novella titled ” Heart of Darkness” written by Joseph Conrad. It is a wordsworth classic and it came in three parts – the first part is ” Youth – a narrative.” The second part is ” Heart of Darkness” and the third is ” The end of the tether.”

Youth a narrative is an erudite observatory of the vicissitudes embedded in that category and like Marlow, the principal protagonist of the novella said in his introduction ” the conquest of the earth which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” I would have thought Joseph Conrad was too unfair to youths but doing a quick comparative analytical evaluation with the youth I see in Nigeria today I am worried how a book written to unravel life started in Liverpool in his journey towards Indonesia in 1946 can actually be right about youths of Nigeria in the 2022 and the future. Elon Musk made a statement yesterday 27-3-2022, that whereas “AGE ISN’T JUST A NUMBER: The billionaire argues ‘very, very ancient leadership’ cannot relate to the bulk of Americans.” While I am not sure Elon Musk has read this book, there is an overwhelming evidence captured in real time eventuation about the improbableness of youth and how it would be difficult to rally it to a fitting paradigm of balance, clear headedness and perceptible rescue from second guessing.

I will recommend this book to every youth who want to aspire to the saddle of greatness so that they don’t end up seeing the lights of the East like Marlow saw but did not get there with all that it began with. I think this book tells of hope desired and of a future left unattended to in a paradox of conflicted whimsical paranormal. Todays youth tells you it wants this, tomorrow it is another thing inversely proportionate to its stated desire that you find it pursuing.

A political party among the registered political parties suddenly sprung up in kano state because of the likely mobility given it by a popular kano politician to use it to achieve his Presidential aspiration but I can tell you that this party appear to be now more popular in Delta State than in tkano it recently emerged. Its chairman in Delta State is SSA to Gov. Ifeanyi Okowa who has his own bag of allergies that are likely to isolate him from the complex manoeuvring of Delta politics. The drivers of this new inspiration are the youths who though have visible evidence and red flags to read from and be wary have somewhat become busy in contra indicated willowdwisp dance of threadbare nakedness. Youths are moving from everywhere convincing themselves that this is the new deal. Many of them have jumped ships. Some are contemplating to. They appear to know this party than those of us who understand the dynamics and see nothing new in their present offerings. Suddenly they are thinking of a convention.

The Presidential aspirant is asking them to go to the nearest party offices across the federation to pick up expression of interests forms to contest for party offices on first come first serve basis and many youths have become immured and demmured. I argue that far from holding the present crop of Nigerian political leadership responsible for the downward spiral dance of our nation to southern Sudan, I think this category of Nigerians called youths are more to be blamed. They should tell us what they want in their flurry of dissipated strength and lost time mental injury.

By Tosan Blessing Harriman FCODESRIA