As usual, I went for the compulsory weekly Community Development Service program at the local Government secretariat in the place of my primary assignment. One thing led to another and a fellow corps member raised the issue of Boko Haram and the State Of Emergency declared in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa state respectively. Ready to learn as usual, I paid 100% attention to his opinion and to my surprise, he started with the phrase "OUR OVER 22 MILLION SOLDIERS" will wipe those boko-haram off in less than two weeks. While I have no problem with wiping off of Boko-Haram in the affected state, my problem with him was the concocted figure of "22million soldiers in Nigeria". I was miffed and furious within myself when he remained adamant and unfazed by his fallacious figure.

Since I was not comfortable with his analysis, I told him to wait and allow us do simple analysis or mathematics. He was so full of himself and shouted me down not to argue the figure again else I'm a LEARNER - a popular slang in vogue to describe novice. From his utterances, I wanted to follow the word of my good brother ,Dr Olumide Henry Fakolade, who once told me, during a disagreement I had with someone on social media, "Kolawole! Never ever in your life argue with some adamant and wayward individuals because you will never win them. They will bring you so low to their level of low reasoning and mind you, just because they have experience in shallow thinking, it will be very easy for them to finish you"

I patiently waited for him to finish spewing his balderdash but my mind won't just let me ignore him. So I asked him if he has an idea of the total amount of the Defense ministry’s 2013 budget. His response? "what is my business with that?" Since the listening audience was not seeing fact from all he was saying, they directed the question to me and asked me what is the total amount of Ministry of Defense Budget. I told them that the Defense ministry Budget is less than a Trillion Naira. To counter his acclaimed 22million soldiers argument, I said if at all we decided to pay Our Soldiers only from the Defense Budget, Less than a Trillion Naira won't be able to Pay his acclaimed figure for 2months with exception to Air-force, Navy, staffs of defense headquarters and acquisition of military Equipment and lots more. He was shocked and looked embarrassed.

What lessons can we learn from here as youths? Nobody is going to kill us on what we don't know, it is very easy and advisable to learn from other people’s opinion when the raised topic of discussion is off your field and you have no actual knowledge about such topic. Silence is always golden and nobody argue against fact. Fact remains unmoved by mountain and it is only a fool that argue blindly where fact is presented.

I left the secretariat more disturbed and confused about what we, the much-acclaimed leaders of tomorrow, have in stock to offer our generation, the aging, generation next and what legacy we plan to leave for our unborn kids. If at this critical developmental and preparatory stage of our life, we decide to pay little or no attention to our leaders past misdemeanors and/or ignore necessary facts and figures we should be familiar with, then we are on a sorry curve of recycling such errors!

The consequence of ignorance in our teeming youth is certainly and majorly the cause of unpreparedness, greed and incapacity we see in our leaders today. The question is, How prepared are we to take over from this set of leaders we criticize daily on social media and the prints due to their gross misconducts? How do we hold them accountable for such misconducts when we do not even have facts to back up our claims? How do we keep our under-performing leaders on their toes if all we do is complain and criticize "unintelligently"?

We all have a responsibility to make our country work. Remember, “No organization can grow beyond its leaders”. If the leaders of tomorrow have stunted growth, the nation they lead will definitely experience stunted development. The thought of that is scary but it also looks inevitable if we realize that the above quote is a time tested truth. If we do not intend to lead an ignorant nation, we must do all we can to get rid of personal ignorance.

After all, Knowledge, they say, is POWER.

Adesokun Kolawole Mayowa

http://osunintegritymovement./2013/05/20/the-ignorant-future-leaders/

Good write up !

Using this opportunitiy to tell the posters saying the Woolwich murderers aren't Nigerians to read the revised 1999 constitution. In it, it is stated that one can be treated as a Nigerian citizen if, at least, the grandparents were citizens of the country. The 2 Michaels are citizens by virtue of their parentage.

"'OUR OVER 22 MILLION SOLDIERS' will wipe those boko-haram off in less than two weeks."

It's sad to know that this statement came from a graduate.

Uyi Iredia: "'OUR OVER 22 MILLION SOLDIERS' will wipe those boko-haram off in less than two weeks."

It's sad to know that this statement came from a graduate.

Most of the statement we read on nairaland are from graduate as well. Even some of them are not half baked Nigeria university graduates, they study abroad.
This tell us something about how some Nigerians reason.

9.5 out of 10 graduates will tell you that the present inhabitants of Israel are called Israelites and that they are Christians.

MOD, can you please share this for the front page, I'd love that.
Thanks

Kamanda: 9.5 out of 10 graduates will tell you that the present inhabitants of Israel are called Israelites and that they are Christians.

so if i think islrealites are xtians my certificate should be questioned How does religious activities in isreal help me have better knowledge of drugs and their actions Your arguement is irrelevant.


Lol@ op's write up. I'm sure we don't even have up to 200,000 people in the Nigerian army.