by Adedayo Ademuwagun

Owhe is having a chat about the forthcoming elections with his 18 year old sister who’s in her final year in the university, and at some point, he asks for her opinion on Vice-president, Namadi Sambo.

But the teenager doesn’t even know who in the world Namadi Sambo is.

She retorted: “Who is Namadi Sambo?”

It’s incredible that a Nigerian who will soon be a graduate doesn’t know who the vice president of her country is — and she lives in the country.

But of course it shows how ignorant a lot of young people are about happenings in the world around them today.

Funmi, a middle aged woman shared her view on the availability of news in the past as opposed to what’s obtainable in present day.

She said: “In those days when I was growing up in the village, there were no TVs or newspapers around. Of course there were no computers. They used to bring the day’s newspaper from the city hundreds of kilometres away because the circulation didn’t extend to our village. So only a few people even got to read the papers. Ordinary young people like me simply had no access to the news.”

Well that was 35 years ago. Today, young people literally have the news at their fingertips. You don’t have to hunt for a newspaper or go to the home of rich neighbours down the road to watch the news on TV.

There are millions of news stories on the smartphone and tablet in their hands. So why are young people ignoring the news? Why aren’t they following the news even though it’s now a million times easier than ever?

One reason is that it’s simply not interesting to them. They find it boring. They don’t care to read about politics, disasters and all those serious stuff in the news. Most youths just want to read something fun and entertaining.

Another factor is that a lot of youths simply don’t have anyone their age who reads papers online or in print or watches the evening news.

Seriously, who watches the evening news? Many youths think that’s old fashioned, something elders do, something out of place for young people. They’d rather watch a movie or read the latest status update of friends on social media.

Besides, that’s simply not how this generation of young people was raised. Young people weren’t raised to sit in front of the TV and watch the evening news. Few parents encouraged their kids to read the papers when they were growing up and were still under their roof.

Few parents check up on their kids when they buy them a Blackberry to see if they’re using it to inform themselves and not just using it for social stuff. So in a way, it’s kind of a parenting failure.

It is important, however, to state that the prevalent apathy of young people to reading, is not limited to news stories alone.

Young people generally don’t read anything these days. That’s one reason books don’t sell. The only books that most young people read are textbooks and other ones that they have to read for their studies — and the intent is often not to learn anything, but to score a good grade or to fulfill a lecturer’s demands.

So what happens when youths don’t keep up with the news?

It’s simple. They get poorly informed and they miss out on important stuff happening in the world around them. For example, who would think that in this age where the news is literally everywhere, a university student wouldn’t know who the vice president of her country is?

So just imagine you’re a young undergraduate and your boyfriend invites you to meet his parents, and while you’re there, his father starts talking about Namadi Sambo, and then asks you a question about the man, but you don’t even know the man called Namadi Sambo.

Will your boyfriend and his parents think highly of you?

But then, just to be fair to Owhe’s sister, Namadi Sambo, is without an iota of exaggeration, a forgettable person.