AFTER 2023, WHAT BECOMES OF THE LIKES OF INI EMEMOBONG?

In a time that the world’s political landscape is growing increasingly frightening each day, countries are forced to respond to the ever-increasing series of multifaceted change by making policies that are open and deliberately inclusive for anyone who has what to offer. But because there is no greater resource in times of trouble than the kind of initiative and resourcefulness that young people bring to leadership, serious countries recognize how critical the need is, to give young people the opportunity to distinguish themselves.
 
The world over, we have seen how attractive this is: how young people are making exploits contributing a broad range of innovation and expertise to the betterment of their country. From president Macron of France, to Sebastian Kurz (Austrian Chancellor since 2017), to Typhanie Degois (member of French Parliament since 2017)...the list is quite long.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about Nigeria; a country that systematically warehouses and deprives the largest most vibrant African youth population in a spectacularly failed system. Where the political scene is an elitist glasses-clinking circle inside a circle of another circle, and young people can go only as far as perceived comfortable. Where there exists constant mortal fear among the country’s leading old—a form of elitist insecurity one would say—that young people if allowed to permeate the core political fabric of the country, would demystify the jinx of bad leadership and dismantle the outmoded system that has served the ruling class so well and so long—at the detriment of the masses.
 
And what have you?

A country that is literally a steaming pile of garbage in near every sense. And its best brains and skilled workers leaving in droves to countries that offer economic opportunities and a strong safety net; most notably Canada. The GlobalEconomy ranks it one of the top countries on the human flight and brain-drain index. The indicators, if they tell us anything, is that the curve is not flattening anytime soon—a reading that portends a crisis level the country may never recover from.
 
But perhaps, the greater danger isn’t that young people are leaving the country for the same reason that the economy is precarious. Perhaps Syed Saddiq (former Malaysian Minister for Youth and Sports at age 25, and current Member of Parliament) did put it in perspective when asked by a student for advice on how to adapt to fast-changing (economic) circumstances. He’d replied: “I don’t believe that young people should just adapt. If it’s adaptation, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be here today, because adaptation means you conforming to convention and convention unfortunately usually under-privileges young people...”
 
The greater danger—as bookended by Saddiq’s statement and you’d agree—is the fact that young people: the ones who have decided to give the struggle a fighting chance; the ones who despite all the failings still believe in the Nigerian dream; the ones who still see the potential; the revolutionaries, creatives, progressives who find the courage to participate in governance in hope to influence a change — will all end up defeated or won over at one point, adapted and conformed to the system. And the list is long, of young people who have gone this way.
 
Closer to home, in Akwa Ibom State: there is an Ini Ememobong who could have been Syed Saddiq at 25. Ini Ememobong because he embodies the energy and intellectual vibrancy of every young person who wants the system changed; who wants to see an improved way of doing things. Ini Ememobong because he burns a rare flame of passion, drives on a tank of revolutionary ideas begging for expressional space. Ini Ememobong because he has proven to the chagrin of conservative philosophy, that it doesn’t take age necessarily, but good ideas and the right mix of determination and willpower to effect change. Ini Ememobong because he advocates for reforms and standard by simply doing it right; exploring new ways to improve and setting new standards in the process.
 
Ini Ememobong because he had long adapted to the system, but fighting not to conform. A fight that sadly, he is sure to lose because there is only as much as one can fight, as much time as one can hold on. The Nigerian political system is intolerant to creatives; it gives low-ceiling for growth and too ironclad to change for progress. You conform—simple—or you go home.
 
And Ini Ememobong isn’t going home because the system limits him—no. We know this because the Nigerian system ridicules you when you’re no longer in the scheme of things. By which time he would have been fully conformed—which I fear—and he would have lost all that verve, pegged his political ambition to size and played to the gallery. We? We would have lost another bright light. And this would become another story amongst many that we will tell about an Ini Ememobong (an Akpama Ntia, a Borono Bassey, a Nana Udom and all the young people who identify as revolutionary) who could have been a Syed Saddiq, but who never was.
 
I’m Akpama Ntia, and I’m a patriot.