Originally published in Pambazuka News, January 2017.
Someone asked whether the younger generations ever read Frantz Fanon. But how can they read Fanon when the education system recommends books that teach children that heads are for carrying loads? The older generations should be grateful then that the youth have not read Fanon, Nkrumah or Cabral, because if they had, they would be out on the streets attempting to tear down the system.
The storm that accompanied Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka’s outbursts about his green card has thrown light on certain issues that in the interest of nation-building and public peace it may be suicidal to ignore.
One: it has shown that the youths are angry. Very angry. And even if sometimes their anger is misdirected, it still doesn’t take away from the fact that any nation that ignores the collective anger of its youths is sitting on a keg of gunpowder.
Two: Social media is turning out to be the older generation’s nightmare. The older generation of politicians, intellectuals, columnists are used to having opinions and making them public without contradiction. They are used to writing in newspapers and declaring their opinions as final without contradiction because some of these young ones would take a year to ever get their opinions published in those newspapers.
What social media has offered the youths is the opportunity to challenge every word spoken, the opportunity to talk back; the opportunity to examine every word written and spoken and sieve out the bullshit from the real message. This is very uncomfortable for certain persons.
Three: Ageism. The normal definition of ageism is an unfair treatment of old people. The Nigerian definition is quite different. It is used interchangeably with “disrespect.” When a young person “has the audacity” to tell an old man or woman that her opinion is incorrect, that young person has transgressed. In an African setting, you dare correct an older person? You are an African and you dare say an older man is lying? You were born and bred on African soil and you dare say an older woman is wrong? How dare you? Have you no elders at home?
If it is disrespectful to criticize elders and you have a nation where the minimum age for contesting presidential election is 40, you begin to wonder if there is no constitutionally-backed conspiracy to silence the younger generation. You begin to wonder if respect is only an age thing. You begin to wonder what number stealing from the younger generation falls on a one to ten scale of disrespect. How can there be a mutual agreement of do this, I do that and you fail to “do this” and expect the younger generation to “do that”? How?
Four: Self-serving interpretations of African culture. When you are an African, you do not have the liberty to talk as you like. You are told to challenge injustice and untruths, but there is an unspoken caveat: challenge injustice and untruths among members of your generation, not among the elders. African culture is flung in our faces by elders whose words and actions drag African culture through the mud every day.
They are quick to forget that inasmuch as African culture lays emphasis on respect for elders, it also emphasizes, perhaps even more, the protection of young ones and seeing to their upbringing. It is like a social contract: protect the young ones and raise them well and they will respect you and cater for you in old age. The older generation breached that social contract first. They ditched African culture and stole from the younger generation. They shared the money meant to build our schools, money meant to give us a safe and comfortable learning environment, money that should be used to stock our libraries and laboratories.
African culture pays a premium to the well-being of the young ones first. African culture says it is wrong to steal from anyone, talk less of children. You should visit our schools. See our libraries with outdated books. See our laboratories with outdated materials and kitchen stoves. That is not African.
And the elders that are not politicians, they kept quiet. They, with their deafening silence, aligned with those who stole from us. How did they feel at ease with our stories of empty labs and libraries? Our stories of fee hike, lecturers demanding sex to pass students, graduating without jobs? And when the young ones decide to fight a fight that the elders refused to fight for them, the older generation that should wake up and support them slap a tag on their agitations: “Juvenile Delinquency.”
Five: The many versions of truth. As we grow up, we realize that the truth has many versions. Say the truth when it is convenient. Say the truth when elders are not involved. You learn that there is a height people reach when you can no longer say the truth to them or about them. You learn that someone can spend their life fighting for the right of people to speak the truth and in their old age, it becomes disrespectful and a crime to say that truth to them.
In the final analysis, the young ones are angry. Very angry. And it is the failure of the older generation of Nigerians that the young ones don’t know the direction their anger should take. I have read Fanon. I have read Chancellor Williams. I have read Walter Rodney. I have read Ngugi wa Thiong’o. I have read Nkrumah. But I didn’t read any of them at school.
How can you enjoy a robust educational system, and see dilapidated structures passed off as schools today and still be able to ask if our young ones have read Fanon? It is a miracle that we graduated with our lives at all.
Mark my words, the Prof. Soyinka saga is not an end, it is a beginning. Mob justice is no longer just going to be physical, it is going to be virtual too. Unfortunately, because the youth lack proper education to know who is villain and who gave ascent to villainy via their silence, there are going to be so many casualties.
I guess the older generation of Nigerians should be grateful then that the younger generation has not read Fanon, Nkrumah, Cabral, because if they had, instead of virtual attacks on social media, they would be on the streets, marching and attempting to tear down this system.