SMILE CHALLENGE: Are The Youths Really Ready For Leadership?

By
Lohnan Lamtur

I watched with dismay the recent exibition of madness flaunting the space of social media tagged; smilechallenge by the youths who have stinkingly allowed their thinking faculty to be perfumed and laced with inconsequentialities so that their dispositions can only be likened to that of Mr. Noble a character in Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen who come to terms with his faded dreams and blatant failure in life, turns himself into a clown dancing naked with his manhood dangling for children he is old enough to born just to earn a living.

It is indeed a pathetic situation we have today in the history of our dear nation; the crop of youths we have today and what motivates them is worrisome. The sordid idea that in no distant time, the same crop of youths will assumed places of leadership is sickening. No wonder we are still being ruled by people old enough to be our ancestors. If not, how can I explain to my inner self that a man who was head of state in 1983 many years before I was born is still the Democratic president over me today almost over 37 years later.

Worrisome enough, engage a 37 year old youth today on discourse that bothers on national issues or what they represent in the act of nation building and you will be grimaced by shock the stupidity he will vomit. A today’s youth has no business with the stench of leadership bedeviling him and the perils the common man is living with due to the wanton challenges ranging from devaluation of the naira caused by poor economic policies, hike in electricity tariff, increase in petroleum pump price and the ever increasing issues of insecurities militating in all zones of the nation.

To make the matter worst, while the youths commits their strength and abilities to all sorts of smile challenge and others, the president is busy borrowing money on their behalf from China to construct a railway to Niger Republic, a country that has no any economy value to our national life as a nation. Sad enough, government only borrow money for the younger generation to refund. So, can there be any other challenge than the challenge to frown, get bittered, rise up to challenge bad governance and the hardship meted out on the citizens by this government? Can there be a better challenge than the challenge to be weeping because of what lies ahead?

No surprise, Bruce Lee says: We are what we do, and a wise man can learn from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer. Suffice it to say, the terror, unjust system, wholesome barbaric treatment meted on us by our very compatriots are the sad realities of our time which has become the very bane of our existence as youths and on our part, we have failed to stand up in one voice of revolution.

Finally, I can’t acquiesce less with James Balwin when he says, “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invites their own destruction, and anyone who insist on remaining in a state of innocence long after innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.