The Tomorrow That Never Comes

It was the year 1999, a few months to my 8th birthday. Even though I was still in primary school, I cannot forget the circumstances that surrounded the 1999 general elections in a hurry.

Nigeria had just broken free from the shackles of military rule, so everybody wanted to know what was next. Of course, political parties of all sorts had sprung up and campaigns had begun in full swing. Two parties were the top contenders. The Peoples Democratic Party and the Alliance for Democracy. Both parties fielded their best battle horses in a bid to garner the masses’ support. Eventually, the PDP candidate, Olusegun Obasanjo and his running mate, Atiku Abubakar, won, trumping Olu Falae and Shinkafi of the AD.

Twenty years after, I had become an adult and had equally begun working. I, however, found it shocking to realize that Atiku Abubakar, the running mate to President Olusegun Obasanjo back in 1999 was the fielded candidate for the post of President under the umbrella of the PDP again.

This brings me to ask these questions:

1. Who are the leaders of tomorrow?

2. When is tomorrow?

If the youths are the leaders of tomorrow — as we were constantly reminded while growing up — but we haven’t been able to distinguish between the youths and the elderly ones since power had never changed hands, isn’t that discrediting Benjamin Disraeli’s ‘the youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity’ quote?

Now, if this is our reality as youths in this part of the world, hasn’t our reality of socio-political correctness been distorted? How do we then self-motivate ourselves to do the right thing, given that our forebears left bad legacies?

When is tomorrow too if the ones who were in power some 20, 30 years ago are still the ones at the helm of affairs? What is also the way out of this socio-political quagmire, since the ripple effect of these social ills has begun taking a toll on the youths who are supposed to be the leaders of tomorrow.

Will This Tomorrow Ever Come?