"IRREPRESSIBLE MIND OF THE NIGERIAN YOUTH"

Dear Nigeria steemians,

You took the insults and discourteous outbursts of the Minister on behalf of 110million Nigerian youth with a civilized calmness and gentlemanly mien. Nigerian youths couldn’t have been better represented. Thanks for not letting him intimidate you with his ostentatious grandstanding and bastardized parade of our culture of deferring to elders. Yoruba patrimony was on trial in that studio. I feel honored that you made us proud. You didn’t let a chip fall off our symbol of excellence. It amounts to assassination of paternity for any man whose only claim to credibility is age, to be so crudely dismissive of another person on account of the latter’s youth.

I know several Nigerians must have been so disappointed that an honorable minister and a gubernatorial aspirant had nothing better with which to bargain for public approval than strings of gaffes, and social blunders laced in between with the Name of God and puerile and refutable claims of experience, all capped up with high sounding words like ‘electoral worth’ and ‘inconsequential’.

Did that encounter help the strength of the argument on the table? Yes, by far! The insufferable arrogance, pettiness, hollow reasoning and overbearing pomposity with which he hurled those insults at a 47year old is suggestive of the quality of thinking that goes into the guidance they give President Buhari in the FEC. Their political worth is good for nothing better than to idolize and masturbate the old man’s ego.

Let me wrap up by quoting and paraphrasing Mahatma Gandhi from his book ‘Freedom’s Battle’.

‘Unfortunately for His Excellency the movement is likely to grow with ridicule as it is certain to flourish on repression.

It is for the nation to return an effective answer by organized repudiation of the prevailing rank pettiness, and change ridicule into respect. Ridicule is like repression. Both give place to respect when they fail to produce the intended effect.

His Excellency resists the temptation to reply to his critics, meaning thereby that he has not changed his opinion on the many vital matters affecting the honor of our nation, the safety and hope of her people. He is content to leave the issues to the verdict of history. Now this kind of language, in my opinion, is calculated further to inflame the enterprising and ever irrepressible mind of the Nigerian youth.

It will be admitted that refusal to accept mediocrity and cronyism has passed the stage of ridicule. Whether it will now be met by repression or respect remains to be seen. Opinion has already been expressed in these columns that ridicule is an approved and civilized method of opposition. The Minister’s ridicule though expressed in unnecessarily impolite terms was not open to exception.

But the testing time has now arrived. In a civilized country when ridicule fails to kill a movement it begins to command respect.’