Opinion: How Loud Is The Voice Of The Nigerian Youth?

By Ayo Oladiran

The attempt to shut the Nigerian youth up has intensified over the past few weeks, and this has, in a way, proved that the \’Lazy Youths\’ definitely have a voice which they have long refused to use.

The youths of the nation have been speaking in hushed tones for long on issues concerning them – most especially the issue of police brutality coming from the Special Anti-robbery Squad (SARS) from as far back as 2017 .

However, in recent times the youths have suddenly become more vocal and this was proven in their ability to draw the attention of the world to them, except that of their own leaders to whom they apparently are not audible enough.

What started off as just a social media protest on the Twitter social media app suddenly became much more when the youths took to the streets to lay their \’5for5\’ demands  to the government.

A major obstacle to shutting down the protest was the fact that the protest had no leader and the \’so-called protesters\’  rejected every leader the government tried selecting for them as the fight would have ended before it saw light of day if they had a leader .

Still, their voices were  too low as they were unable to get the government to hear them even after the \’Black Tuesday\’ that the nation witnessed despite the fact that  their protest was \”genuine and well-intended \’.

It took the intervention of a \’fire-spitting  dragon\’ by hijackers of the protest to get the President to react to the protest in a 12-minute broadcast which was meant to cover weeks of protesting and satisfy the ones that lost their loved ones in the bloodbath caused by SARS officers .

The deafening silence of the government for long only showed that this government was well committed to the \’wellbeing and welfare of the citizens\’ and how the Nation\’s neighbours should have known more facts before making \’hasty pronouncements\’ making the voices of the youths louder.

Dear Nigerian Youth, if there had been no foreign interference in addition to the \’fire-spitting dragon,\’ would your voice have been loud enough or would your words have been regarded as indistinct enunciations ?

Ayo Oladiran is a Social Critic and a Content Writer Studying mass communication at one of Nigeria\’s most prestigious institutions .