Those whose fathers have ruined Nigeria and the contemporaries of their fathers are what we have left on the stage. Criminal politicians and soldiers who have been recycled and overused now have the last chance to redeem their useless pasts.

2014-2019: The Last Show Of The Wasted Generation?

By Adeola Aderounmu

Some of the early indicators from the Buhari-led APC administration are negative. Many supporters of the administration have been responding to the criticisms against the APC government by asking for time.

It is a genuine request to ask for time because time is the indicator and revealer of all things.

But the argument for more time in the Nigerian context needs to be understood and well-defined.

The endless resiliency of the ordinary Nigerians have made nonsense of the principle of time and performance as well as accountability and probity in Nigeria.

By sleeping away mentally while living in a country devoid completely of social justice and equity, the ordinary Nigerians have been as guilty as the marauders who raped the land and cart away the treasuries for themselves and their children.

Passive citizenry contributed largely to the wasteful years that befell Nigeria from 1960 to 1999.

In that time frame of more almost 40 years, the value, meaning and the quality of life in Nigeria degenerated to one of the lowest in the world.

To make matters worse the PDP-led government unleashed another complete 15-years of waste on Nigerians. The Obasanjo-Yar’Adua-Jonathan administrations of 1999-2015 impoverished the lans and left majority of Nigerians poorer than before.

These rulers and their precedessors bled Nigeria to the point of an almost irreversible damage.

The recent climax was when a country that is almost devoid of electricity claimed to be the largest economy in Africa.

It is still so bad that the suffering in Nigeria (for the ordinary, struggling masses) is comparable to the situations faced by people living under war situations or the threats of it.

The wait for change has been an endless one.

Hence, the category of people who are in a haste to see the Buhari-led government properly hit the ground and running after barely one month have genuine concerns.

They are the people who know that time is now a luxury that Nigeria can no longer afford. They are the ones who abides by the principle of ”the morning shows the day”.

However the proper function of time in the entire scenario needs to be highlighted.

Change is a process and not a single event or an isolated occurence. Therefore there will be a need to re-educate the rest of us who think that a Buhari presidency under APC is the antidote to all of Nigeria’s woes.

Indeed the gradual change in government and governance are parts and parcel of the processes that will bring about the conditions that are needed to bring back living in Nigeria to what it was in the 1950s and early 1960s.

In modern times, those years before l was born were the paradise years of the Nigerian life.

There was an early warning that Nigerians ignored during the run up to the recent elections of 2015. It wasn’t new but it was phenomenal and rampant.  Some people continue to dignify political prostitution by calling it carpet-crossing. This permissive madness in the Nigerian political arena made popular by this wasted generation is about to ruin the traces of hope.

It has a lot of implications too. The most revealing is that irrespective of their political parties, Nigerian politicians are always after their own selfish interests. To a very large extent, it shows that politicians do not believe in the change that the ordinary citizens are clamouring for.

For them, politics is business as usual. Politics remain the easiest way to stolen wealth because the winners take it all!

Some brilliant minds continue to emphasized that until the political parties are separated ideologically, there will be no difference in what they bring to the table. Moreso tragic is the situation where the institutions that should check accountability and probity have been put in a state of permanent coma.

The sad situations from the past and present dispensations means that the strengthening of the institutions and their independence can no longer wait.

Changes may fail to happen as expected if the status quo of the various institutions remain the same. It means that the politicians will continue to steal, loot and propagate inpunity as if these ills are their birthrights.

In the same vein, there won’t be visible changes in Nigeria if the people do not understand that their own attitudes, their behaviours at their offices and in the society at large are also ingredients of the changes that everybody is talking about.

It is so disheartening to see that everybody is talking about change whilst nobody is changing the ways they have been doing things.

There is a lot of work to be done Nigerians!

The people must do what is needed of them as citizens and they must embrace patriotism.

The government must meet the people halfway to make the change cycle complete and running.

Buhari must appoint his Ministers before the end of June 2015 to redeem what is left of an already faulty start.

At this moment in Nigeria’s history-with APC-led central government-is what appears to be the last chance for the wasteful/wasted generation of Nigerians to redeem its name.

Politically conscious Nigerias and the people who will live in Nigeria by 2019 would be lost forever if they ever use the change slogan again.

In today’s Nigeria those whose fathers have ruined Nigeria and the contemporaries of their fathers are what we have left on the stage. Criminal politicians and soldiers who have been recycled and overused now have the last chance to redeem their useless pasts.

This type of nonsense must not happen again.

By 2019 one expects that the citizens must have played their parts. One expects that the government would have played her parts through exemplary leadership, total war on corruption, economic programs design to lift human dignity and political reforms to correct the sources of instability and mediocrity.

There are many more ways to know and measure performances. By 2019 the people must know if a new drastic measure will be needed and the awareness for that must begin in earnest.

If the tool of (last chance) change fails, the upcoming generation of Nigerians must begin to organise to weigh their chances of living a fulfilled life.

There is a tool that remained unused and that is a riddle that need to be solved. It is a two-edged tool. The more potent edge leads to a total generational shift and it will be wonderful to rid Nigeria of the wasted generation and their offspring that still loom large.

No matter what happens, Nigeria needs a functional political structure and system. Things cannot continue the way they are now.

Regional government and devolution of power are remedies to both the federal character system and the impotent geo-political zonings that have drained Nigeria of creativity and development possibilities.

A lasting change that will favour the people from the top to the grassroots will be very useful in evaluating the PDP- infected, power-hustlers APC government of Buhari.

The APC government has less than 4 years to rescue and redeem Nigeria’s wasted generation in what may be the final chance or opportunity.

aderounmu@gmail.com