Since our dear country has now metamorphosed into an animal kingdom, where snake, a carnivore now evolve into swallowing money, I think it won’t be wrong to express my thoughts using crab as an analogy for the purpose of driving home my point.

With the way things are going in this country, I won’t be surprise to wake up one morning and see an headline that says “Nigeria For Sale”. But God forbid. For too long, our leaders have taken us for a ride and unfortunately, as youths, we’ve given up on ourselves and at the mercy of our inefficient leaders.

Where are the Student Union Governments and Youth Bodies, where are the pressure groups? They either are no longer the voice of the youths as they claim or their voices bought over by the same cabal stagnating the nation. Our value system is corroded.

Dear youth what is our stake in this country? Why are we charting a wrong course, why are we channeling our energy towards things that add no value to our collective existence?

When you take a good look at the composition of the Buhari’s administration at the federal level, tell me where you will find the presence of youth?

There are no youths and all the ministers are either middle age or senior citizens. And yet we are not asking the right question.

And yet, we come on social media to pick on our fellow youths, throwing tantrum, tearing ourselves down and fighting over the same old breeds of Leaders who don’t value us or consider us worthy enough to take up leadership positions.

Over 60% of our population is young people of 36 and under but yet with this reality we don’t want to leverage on that.

You see, these incorrigible leaders and old breed politicians that subjected this country to the sorry state it found itself, continue to device means to steal and ruin of future but rather than counter them by organizing ourselves, by speaking and registering our displeasure nationally and by mobilizing and protesting peacefully, by collapsing into political parties and getting elected, what most of us do is to tear each other down on social media for the very same public office holders that we complain about.

What is wrong with us? This attitude of pulling ourselves down, seeing an igbo youth trading tackle with an Hausa-fulani youth or a Yoruba Youth calling an Ijaw Youth names because our leaders divided us through ethnic line and we are acting like youths with no mind of our own.

I called this the crab mentality. If you catch crabs, you do not need to cover the basket or vessel where you put them in because once one of them starts to climb out, the others will drag it back down and so they act as a police against each other for the benefit of their owner.

We are misplacing our priority as youth of this great nation. Imagine the kind of zeal and dedication we show to European Football. I’ve read stories about our youths fighting and even in extreme cases, killing one another just because of rivalry over their football club.

Our unity alone should not start and end in sport. It is only when super eagle play that Nigerian Youths are united. That is when you go on social media and Yoruba, Igbo, hausa, Ijaw, Kalabari, etc, are the same.

If we were to channel this same zeal to building unity amongst ourselves so that we can have a common front in 2019, there will definitely be a change in the political structure of Nigeria.

These recycled leaders won’t back down for us, they don’t care if we are hungry, they don’t care if our population is 60%, they are not scared if we join political parties because they will always structure the process to favour them.

But what they are afraid of and won’t want us to have is been united, they are afraid of our unity. They know that when we are united, we will be easy to break down. They are happy are seeing us fighting like cat and dog on social media. These politicians you kill yourselves for are not worth dying for, they use us against ourselves. They heat of the polity and leave us to finish ourselves up because they dangle peanut before us and promise us a better tomorrow that never comes.

I call on you, Youths from the North, Youths from the South, this division must stop. Let’s not look at each other as ‘Aboki’, ‘IPOB’, ‘Afonja’ or other such derogatory names that we use to label ourselves on social media.

We live in a country where anything is possible. Today, I am happy to see youths defying all odds to come all out to declare their interest to run for an elective position through different political parties.

The era of youths becoming only bag carriers or at most PA’s for these redundant politicians is over. I believe that any youth has the capacity to declare and run for Presidency in 2019.

That is what Youth Aflame Nigeria is all about. A sociopolitical body that represents a call for renaissance, a call for action, a call for a change in status quo in our dear nation.

So we must talk, we will publicize, we will Volunteer, we will mobilize, we will connect, we will collaborate and we will lead.

Dear Youth, Democracy is a game of numbers and we have the numbers. Go get your PVC, secure it with your life because it is your power. Join already established parties and use your numbers to take it over.

And do not worry too much about money. Money is important, yes, but the world is changing. In fact it has changed!. Youth Aflame Nigeria will build a platform, we will carry ourselves along and we support our interest.

And when they say we are not ready or not ripe to lead, tell them that Nigeria made her greatest strides and achieved some of her most rapid progress between Independence and 1979 and that youths led for thirteen of those nineteen golden years.

Emmanuel T. Aniagoh is the Convener of Youth Aflame Nigeria (YAN).

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