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Are we losing the hidden paradise in our youth?

By Chris Uwaje and Olubayo Abiodun
05 May 2018   |   6:34 am
There is an urgent need to engage on a national project on the recovery of the troubled mindset of millions of Nigerian Youth who are predominantly hooked on the Internet as a gateway to wealth through fraudulent means. “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell…

Young Nigerians march to protest against age barriers on political posts in Abuja, on July 25, 2017.<br />Hundreds of young Nigerians marched towards the country’s parliament on Tuesday, calling for lawmakers to remove age barriers on political posts, including the presidency. Nigeria’s 1999 constitution stipulates that the president has to be at least 40, while senators and state governors have to be aged 35 or above. / AFP PHOTO / –

There is an urgent need to engage on a national project on the recovery of the troubled mindset of millions of Nigerian Youth who are predominantly hooked on the Internet as a gateway to wealth through fraudulent means. “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. Almost all painful feelings have their source in an incorrect way of looking at reality. When you uproot erroneous views, suffering ceases.” John Milton, Paradise Lost.

Are we losing the hidden paradise in our youth? This write-up is initiated by concerned interest group after a surgical analysis of the subject-matter as an urgent call to embark on a national psycho-sociological project to re-engineer and save the eroding mindset of many of our Youth who are currently addicted to Internet scrams as the only way to progress and indeed their last hope in life, in the face of the blatant neglect and abandonment of the fundamental responsibility of leadership for sustainable youth development, And by extension, the survivability of our collective future. Our position is that the core of problem under discussion resides in human attitude.

Relevant studies have shown how unrestrained chronic youth-centred negative thinking and attitudes cumulatively derail and destroy concepts of nation-building, patriotism and sustainable development – especially when psychological and sociological dimensions are neglected over time. Is this the case with the branded “Yahoo-Yahoo Boys” of Nigeria? How long has this been going on and how long will it take to recover and heal those derailed youth minds which are critical for national development? What will become of the children of the Yahoo-Yahoo Boys and it’s cultish impact on the future of our nation? Are our current Youth development programmes responsive and strategic enough to attain the desired goals?

Conventional wisdom informs that attitude is everything. However, an attitude in its structural dynamics consists of the acquired state of mind, consisting primarily of environmental observation in a given space-of-things, feelings, thoughts and tendency to act towards anything we come across. Through the application of our conditioned mindset, we may attain a positive or negative character in our relationship with any particular set of thing we encounter.

Therefore as we forge along, it is instructive that we explore the conditions-of-things within the Nigeria development environment – particularly our leadership, family values, education, merit assessment, child care and fundamental human rights and above all youth development programmes within the context of globalization. Great minds such as Professor Emeritus Wole Soyinka had many decades ago observed the emerging decay of values in leadership, economy and development with great impact on the youth when he advanced the hypothesis of the ‘wasted generation’ of Nigeria.

This critical warning was not heeded by the leadership who failed to advance proactive strategies and programmes for Youth development while the population growth surged dramatically in the last fifty (50) years after the civil war. This abandoned responsibility cumulated into the breakdown of the value-chains for equitable nation building and fuelled corruption of thing like a wide fire in the wilderness.

Globalization is often translated as another word for the internationalization of trade and commerce in pursuit of sustainable development – guided by specific standards. However, empowered by the Internet (ICT) as the new tool of life, the norms and values of the Internet have been grossly misinterpreted at the most basic levels. The Internet is here to stay and its mission and activities will be further intensified by the demands for globalization-of-things and the critical adventure of each nation poised to control the human mind by harnessing life Data at all levels.

For many decades, the Nigeria nation-state has been dishing out mind-blowing figures of stolen money and wealth from our collective national resources and continues to display such outlandish data in the face of the teeming Youths who are hungry for food and knowledge but experience the mirage-of-things at almost all development stage.

Currently, Nigeria’s e-readiness status is abysmal low (119 out of 134?) in terms of enabling environment and national IT spend, while the Youth population growth continues to surge with the alarming stampede at access to everything for survival – throwing ethics and values to the dogs.

The age of top leadership base of many nations of the world are hovering between 30-50 while Nigeria’s is ballooning from 70-80 years – further disillusioning the youth and their dreams.. With limited and/or non-existent enabling environment, fragile infrastructure, abandoned classrooms, zero Knowledge Parks and processed by conspicuous consumption with preference to foreign goods, glorified squandermenia culture and insatiable consumption mentality – a product of who you know instead of what you know!

Re-Engineering the mind-set of the youth – the way forward
The activities of Yahoo-Yahoo Boys. The YY syndrome is a national scourge and the Youth Community must be called to order to dialogue.

The long-term damage to Society, Recovery Mechanism: the critical Pillars for Youth Development: Policies, Strategies Legislations, Institutional Framework, Regulations and Fiscal Incentives Others. What the Youth want form Nigeria.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: EXTRACT FROM MY BOOK: “ e-Knowledge: Time is Running Out” Published 2010.

Nigeria today, represents a huge and unorganized information system – each cluster operating almost independently without recourse to standards, linkages and feedback. This negates the fundamental principle of structural dependency of data and information, which must be interlinked, networked and interact at various levels – as an inevitable transformation process for generating meaningful knowledge, based on an acceptable level of ‘organized standard’.

Information overload without the effective tool (technology) to analyze, extract, standardize, process, store, retrieve and efficiently distributed through a secured pipeline of networks for the needs of the entire society, has the capability of choking a nation’s development goals!

It applies to corporate business organisations, institutions, social clubs and the family. For information to make better sense, it must be meaningfully organized, warehoused, re-structured, analysed, standardized, tested and ultimately transformed into productive knowledge.

Life, man and his total environment represent a fearful quantum of complex information load. Some of them are and have life forms, others are not. Some are mobile and super-active, while others either incubate or are dormant. Almost all have color, intriguing designs, fascinating style, standard and acknowledged wisdom.

Nigeria: Choking Under Information Overload!
The entire universe therefore and life in particular as we know it today represent the most complex information web. The wise say: “life is a story.” Perhaps, there is need to emphasize that “life is an unending story of the structural formation of data and knowledgeable information networks – which ultimately converges into intelligence.”

The thin-line, which divides nations within the context of development at all levels, is found in the basic equation on how they plan, time and process, apply, store and retrieve information at all levels – classified under “knowledge” and “intelligence.”

Of the over 39 years (so-called) existence of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, an unimaginable volume of data and information (printed. written, pictures, video and oral/voice) have been generated. Amazing proportions of this information volume were undocumented. A major part of the documented aspect – which can be perceived as a warehouse of knowledge is either not properly stored or got perished and/or currently dumped in dark corners or sorry environment populated by man! Some of these knowledge treasure are abroad, actively developing other nations. As the population grows, demand for basic and sophisticated information also multiplies many folds.

To cope with this demand (both locally and internationally) it is pertinent that advanced tools and technology should be deployed to enhance and deliver efficient services. User skill must also be enhanced through continuous training to empower and encourage creativity. Above all, such information must be reliable, mobile and accessible by anyone at all times and from any point.

In a nutshell, information overload is a process of rapid data and information accumulation in an environment with slow response tools to analyse, process and redistribute refined information for society’s use, development and creation of wealth. Information overload by definition is the process of massive accumulation of unorganised data and information without recourse to an acceptable standard or long-term objective direction. Due to the lack of this standard, information overload is predominantly centralized in a standalone format, devoid of inter-connectivity potentials, is abundantly manual, structurally deficient, often too massive to document and store with an available tool, usually inaccessible by the majority and overtly secretive!

In the final analysis, information overload creates a serious glut, slows down socio-economic productivity and development process; above all, it breeds covert illegal institutions responsible for national resources sharing blockage. The resultant effect of information overload is a vicious circle of ‘out-of-life’ or outdated data and information pool that have been overtaken by global events but still remains in circulation at snail speed! It abundantly builds up communities of massive ignorance amidst fearful economic artificiality, distortion and rapid population growth. Information overloads which breed ignorance in both the leaders and the led usually degenerate to a level of the abandonment of societal responsibilities. When this type of information overload occurs, the machinery of governance sails into troubled waters and become protective and ultimately turns a dictator.

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