Valentine's Day Message

Nigeria has become a disappointment to us all, but regardless of this we still owe our country our support and love. Therefore we need to stop continuously blaming our government and show the world that we are indeed a country with great potential as the youths because we are the leaders of tomorrow. There are two things that I have that I feel as the youth we owe to our country. The elections are around in about a month, we are need to try and make an effort to change things through voting. This brings me to the first duty that I feel we owe to our country, political participation. Political participation involves those activities that influence and also shape the political arena. Political participation is not limited to just voting or the right to be voted for, it also involves activities such as signing of petitions, peaceful rallies and lobbying. As young individuals we need to participate in politics in order to make a direct impact on society, however political participation has to be sensible in order to make the effects needed. We need to research the candidates we are voting for before voting and not just limit our views to hear say and ethnicity or religion as seems to be the case these days. Considering the depth of hunger of our politicians for power they tend to use the media and other means to discredit their candidates. In our country today, the politicians are more concerned with fighting and discrediting their opponents rather than actually governing our people. Votes are often bought and people are canvassed to decide their fate for the next four years based on various handouts such as: foodstuff, money, amongst other things. How can a bag of rice or a few naira notes determine who you vote for? We need to educate ourselves about the consequences of such misjudgements and also educate those who don't have the access the things that would help educate them. We also need to get actively involved in politics through signing of petitions and peaceful campaigns for things that we feel need to be changed. There is a saying that heaven only helps themselves, we need to start taking a few steps ourselves in order to help save our country, we cannot just sit and lament expecting that God would save us without doing anything ourselves. We have become a country that continuously points out our ethnic differences. There's a stigma going around and it is trying to bring us apart, our religious and ethnic differences have become glaring. We have replaced love with greed, tolerance with insurgency, patriotism with fear and then we bottle the detriments of all this with hope. As the youth we have to remove these shackles that are attempting to drag down our country through our actions. In our country being a member of a tribe or an ethnic group comes before being a Nigerian. Some people never get the chance to marry who they truly love because of tribal differences, Yorubas hardly allow their children marry the Igbos and vice versa. This goes for other things such as voting, such a narrow minded view is what is dragging our country backwards. American and British people are known to put their country first, this is why they tend to breed some of the most patriotic citizens of the world today, and also one of the most developed countries in the world today. Our ethnic differences should bind us rather than push us apart, we should learn from such countries and as the youth try and promote one Nigeria through the various talents and what means we have. Our country should always come first regardless or whatever tribe we may come frame, the best way to move our country forward is to stand united.