FELA DUROTOYE – The personification of a failing youth power

“FELA na motivational Speaker na. When he come our TV Station, we ask am, how do you plan to make your policy work? He say God will speak to him. We look am like dodo. He say doesn’t God speak to you, we say NO. he surprise”

That is the summation of Fela, the presidential candidate. Some people have asked why I have been so rabid in my opposition to this charade. Some have even gone ahead to ask if I have anything personal against his person. Truth is that I really do not care if my position is taken as a personal grudge against him because I feel so pained at the way his posture has blunt the possible emergence of a better prepared candidate from the demography Fela represents.

The need for a third force is more than ever before very critical. The need to galvanize and energies a restless youth voting power block is the only way we can upturn this cart of geriatric usurpers. But they continue to laugh at us, calling us ‘lazy’ and not ready. So do we blame them when the best we can throw out is this maverick who relies on beautifully scented clichés and empty rhetoric to attempt a push at the mainstream.

As I watched him yesterday, his inexperience and ignorance glaring so conspicuously at the brilliance and depth of Moghalu and Ezekwelzili, I feel pain. A major pain that tells me that we may just have lost an opportunity of a generation if the best we could throw up was this white-attired philosopher king.

Over 60 million youths troll the net daily, youths and millennials are the mainstay of strong pillars of the economy. They drive telecoms, entertainment, technology, services and agriculture. They are an economic power bloc business ignore to their peril. They have driven Nollywood to an estimated N3trillion valuation and continue to hold down industries and sectors that withstand the vagaries of a myopic economy exposed to the vandalization and rape from these old people.

Read also: ATIKU: …This is not a Jonathan

The little we seek is political leadership drawn from this same demography to join hands with the economic leadership to turn things around and what do we get – Fela and Sowore. They say, ohh don’t say anything at least they were courageous enough to come out. They have done their part, what have you done?

Well, there has been no compulsion to jump out, what we have is a system that is expected to welcome and embrace all who feel the push. But to answer the calling, you must be prepared, you must have gone through the rungs and got coached and taught on the issues, and practicality that is expected for such a huge job. We are 180million people and easily the most important country in Africa, it cannot be ruled by dreamers and motivational speakers.

Even the ones that are ruling us now, that we are shouting and are ‘killing’ us with draconian policies, prepared themselves for this task. What they are doing with their preparation is something else but they went through the apprenticeship required. Go see Buhari’s pedigree, Jonathan, Atiku, OBJ or Awolowo or Lai Muhammed.

We need to throw in our people into local governments, state houses of assemblies and the House of Representatives. Let them begin to work the system, understand it, understand policy formation, execution and implementation. Understand the Civil Service, understand international Politics and also understand separation of powers. While at it, they must also understand voter culture, cohesion and mass mobilization. What we have seen has just been a colorful run fueled by a huge believe in the hype that powers social media and not a dutiful search in the depth that are in the bowels of this same social media that has turned others into billionaires.

Lastly, I leave Fela and his ilk with the legendary AL Pacino in one of his historical turns in the movie, ‘Scar Face’ – never get high on your own supplies. That is it.

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