Japheth Omojuwa: The Desperate Attention Seeking Generation

They are a predictable bunch.
They are professional youths
and even have hashtags to back up their desires. In their midst you find men who upon contact with men of power want visas and “any form
of support.” Were such men of power to refuse them such a request, they become enemies, then go on Twitter to abuse same. They are
smart enough to make it look like their actions are about ideological differences other than one man asking another for bread and the other deciding not to share. ‘Wetin-man-go- chop’ differences via WhatsApp, emails and BlackBerry messages they beg event organisers to be
allowed to attend public sessions with men of power, but if they miss out on such sessions, they make sure to demonize those who attend.
Where they attend, they’d look to get pictures, they’d work to be paid a sum for their attendance. They are poor souls, young in age, but old in the game of desperation. They have dreams, little dreams: they just want some money to live. They believe everyone wants
same, that everyone just wants some money to live.
They choose a side and defend same with all their might. They defend the indefensible and damn your rationality. They raise some storm and manage to get a few Twitter followers –
say some 4000 followers.They suddenly assume they have the world covered. They tweet and assume the world hears because they get some 20 retweets from within the circle that houses men and women of dishonour.
Their voices find amplification in the loud bigotry of fellow soldiers in the advancement of all that is evil. They live on purpose,
existing solely to rain curses and abuses on those who refuse to worship the men they worship. They curse those who refuse to dance
on the laps of the women whose corrupt milk
they desire.
One moment they are out with you protesting injustice, the next moment they are on queues meant for those who are ready to sell their souls to sing and wail about the coming messiah of Nigerian extraction, whose reign we endure even now, and whose reign they insist we must live through a few more years.
They have dreams, dreams as the size of their minds, little dreams as the size of their self- worth. They are comfortable in their dishonourable skin, their body a cluster of desperate young people with nothing to offer but the insistence of sycophancy and the attention-grabbing hue of hypocrisy. Anything would do, they just need something for today.
They want all to be just like them. So they wake every morning accusing all of who they are.
In their minds, a lady of repute can sell her soul for a plate of porridge because they had their own bodies, souls and little minds deposited at the bank for nonentities and only had one plate of porridge as proof of
allegiance. They will scream “oh! You met with that rich man! You got paid N50,000.” They are right, if they had a chance to meet with power, they’d scramble for the crumbs around power, the many left over Naira notes servants of the house forget to pick up from their
masters.
They want to be like you, to spend some hours hanging in the skies, seeing cities of places even their dreams never took them to. They
imagine how you could have reached such heights, then the lid on their minds keep their thoughts well below the bar of common sense – it could only have been because you collect several plates of porridge from the men whose backsides they run their tongues through.
They are part of the generation many see a
new turn with, the generation that is not short of great men and women, the generation that must clear the weed around its glory. These small men and women with little dreams must not find the means to become the face of such a beautiful generation.

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This Opinion piece by Japheth Omojuwa was culled from Metropole