Another day, another hall… another group of ‘eminent national leaders of  thought’  gathered, to find the way forward for Nigeria. And they were there in their numbers, the usual suspects and quite a number of the ‘unusual ones’. And as expected, there were also those who saw it as a great opportunity to re-invent themselves and re-write present day history.

Though my tag read ‘Eminent Leader’ I was prepared to sit this one out. It was suffice to just be in the room, soaking up the atmosphere, listening to the divergent voices, a lot of it mere rhetoric, collecting fodder for this column… you can imagine my surprise when the moderator gently tapped me on the shoulder and requested that I gather my thoughts as I would be asked to speak as a young concerned Nigerian.

I said to him I didn’t think that it would be such a great idea considering my strong views on the leadership of this country, the proviso was clear, as long as it wasn’t libellous and one took into consideration the sensibilities of the majority of the people there present, and one was cognisant of the fact that the proceedings were being beamed live across the world; one was free to express one’s self.

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to point out that there people there present in the room who had actively contributed to the mess we are in; what did they have to say for themselves? In fact, one of  them had just waxed so lyrical that if the history wasn’t so recent and his sins still so fresh in my memory I would have mistaken him for an activist!

Corruption is rife because very few people truly believe in project Nigeria; we do not see ourselves as part of a collective… . We all for the most part simply pay lip service to nation building and to that extent I had to agree with one of the speakers from the Niger Delta region who retorted that until the devastation of that region is seen and handled as ‘our’ devastation; the oil found therein cannot be considered as ‘our’ oil.

What I left unsaid was that I represent a growing number of  Nigerians who when called to perform in our individual arenas bring to bear a certain level of excellence. We are known to be reliable, professional, and consistent and have integrity and we totally abhor and reject the portrayal of the average Nigerian as a rabid non-thinking, bumbling fool on the global stage.

More to that I also represent a generation of Nigerians that can be described to some extent as the last of the Mohicans in that the generations coming after me have very little or no respect for the grey hair on our ‘elder’s’ heads. In modern day speak, dem no send.

What’s more they can’t tell the difference between who’s been good and who’s done bad. I have a 25-year-old daughter for instance, who has never heard of Chief Olu Falae , who was one of  the elders who had to sit there, bristling, not able to do anything about it while being tarred with the same brush of  corruption as one speaker labelled all our past leaders and public office holders as corrupt. She’s never heard of  him because the people that govern us and decide these things forgot to include contemporary Nigerian history in our school curriculum.

Now we are at crunch time… before these kids literally begin to smack the caps and geles from our heads, let us find a lasting solution to cankerworm that eats at the very heart of our nation.