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By Henry Umahi
The orientation, character and resourcefulness of the youth of any country defines its future. This was the submission of Amb. Akachi George Obasi, who urged youths not to forget that they are the life and future of Project Nigeria.
While acknowledging that many Nigerian youths are giving a good account of themselves all over the world, he lamented that there were those who missed the mark.
He also warned the youth about the dangers of drugs, peer pressure and deviant contents of some gadgets at their disposal.
He said that with hard work, dedication, planning, education and proper counseling, the future of the youths of our land is bright.
Ambassador Obasi said: “The days of your youth are the best days of your life. You are at your peak physically – rippling muscles without stomach pouches for young men; soft, smooth and naturally oiled skin without wrinkles for young women. You don’t have debilitating illnesses and can eat and drink whatever appeals to you. Everything about you is literally looking up. The world is at your feet to conquer.
“Being a youth today places you in a very priviledged position. You have at your feet what generations of youth before you could only dream about – if their imaginations could stretch that far. About 40 years ago, there was nothing like personal computer in Nigeria. The University of Lagos had only mainframe computers – huge machines which students accessed with what was called punch cards.”
Offering insightful perspective on personal computer, mobile telephone and endless possibilities they provide,
Amb. Obasi said: “Then, the dream of a portable computer took root, and the personal computer was born. Portable instant information was born; one needn’t carry tons of files around anymore. It was magical – a revolution. Also, less than a generation ago, the telephone was a device for the privileged. Former Senate President, David Mark, as a minister for communications in the military era, declared that the telephone was not for the poor. Indeed, it wasn’t. Besides costs, the waiting period for a telephone line – analogue telephone – was over 25 years, between applying for it and getting it. That was the state of affairs until Obasanjo approved the introduction of the GSM telephony in 2001.
“Today, you all have palmtop pieces of computer, otherwise called android phone in your hands. You can reach anywhere in the world with a call, or browse information in any part of the world. You listen to a lot of Nigerian music. Never before had we such a number of Nigerians making music. It’s not that the interest in music has just descended on Nigerians. Before this era, recording music was so difficult and tasking.
“Recording equipment were very expensive and sparse in the country. The players and singers must achieve a perfect sync while recording. It was all manual and must be precise. Today, recording is a lot easier and practically anybody can record with an android phone and relevant software. Two instrumentalists or singers don’t even have to be together for music to be recorded. You simply pick their inputs from any part of the world and synthesize.
“Publishing or broadcasting used to be very capital-intensive endeavours. Today, you young people are all publishers, writing your blogs and spreading your opinions or fine visages round the world. You must be wondering what the term, Freedom of Expression, meant in the era before yours when you needed to be a dollar-millionaire to really express yourself sustainably via the electronic or print media. The world is at your feet today, and you can express yourself in any way.
“Besides global reach and real freedom of expression, young people are also making money, good money, via their communication tools. Bill Gates was young when he wrote and started managing the Microsoft software empire which grew to become the life wire of the personal computer. In doing so, he became the richest man in the world for several years. Then, there are others like Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Mark Zukerberg who made Facebook, and our own Chinedu Echeruo who built and sold a software to Apple for a billion dollars!”
Regarding youth-led growth, Amb. Obasi said: “The fastest growing sector of the Nigerian economy today, is the fintech sector – a newly minted sector which applies computer technology to improving and automating financial services and customer relations. It is the forte of the youth, and within the space of five years, the sector is attracting billions of dollars in funding from the international financial markets. They are achieving in months what took brick and mortar businesses as well as banks decades to achieve. Besides the era in which wars were common, the youth had never been as hot as they are today! What a time to be young!”
Amb. Obasi also spoke about the flip side – tragedy of modernity. Take this from him: “But as we know, every coin has two sides. While applauding the sophistication of the toys that our youth have today, and the tremendous opportunities that are open to them, we are at the same time aware that there is a flip side. Back in 1980, an Iranian professor, Majid Tehranian, published an essay which he called, “The Tragedy of Modernity. The thesis of this essay was that modern man had got caught up in virtual idolatry to objects of his own creation; man had created things which have turned around to govern his life.
Prof Tehranian raised the alarm early. What would he say, if he were to write the essay today?
“When the electronic calculator was introduced in the 1960s, it speeded up calculation. But there was an outcry that it was lulling the brain to sleep, depriving it of the rigours of making calculations. What do we say today about the android phone, a portable computer capable of providing all kinds of information on any subject? Isn’t the human brain being lulled practically to death? Why would anyone engage in the exertions of thinking when answers are there on their android phones?”
Explaining the import of the media and the message, Obasi said: “By the way, aren’t our very lives getting altered? Communication flow used to be an interaction between one or more humans through a medium. Today, what do we say? Machine has taken over the position of the second person in the communication flow; with its prodigious information bank, who needs a second person for communication?
“Marshal McLuhan had theorized in the 1960s that the medium is the message, but I bet that even he couldn’t have envisaged how true and direct his theory was to become.
“When the old Canadian, McLuhan, propounded the thesis in 1964, he meant that the form of a message (print, visual, musical, etc.) determines the ways in which that message will be perceived. He expounded that modern electronic communications (including radio, television, films, and computers) would have far-reaching sociological, aesthetic, and philosophical consequences, to the point of actually altering the ways in which we experience the world. But I doubt that even this great communication theorist envisaged how uncannily true and direct this would be, and the threat that it would pose to interpersonal communication now.
“Back in the early 1990s, a young woman dropped her baby and left her marital home because the husband didn’t give her sufficient time. She complained that the man would return home after the day’s business, eat dinner, then line up the day’s newspapers to read page after page. She couldn’t put up with that. Another woman dealt with the same issue more directly. She had made her hair, and her husband, a surgeon, didn’t even notice, but was engrossed in the newspapers after supper. The woman simply plucked his eyeglasses and crushed it with her heels! If he wouldn’t see her, then she won’t allow him see any other thing!
“Beyond companionship, how will children learn and what will they learn when father and mother are independently engrossed each with their phones and living in different virtual worlds? Would they know when baby crawls into the kitchen and pulls the frying pan and oil over himself? How would in-laws feel when neither the man nor the woman speaks with them, but are engrossed in their different worlds?
“Old English poet, John Donne thought that the clock was beginning to run their lives back then in the 17th century and called it ‘saucy pedantic wretch’ in his 1633 poem, ‘The Sun Rising.’ I wonder what he would say if he takes a peep at the world today and sees that our youth wouldn’t even leave the android phone for a few minutes to talk to God in prayer.
“What do you think I’ll do, if I were God and you bring out that thing in church? Yes, I’m not God, but I’m His son, and I believe He would do with some respect too. You may not think of it in this light, but a lot of you are practically elevating this device above God.”
He also spoke about deviant media content. According to him, “besides disrespecting God, there are other ways that the dominion of the toys of the youth impact negatively on their lives and the society at large. There is the big issue of the content of the media.
“For instance, there is the big issue of pornography on the internet, which is available right in your palms. Your grandparents may have told you how nubile young women walked about scantily clad in their times. It still obtains in some of our neighbouring countries today. But that is very different from what is presented to you on your devices. In the sociology class back then, there was a differentiation between undressing and the state of nakedness. In societies like ours that has imbibed the cover-up culture, one needs to undress to get to the state of nakedness. But nakedness is actually a natural state of being without clothes. The etymology of clothing shows you that it was originally a tool for protection against harsh weather before evolving over the centuries to become a thing of fashion and sexual cover-up. Undressing, often comes with a motive which may not be wholesome, except for the performance of natural functions like the use of the bathroom, and of course for copulation.
“What they show you in your devices are often states of undress with obvious motives, exaggerated anatomies that leave you feeling inadequate, and drug-induced sexual performances that have no place in nature – deviant sex that kills in more ways than one. Unrealistic sexual expectations are created and in a bid to meet such, many young people, both male and female have died. Besides fatalities, there are growing cases of impotence in the society. A growing number of young men have gone impotent in their 20s before getting married and need aphrodisiacs to make love to their wives when they land because they can’t get naturally excited. How long will that last? That is disaster, and pornography has a lot to do with it.
“Beyond moral issues, there are other matters of life and death that are mediated by the toys you have in your hands. I had known that diligent searchers can source critical information for making biological and chemical weapons from the internet. “But I was shocked the other day learning that there are 3-d printed guns, and that they’ve been available since 2013! That was the weapon used in the public murder of the former Japanese Prime Minister, Shinto Abe on July 8 this year.”
In conclusion, Obasi said: “An idiom from my native land says that nobody is totally useless; that at the very worst, the person will be an example to the young about evil. This day and age presents you the opportunity to be the best you can ever be. It also presents you almost in equal proportion, the opportunity to waste your life. The choice is yours.
“A headmaster in my primary school said to us that if money was lost, something was lost; if health was lost, something was lost; but if character was lost, everything is lost! You have the choice to soar with your world or be the very definition of failure or evil.”
