The lost generation of Nigeria, are the active middle-aged, well educated, knowledgeable, widely travelled, well informed but toothless citizens of the country as age-qualified above. Because they are so ineffective, [size=14pt]they’ve turned to being cyber warriors of late[/size]. While our fathers and grandfathers took the fight to the British slave masters, they end up fighting the system and each other on the internet. While one may say cyber wars could be effective sometimes, the cyber rhetoric has to be translated into actions to be totally effective and be related to.

At the beginning of this decade in the year 2000, the general belief among the lost generation was that this will be a decade of change for Nigeria. Whatever gave them this confidence is still beyond any reasonable comprehension. Could it have been that they expected the agent-President to be a different ruler the second time around? How soon did we learn that a leopard does not change its spots; this is a man who has never done anything good for anybody, as confirmed by one of his wives in her book, and many of his so called friends. This is a man who the wife claimed slept with almost all of his friends’ wives; a man who was even accused of sleeping with one of his sons’ wife; a man who was suspected of complicity in the assassination of a supposed friend; not only has the death of the then attorney general of the federation in 2001 December not yet solved, the major suspect in the assassination was allowed to assume a Senate seat from jail – this became one of the wonders of the world. A man who dubiously held on to the Petroleum Ministry throughout his tenure without tendering any accounts to the nation. The list goes on and on.

Each of these dealers, we’ve not been blessed with any forthright leader, has only managed to leave us with negative legacies. Just like the gap-toothed Maradona left us the culture of “settlement’, he used to boast that he knew the price of every Nigerian, which led to unprecedented level of compromising of values that bred the incurable corruption that has now been ingrained in all the fabrics of our lives, from the market woman to the Presidency, so also did the immediate past agent-President manage to leave us with the culture of “do or die” in politics. The “Do or die” culture has led to politicians doing whatever it takes to get to office because they know that even a politician at the lowest rung of the ladder, a councilor, can “make” more money than a Professor. The country has lost its priorities and, in Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s words, “overtake don overtake overtake”, the end result is confusion which is leading to the end of the beginning.

Soon the decade will be coming to an end and the dealers of the British Experiment, or shall we say elders as they label themselves, have only managed to show more of their unscrupulous characteristics in managing the affairs of the amalgamated by-product of Lord Luggard’s concubine’s conjunction of a name.

How does one explain the absence of the President from the country for over a month without any explanation to the citizenry? You and I would have been fired if we go AWOL for a week not to talk of a month. How does one explain the arrogance of the Vagabonds-In-Power represented by the most corrupt Attorney General the country has ever been unfortunate to have? How does one explain the audacity of the Speaker of the house to say that congress spent ONLY NGN21b for travels when an average citizen in his constituency cannot even travel on good roads, passable waterways, or a hitch free flight from one part of the country to another? How does one explain a budget of NGN7b to build a residence for the Vice President when Nigerians are housed in the most despicable environment in the Niger Delta? How does one relate to an expenditure of NGN2.7b by a no-good Foreign Minister for travels that did not benefit the country in any way? There are Nigerians languishing in jail and been deported daily from China, Italy, and even Libya. How does one comprehend the fact that not a single one of the 91 roads the Transportation Ministry promised to build was completed in 2009? How does a Minister explain the failure to generate the wattage promised to the National grid despite the huge sum of money allocated to this sector? Thanks to Akwa Ibom State for the 100mW added to the National grid. How does one explain a budget of NGN2.8trillion to a police department whose major role is utilizing 33% of its force to protect the looters of the people’s treasury, another 33% deployed to exploit citizens at checkpoints, while the other 33% engage in extra judicial killings for the highest bidders of their services, in settling scores, and in aiding and abetting armed robbery.

The congress has not passed any bill that benefits the so called Nation since inauguration; they have only managed to excel in their characteristic of misappropriation by allowing a born rogue to head their appropriation committee, so he can ensure each of them gets his befitting booty.

The laws of the nation are being disobeyed and disrespected everywhere you go. The judiciary has been compromised that almost all the Justices have lost their integrity, hence dignity. How does one explain the acquittal of an avowed, notorious thief facing 243 charges of stealing from the State’s Treasury when he was a Governor? How shall one explain the fact that an election was conducted in a State in spite of an injunction granted by a court of law against holding the election unless and until a clean voters’ register is presented to the opposition? How does one relate to a report that a committee set up by a state Governor to look into unprovoked extra-judicial killings that occurred in a city in the state continued to sit in spite of an injunction against its sitting by a court of the federation? How does one relate to the fact that a Minister will flagrantly disobey the Vice President’s order not to travel? One can go on and on but everything points to the same fact – the British Experiment has failed the litmus test, and efforts to improvise new “chemicals” to reactivate the experiment have not yielded successful results.

The lost generation has felt the pinch of the experimental failure the most. They allowed their tenure to be used by all the spent forces assembled into ruling the country – the cabal. The freedom of a people can only occur from within, sometimes with help from with-out. The most unfortunate thing about the whole scenario is that when you look at the ages of the perpetrators of these man’s inhumanities to man, a large percentage of “the lost generation” is included. This is like begging a man to save himself from self destruction or all hopes are lost for the survival of this experiment.

When a major player in an organization saddled with the responsibilities of exposing corruption in government is accused of compromising his integrity by taking “fuel” money from one of the “emperors” he was supposed to monitor and expose, hopes are getting dashed and survival as an entity is being further blown to the wind. That all the “do or die” political players in Anambra 2010, which will be the final test of survival of the British Experiment, belong to “the lost generation” is a further pointer to the self destruct nature of this group.

There are several countries in today’s Africa and Europe that are less than 5 million in population; so if the British experiment is Balkanized, there is no doubt that the emerging nations will survive and thrive. This will enhance competition, encourage growth, and result in development. The Tiger countries are living examples. If this British Experiment is not going to suffer an implosion in not too distant a future, the cabal has to permit restructuring that will lead to regional autonomy, monitored by a weak center. Any attempt to the contrary will only reinforce the saying “To Thy tent O! Israel.”

I welcome all to a new decade beginning with the year 2010. I hope the decade will be a wakeup call for the lost generation; that they will smell the coffee, rise up, and demand their rightful places in repositioning the experiment. Any further failure of the British Experiment, may lead to the manifestation of the prediction of an intelligence Agency of the British’s “cousin.”

Oloye Lekan Awojoodu, a past Senatorial candidate, is an Architect and a Project Manager in the USA.


http://www.nigerianmuse.com/20100111083340zg/nigeria-watch/the-end-of-another-decade-for-the-lost-generation-by-oloye-lekan-awojoodu/

I belong to the lost generation of Nigeria. I am part of the youth that has been robbed of the opportunity to be proud of my country. I was born just as things in Nigeria began to rapidly decline, after the hope that came with independence slowly began to look more and more like a distant dream.

I was born around the time Nigeria started suffering from the biggest brain drain in Africa, with young people trying to seek better opportunities left the country because they started to loose their hope in Nigeria. My dad was not one of those people. He got a scholarship to study in France, and lived there for about 10 years but regardless of advice from his friends who are still scattered around Europe till today, decided that he had to go back to Nigeria to help his country develop its untapped potential and become one of the greatest countries in the world. He said he had encountered a lot of foreign students from India, Malaysia, China and Egypt, all on government scholarships as well, who spoke of nothing but the ways they were going to go back home and improve things. He was filled with so much hope, ambition, and dreams for his motherland, and also spoke of how things were going to improve as soon as democracy was instilled. Boy was he wrong.

My dad is one of those people that could never live anywhere else in the world, he is a Nigerian to the core, and believes in the Nigerian dream. But at the same time he is their biggest critic. This post was inspired by our conversation last night, as I got a job, and I have decided to stay here for a while as opposed to going home. And he said, the saddest thing about your generation is that you have been given no reason to be patriotic. My generation robbed you of the opportunity to believe in your country. You grew up in the age of degeneration, Nepa, water, fuel crisis, religious conflict, armed robbery, Niger delta, kidnapping, poverty, failing universities, strikes, bad roads, no health care, greed, selfishness, and the worst corruption humanly possible. How can you believe in a country when this is all you have ever known. He said when he was growing up, yes they were poor, but so was everyone. There was no mass accumulation of wealth that created a ridiculously wealthy upper class in the fastest time known to man. There was a dream then that could be fulfilled with hard work-- go to school, get educated in a school that doesn't strike every week, with infrastructure that works and lecturers that care. Get a degree you worked for, not paid for or gotten through a number of disturbing ways and apply for a job. Although the jobs were few and far between, they were chosen based on merits, and there was a chance to make something of yourself aka "the Nigerian dream"!

Don't get me wrong, there are people that are living out this dream everyday, but its harder with our generation because we have lost hope.
We have not lost hope in ourselves or our abilities, because the Nigerian spirit is too strong for that. The Nigerian music industry is the greatest example of that, an industry that is fuelled entirely by the resilience and talent of the youth. But we have lost hope in Nigeria as a nation. When we think of our future, we don't think of how we can improve the country, but how we can improve ourselves in the country. We see it as being out of our hands, the country is beyond what we as individuals can do to make it better. It doesn't help that the few people in Nigeria that have tried to do good have been made examples of. During military rule it was arrests of Ganni Fawemi, Abiola and death of Ken Saro-Wiwa and Dele Giwa. During my time, the hell that Dora Akunyili, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, El-Rufail and one of my icons Nuhu Ribadu have been put through proves that its not worth it to try and "change" Nigeria unless you are ready to die.

And Nigeria is definitely not worth dieing for. The deaths of Bola Ige, Mr Dipo Dina, and Funsho Williams, all show that people will make noise for maximum one week, no one will be arrested or be held accountable and whatever point you were trying to prove will die with you.
We live in a country where people don't vote because we believe our votes don't count. We do not protest about anything because we believe it is a waste of effort and nothing will be done about it. We do not give feedback or take part in citizenry because you as an individual do not matter. We do not count. Our opinion means nothing. What is going to happen will, and we have accepted that our hands are tied, if we even have hands at all.
So the million dollar question is what should my generation do? Do we keep holding on to this dream that "e go better" even when we know that it most probably will not. We seem to getting to a point where something really drastic has to happen before we rally up and say enough is enough.
At this point we have to ask ourselves, will I be willing to lay down my life for Nigeria and all it stands for?

Miss B
xoxo

http://naijadaydreamer..co.uk/2010/02/lost-generation.html

We live in a country where people don't vote because we believe our
votes don't count. We do not protest about anything because we
believe it is a waste of effort and nothing will be done about it. We
do not give feedback or take part in citizenry because you as an
individual do not matter. We do not count. Our opinion means
nothing. What is going to happen will, and we have accepted that our
hands are tied, if we even have hands at all.
So the million dollar question is what should my generation do? Do
we keep holding on to this dream that "e go better" even when we
know that it most probably will not. We seem to getting to a point
where something really drastic has to happen before we rally up and
say enough is enough.
At this point we have to ask ourselves, will I be willing to lay down
my life for Nigeria and all it stands for?