At the 100th-year anniversary of Ijero Baptist Church in Lagos on Sunday Nov 30, former Head of State Olusegun Obasanjo shared a story of his recent encounter with a jobless Nigerian youth and how he urged him that today’s generation should fight for Nigeria’s democracy just as his own generation fought for Nigeria’s independence.
“Recently, a son of my friend looked at everything around him and got angry and went to meet his dad who is my age mate. He told his father that our generation is a lost one. The father did not pay him any attention so he came to meet me.
He told me what he told his father and justified it by telling me that he went to the university and graduated but got no job. So, our generation has failed him. So I told him that it is normal because that was how we used to blame the generation before us.
But I told him that the generation before mine was the one that fought for our independence. Whichever way we want to criticise them, they gave us independence. Then my generation which you say is not good, fought the civil war. We fought for the unity of Nigeria and if we did not do so, you probably would need a visa to travel to Kano or Port Harcourt. Not only that but that generation also established the foundation of democracy.
So what do you claim your generation has achieved? It is part of it. We have seen what successive leaders of each generation have done, what can we say about you? What can we say about your generation?”