By Muftau Gbadegesin
As the world marks international youths’ day, the youths in Nigeria by all indications are at a crossroads over the precarious situation the country has been dragged into. While the world economy is being shaped by youths across the world, their Nigerian counterparts are trapped in dilemma of choice between good and bad, virtues and vices.
This dilemma may not be unconnected with surge in crimes and criminality and the way issues around unemployment, corruption, insecurity, nepotism, tribalism have all been treated and attended to by government across the three tiers. As a matter of fact, most Nigerian youths are not just bewildered, they are also confused and in quandary as to whether the virtues of patience, perseverance and endurance really pay as against those of deviants, and rebels and militants and insurgents already an established order in the country.
The late president, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua granted amnesty to Niger Delta militants in 2009 to put an end to prevalent pipeline vandalism that had always put Nigerian economy on the brink. That move was lauded as a right step in the right direction by stakeholders in the region and other Nigerians genuinely interested in lasting peace in the oil rich region.
As with other initiative and policy of government, the lofty idea was not spared of vitriolic criticism which was premised on the fact that absorbing criminals hell bent on destroying the nation’s economy might not just be counterproductive but may give rise to panoply of youths who will take solace in crimes and criminality thereby expecting government to grant them state pardon.
Such policy framework must have informed the Buhari administration’s grant of amnesty to repentant Boko Haram members and placing them on N20,000 stipend per months at a time victims and survivors including men of Nigerian Army are left to their fates.
One only hopes that the government’s decision to pardon the bloodthirsty terrorists despite swathes of evidence pointing to their inhuman and dastard acts will not give more youths the liver to engage in crime against inhumanity either in the guise of internet fraud or money rituals or kidnapping or banditry. The great danger is that many youths will start rationalizing crime as survival tactics and a protest against the system that has both treated them unfairly, unjustly and unequally.
Nigerian youths need to know at all times that reward of good is always good and that the virtues of patience and endurance and perseverance always pay as exemplified by the outpouring of grief that greeted the demise of the country first female combat pilot, Tolulope Arotile. Vices might bring temporary pleasure in terms of material gain, but the inglorious end of such adventure will not always justify the effort
Muftau Gbadegesin, Muftaugbadegesin@gmail.com