Becoming the Beautiful Ones: The Reality Nigerian Youths Must Face
What if the beautiful ones that will improve the lives of the citizens, exterminate corruption and erect good nationhood built upon excellent principles have been born?
What if they’ve been hiding behind the ugly ones, afraid to speak up and stand against evil and corruption?
What if they are being imprisoned in their own minds by fear, social acceptance and present challenges?
What if, instead of spending their time developing, improving themselves and taking worthwhile actions to beautify our rotting nation, they are cringed up behind their phones wasting their precious time and scarce resources?
When will the beautiful be born if not now?
What if you are the beautiful one?
The beautiful ones are the ones that make things happen. They amaze us by their arduous actions and beautiful results. They exert influence and wield a tremendous amount of power. They are the leaders.
A church, a community, a state as well as a nation is only as strong as its leaders. A leader-less society is a jungle where might is always right. The Lion, with its enormous power and ferocious confidence dictates the tune of the jungle while the sage, Sir Tortoise sits quietly, lamenting and criticizing the government. Someone said: the only condition required for evil to thrive in a society is that good men keep silent.
We are at such point in history that there is dearth of true leading leaders, scarcity of sincere shepherds and famine of faithful followers. Our society has fallen into the hands of vision-less, hopeless, purposeless and lying cabals who make a hell of noise with their empty promises. They vow to make a paradise of the arid desert in a twinkling moment. They promise to turn streams into oceans and stones into mountains. They insist on building castles in the air where even huts never existed. They paint themselves as beautiful brides, prostrating for a handful of votes and only to get there and make themselves superhuman.
But we have heard in times past how nations were built and countries constructed: that they were not built by men with hoary heads, who ought to be rocking their grandchildren to sleep. Countries were not constructed by adults battling with the intrigues of sacred matrimony and witnessing the pains of childbirth.
They were built by youths — men in their prime. People who were just graduating from the institution of childhood and looking at the gates of adulthood from afar. They were built by beautiful ones who refused to shut their mouths and let evil prevail. They drove their way into the driving seat of their nations and would rather act in spite of fear than do nothing. They would rather die than watch their nation torn into shreds by the seemingly confused ugly ones.
Let us look briefly at the lives of two of our greatest leaders.
Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe
Dr. Benjamin Nnamdi Azikwe was born on the 16thof November, 1904 in Zungeru Northern Nigeria.
In 1934, at the age of 30, he was already a doctorate student of a university in Columbia, having studied in Howard University, Lincoln University and University of Pennsylvania.
Upon his return in 1934, he became the founding editor of African Morning Post, a daily newspaper in Accra, Ghana. During this period in Accra-Ghana, he advanced his idea of a New Africa. The New Africa is a state where Africans are divorced from ethnic affiliations and traditional authorities and transformed by five philosophical pillars of spiritual balance, social regeneration, economic determinism, mental emancipation and national Risorgimento.
He returned to Nigeria in 1937 (at the age of 33) and started the West African Pilot, a Newspaper he used to promote Nigerian nationalism.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo
Chief Obafemi Jeremiah Oyeniyi Awolowo was born on the 6thof March, 1909 in Ikenne, present-day Ogun state.
He went to the UK in 1944 (at the age of 35) to study Law at the University of London and was called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple on 19thNovember, 1946.
In 1946 (at the age of 37), while in London, he formed the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, an association dedicated to the preservation and advancement of Yoruba Culture in the new world conditions.
In 1949 (at the age of 40), he founded the Nigerian Tribune, the oldest surviving private Nigerian newspaper, which he used to spread nationalist consciousness among his fellow Nigerians.
In 1951 (at the age of 42), he founded the Action Group, a party which demanded immediate independence based on federalism and the first Nigerian party to write and present and election manifesto.
Youthful minds are free, full and clear. Youthful brains brim with ideas, are padded with passion and exude enormous energy. Youthfulness is a state of mind and not a function of age, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity and an insatiable appetite for progressive reasoning.
What will you do?
Will you arise and become the beautiful one or will you remain in the shadow of the ugly ones?
Let us know in the comments below.
Originally published at israelalabi.wordpress.com on February 23, 2017.