Opinion: Nigerian youths should rise and take responsibility now

by Mary-Jane Okwuosah

You will think that with the recent happenings in the media, both mainstream and social media, that practically everyone knows what`s going in the world both local and foreign activities. That`s what I thought too.

Now we all know that almost everyone has a smart phone these days, and that is quite a foregone conclusion in many of our universities, here in Nigeria.Therfore you will expect that most of our youths [the so called future leaders] will have some kind of awareness or knowledge about the tensions in various parts of the world most especially our country, and together with the ways social media has managed to keep us abreast of situations when mainstream media fails to do so.

But its quite sad to see that this is not the case with many of these our future leaders, Yes they have all these type of state of the art  gadgets but they barely use them to access knowledge of the happenings around them.

Most of them are so engrossed in their own lives and their selves that they barely know or care that something like either a bomb blast or these incessant killings by the herdsmen,  provided it doesn’t happen to them or their immediate family. Total disregard for knowledge of societal problems, as long they`re sure that their source of support[parents and relatives] are okay then they have no care, at all.

The select few who care, who want to be involved in speaking out are branded as being too serious, or harbinger of bad news these ones have no one to share their views and ideas with, and if they luckily find like minded people the enthusiasm to say or do more  isn’t always enough.

This situation is very saddening as youths we are the last resort for enforcing the change we all dream of, it`s only us that can make our country have a befitting democracy, it’s only us that can make our laws to be enforced, that can make sure that our collective rights as humans are observed, once we stand up together to say that Enough is Enough. Our voices I believe are powerful, but instead of shouting out and demanding a better life for ourselves, we are self obsessed, totally uncaring, allowing the system to continue to manipulate us and we are silent.

Its enough!!!, I’m tired of being silent, I want my voice to be heard.

Do you?.

_____________________________

Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Mary-Jane Okwuosah is a law student of Nnamdi Azikwe University, Awka Anambra state. She can be reached on twitter via @janiebanks

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

cool good eh love2 cute confused notgood numb disgusting fail