They say we are rude, uncultured and without class. That we drown civil discourse with incoherent noise and troubling fanatism. We have been relegated to the rear of “real” political discourse and have been likened to discordant tunes or clanging cymbals. They ask for respect, civility and graciousness. They say we are disorganised, disunited and lacking in focus. They say our collective hopes and aspirations for 2023 are nothing but a fleeting dream or a castle in the sky; after all, “who knows Peter Obi in the north?” However, to dismiss the Peter Obi counterculture as mere political ineptitude propagated by unruly youths, is to fundamentally misjudge what we are and the severity of our trauma. This is our story:
We are those pesky millennials and generation Z: The same ones who have hardly ever gone 24 hours without the lights going off. The ones who see public utilities as an abstract concept spoken about only in books or on TV. We are the people who believe that tap water can only come from a borehole. We are the generation who witnessed simple local travel regress from just a light prayer to complete fasting and intercession. We are the generations that, due to economic hardship, are starting families on average 10 to 15 years after our parents did and are dying 10 to 15 years before them. They speak of us in academic terms, our plights buried behind rigid statistics; “Youth unemployment and underemployment is at 70%”. We are here, we are human beings, we are watching, we are weeping, and we are dying.
To add insult to injury, we are bullied, suppressed, and oppressed by every element of country and state. The expressions of our creativity and culture have been myopically defined by our hairstyles and phone brands; we can hardly walk an inch without being hounded by agents and officers of the country. We are harassed for crimes as severe as “driving while young” and “doing that hairstyle that they don’t understand”.
Nigeria eats her young and hates to see them grow!!!! We asked Her for bread, but She gave us stones and despised us for still being hungry; we asked her for an education, but She gave us ASUU strikes and lambasted us for being illiterate; we asked Her to let us live in peace, but She gave us Boko Haram, IPOB and bandits and insulted us for feeling scared. We stood at Lekki Toll Gate and begged her to restrain her agents from further harassing us, but she responded by sending her agents to harass and kill us in a “phantom” massacre that never happened.
Our entire existence is a tragic pattern of continuous abuse and oppression. My choice of Labour is not necessarily an endorsement of Peter Obi, it is just a rejection of APC and PDP, my oppressors.
They say we are rude, uncultured and without class: but these are the only examples that Nigeria has ever shown us. They say we are disorganised, disunited and lacking in focus: It is just to reflect that from which we came. They ask for respect, civility, and graciousness: but we cannot give what we do not have, and we do not have, because we have never been given.
Good morning Nigeria, we are the monsters you made!!!!!
*Owi (the j.town boy) writes through owithejtownboy@proton.me
Credit: Premium Times