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Nairaland Forum / Entertainment / Celebrities / Tony Elumelu Writes An Amazing Inspirational Peice To The African Youth (318 Views)
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Tony Elumelu Writes An Amazing Inspirational Peice To The African Youth by envoguemag(f): 3:34pm On Dec 04, 2017 |
Letter to the next generation
Young African,
You are brave, you are resilient. You are savvy, you
are entrepreneurial, and unlike the generations that
have come before you, you are much hungrier for
success. You call your ambition, “your hustle”, and
you have several of them because you are tireless
and eager to achieve financial independence – no
matter how elusive it appears. You are optimistic
but you are also anxious. You have seen others toil
long and hard for economic security in vain,
decades of labour without fruit. Some of your friends
may have discussed emigrating with you – legally
or illegally, and some may have lost their young
lives crossing the Mediterranean in search of a
future overseas where their talents are recognized
and rewarded. You may even know a few in Libya,
unsuspecting victims to the ugly acts of slave trade.
A combination of these factors has left you
disillusioned and disconnected. You don’t believe in
politics. There is no use in getting involved. You
have seldom experienced good governance, so you
think, “What’s the point?” But despite the gloom,
there actually is indeed a point.
My generation and the ones before may have failed
you, and the infrastructure for success glaringly
absent – a persistent darkness in place of
electricity, a stifling business environment that
discourages enterprise and innovation, debilitating
bureaucracy, inaccessible public officials who
remain oblivious to your needs, an outdated
education system in urgent need of reform– and
the list goes on, but, if there’s anyone with the
power to transform our continent and reshape our
economic and social trajectory, it is YOU. There is
formidable power in your intellect and creativity,
your talent and ingenuity are rare, and your resolve
and determination against all odds, can drive great
change. But most importantly, the greatest force is
in your numbers. Together, all 600 million of you
that are under 30 years old, have the potential to be
the most influential bloc on this continent. The
indescribable influence that you can collectively
wield, I hope that you soon fully understand and
hopefully, deploy.
Today, I’d like to discuss the inescapable reality of
politics with you. It has been a busy week of
traveling from Lagos to Boston, to Los Angeles, and
in a few hours to New York, to receive BCIU’s
inaugural Dwight Eisenhower Entrepreneurship
Award, but I thought to take time out this evening to
share a few thoughts with you. I have been inspired
to share this with you after listening to my former
professor at Harvard, Prof Michael Porter, whose
session during our leadership council meeting of the
Harvard Kennedy School Center of Public
Leadership, was insightful, powerful, and very
thought provoking.
His well-articulated argument emphasized that as a
people we cannot afford to remain passive about
politics. Though his reference region was America,
there are strong parallels with our own situation in
Africa. The main root cause of our continent’s
underlying failure to pull the majority of its citizens
from the unyielding clutches of poverty is poor
leadership, so then why do we continue to tell
ourselves that politics exists in a realm outside our
own realities? Why do we refuse to engage in the
political process of identifying and supporting
visionary candidates, instead we remain at the
mercy of political leadership committed to putting
private interest ahead of public interest. Leaders
who are beholden to the ideology that political
parties come before citizens. Leaders who are
private gain-seeking actors.
What we desperately need is a continent-wide
awakening. We must grow to become active
citizens who are committed to getting involved. The
system is not self-correcting, there are no market
forces at play to ensure that it corrects itself. It will
require human actors – me and you – to identify
and dismantle the structural impediments that fuel
the status quo of bad leadership. We must address
this issue both systemically and systematically.
Our democracy has become very disconnected
from being democratic, we must bring power back
to the people. We must reform the rules of our
electoral processes to inject more transparency.
We must transform politics from being an industry
for a few interests, to being about the people and
addressing the public needs. We must change the
oligopoly nature of our politics today to being one
for the majority. The barriers to entry are high in
politics, and very often, our best brains and talent
are discouraged from running for office. We must
dismantle these systems that keep away talented,
individuals from joining the race.
We must open the door for generations knocking
after us. We must take advantage of our
demographic dividend, millions of young people who
are ready to make a change. We must welcome this
new generation of new ideas and we must
democratize access to opportunity for all. We must
get more women involved in the process because
when you empower women you empower
communities. Structural reforms mean that no one
individual can make this change alone, but with our
collective voices and the realization that this is our
time and that no one but us can save our continent,
we can achieve change. We can no longer
outsource politics or governance to people we do
not trust. We must understand the inextricable link
between governance, economic growth and national
security. To pretend that politics does not influence
the entirety of our lives harms us more than it
benefits us.
We must change the rules of the game. We must
put up a coordinated front to reorient our values and
bring power back to the people. Our leaders must
be the best amongst us - those with the most
transformative ideas and the capacity to deliver. . It
should be the best amongst us leading us in
government, in the military, in our judiciary and of
course the corporate sector. We must instill
accountability in our processes, but also hold
ourselves accountable. We must play our own role
in identifying and empowering those amongst us
best placed to make this difference. To abscond
from this duty is to be negligent of our responsibility
to our continent.
It won’t be easy, but nothing good comes easy. A
famous man once said you should learn to
categorize all your problems in three sections:
Easy, Impossible and HARD but doable. When it’s
easy, you should give it to someone else to handle.
When it’s impossible, you shouldn’t bother with it.
But when it’s hard but doable, you should go
straight to work to make it happen.
My fellow Africans, I appeal to you that though this
task seems hard, it is entirely doable and we must
begin this journey. Let us rise to this challenge and
begin to elect leaders who we trust in and are
confident will help us realize the social and
economic hopes of our continent.
TOE
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Re: Tony Elumelu Writes An Amazing Inspirational Peice To The African Youth by wickyyolo: 4:07pm On Dec 04, 2017 |
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