Okeny Kenechi.

We should not allow ethnicity or partisan affiliation to trivialize this matter.

The Nigerian Youth is the most abused youth in the whole planet earth. That we are terribly manipulated is not even the problem. The problem is that we don’t even know that we are being dribbled with our active connivance.

In our 19 years of military democracy and underdevelopment, the Nigerian Youth has been reduced to a mere beggar in an issue he should be a stakeholder in.

We have seen how the Nigerian youth is being used to achieve lifetime goals of moving from one political post to another, earning millions in multiple pensions while the youth continue to groan in pain.

During the last election, when we were busy abusing ourselves, killing and maiming, threatening and blocking each other on social media, I wrote that we as youths have not been able to define our roles during elections beyond being mere vehicles through which past this and past that drive their way to the top.

And even up till now, 3 years after that charade, we have not still been able to clearly define our roles in the circle of leadership beyond violence and praise singing.

Each politician has an active social media club of praise singers with money for internet data distributed every month to ensure that propaganda is sold unceasingly and little achievement blown to the highest proportion.

Only in Nigeria is road construction seen as a huge achievement while the schools are dead and the curriculum buried.

How long are we going to continue like this; being slaves where we should become kings?

During the last election, someone came to me and said “ahh, they have started sharing guns at so so place. You be rugged guy. Let me take you to my chairman. You will make money”

I stared at the masochist for minutes and then threw a question to him: “are the children of your chairman who is in his late 50s also there, lining up to collect guns?”.

My question slapped him back to reality but it didn’t stop him anyway. Today, he is without an eye. Politicians are still planning on how to arm people like him.

I also saw first hand how politicians fill a stadium by dishing out 2000 and bags of rice. There is hunger in the land and they understand that more than anyone. The average politician has statistics of everything at the tip of his finger.

I don’t know whether those who collected such monies 2 years ago are still spending it and the bags of rice still in their kitchen.

But I know that bad governance has been constant since. And 2019 will be worse off as those who had jobs in 2014-2015 are currently jobless, and will add a reasonable number to the pool of hungry crowd from whence politicians would pick the boys from.

Collect 2000 from politician and you have collected your rights to good roads, well-equipped hospital, schools and most importantly, jobs.

As youths, what are our plans for the coming elections? Purveyors of violence or that of common sense that would lift us out of the present dilemma we found ourselves in?

We know, that if some laws are not changed as pertains to elections, we would never make headway as young people. Forget the not too young to run bill that was slapped to our faces. On the surface, it looks well attractive but dig deeper and see the challenges their in.

How many of you earning decent wages can afford 5 million Naira for a form to contest an election, without being sponsored by the same people who left us in the mess we are?

Not too young to run did not also state that because you have 5000, the billionaire politician is limited to 5000 expenditure for the elections.

However, we can extract an agreement from these people. Not in the form political appointments but political reforms that would ease up the burden of being a Nigerian youth.

You have suffered enough. Wages in this country is almost useless. The middle class which is the engine of every economy has been decapitated and pushed to the poverty line.

The economy is bleeding. People are living on past glories and all my friends are in front of computers trying to dupe white people. But such do not grow an economy. It does not create jobs.

I mean, have we not suffered enough?

Only in Nigeria would a young person struggle to gain admission, pay fees without any input from the government (if they have contributed even a biro towards your education, you are very lucky), pay money to collect the certificate that he paid school fees for, pay money to be mobilized for nysc, go to the camp and be treated like a refugee.

You find soldiers without the required 5 credit in O-level kneeling graduates down and flogging them. Then, you get thrown into the streets of a state you have not been to in your entire life and which you do not know anyone in without accommodation,and then, you get paid peanuts while rushing from class to class.

Nigeria does not even respect the certificate it gave you.

You will be really lucky to get a job of 100k without knowing one Oga or the other no matter how qualified you are.

Even the number of people idle does not in any way frighten these people and jolt them into action because they feel they have the magic wand to control the people.

Our national productivity is too low.

I have found out that everywhere I turn, there has been no level of preparation for me. Nigeria does not know I exist.

Then, try and open a business and the same government would send in their armada of joblessness to collect one levy or the other from you, after you must have bought fuel and diesel?

We can’t continue doing the same thing and expect different results.

Let us plan