NO ONE ENJOYS seeing or hearing about youths being uncharitable towards adults, not only is it uncivil, it violates etiquettes and cultural norms. When Mr President, in faraway United Kingdom, allegedly castigated the entire Nigerian youths, as a bunch of indolent brats, desirous of doing nothing productive, including going to school, he incurred not only the wrath of  the  youths  but violates the expectations of responsible leadership.

A leader is part and parcel of the citizenry-elevation to a leadership position imbues one with an enormous responsibility-to think for the people at times of need; to make sacrifices to ensure the well-being of the citizenry and the nation; to ensure that peace and tranquility reigns in the communities, enough to engender  the  full realization of human goals. These, literally, dictate that the leader sleeps last and wakes first and eats, only, when every citizen has eaten.

This is the kind of leadership envisaged by the proponents of democracy-government of the people, by the people, for the people, in which the people, largely, determines who the leader is and goes further to determine what he does, through the parliament. The arbitrariness of the all-powerful leader belongs in the Stone Age during which warriors  conquer to rule-it is no  longer  the vogue. While the  leader  deserves honour and respect, he owes the citizenry respect and commitment to service.

The response of the youths to Mr President’s UK tirade is understandable. We are not lazy, rather, we are responsible people desirous of good life but abandoned and deprived, by society the youths said, in different languages. Some, even went further to call baba’s attention to the difference between their total deprivations and the over-pamper of profligate Yusuf Buhari, son of Mr President who, recently, fell off from a power-bike, allegedly costing three hundred thousand dollars-this amount can wipe off tears from the faces of widows and orphans in my local government and the adjoining two other local governments! It is enough to repair all the leaking roofs in the secondary schools in my state. Injected into a university laboratory, this can enable us leapfrog from being an underdeveloped state into a developing state. That’s is the cost of Yusuf’s toy! We weren’t told what he, Yusuf, does for a living.  Charley Boy, the musician, annoyingly, said, categorically, that Yusuf, not they, (the youths) is lazy.

Truth be told, Nigerian youths are among the most creative, anywhere, under the sun. They are high flyers in academia, industry and in the social media, in those climes where it is rewarding to do that. Everywhere you find a Nigerian, education is prime on his heart. An American President, once described the Nigerian community in the US, as the single most educated community in the US-an average Nigerian doesn’t stop, only at the Bachelor’s degree level, he added. In most parts of Nigeria, in which western education is not an abomination, almost every home can boast of at least one or two university graduates, including many of the ones we see operating okada, in Ekiti state! What we need do is find out, why not here, in our country? Simple - here isn’t conducive for hard work!

So, what informed baba’s view, expressed in the United Kingdom? How many places has he visited and how many youths has he met? Was he proud to make such a damning comment about the youths of a country he leads? The incidence of irresponsive and irresponsible leadership that creates a wide gulf between the satanically-affluent aristocrats, with their families and the life-threatening poverty with acute-deprivation of the citizenry, is the bane of our society. It is the reason our country remains the least productive and the least secured, today. This was the reason all Nigerians got deceived by the change rhetoric of the APC, during the presidential campaign, motivating all to queue up, under the sun, to vote for a change, which, four years, after, is still a mirage. While this government has failed to curb pen-robbery and treasury pilfering, extortion at highways, by the people we call security officers, has become not just more daring but reached a shameful crescendo.

While baba laid in a British hospital, paying a colossal amount of public money to employ medical personnel, over there, large numbers of our medical graduates, without political connection, roam the streets, here, frustratingly. And, wait a minute, can we complain if there are youths who are not willing to work? Where is the motivation to work in our winner-takes-all political model with the monkey-dey-work-baboon-dey-chop economic model? Do we not all know that politics which contributes, absolutely, nothing, to the nations GDP  is the most rewarding venture? In such a clime, is there much wisdom in stressing oneself, intellectually and  physically  when you can be better rewarded shouting baba-ke after these crooks we call politicians. The N13m a senator earns, in one month, is above the total  package  of a professor (the highest paid university teacher/researcher) for two years.