A former Minister of Youth Development and Sports, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi has called on Nigerian youths to desist from self-worship and embrace followership before aspiring to become leaders.
Speaking at the Emerging Political Leaders Summit in Abuja on Wednesday, Abdullahi observed that a ‘we’ versus ‘them’ mentality can only reduce young people to “a rabble of plebeians making ineffectual noise from behind the gates.”
“You cannot abuse people into surrendering power to you. As long as young people continue to maintain an adversarial posture that is powered by a sense of sanctimoniousness or a sense of entitlements they can only drive themselves farther away from the goal of gaining power and influence to bring about the change that you desire to see in the country”, he said.
Decrying the use, abuse and misuse of social media by young Nigerians, Abdullahi described the current generation of youths as a “selfie generation, in which everyone wants to lead and no one wants to follow.”
“A generation that has substituted hero-worship with self-worship; that believes it is somehow demeaning to be a follower, but are obsessed with accumulating meaningless followers online… a generation that the only book they enjoy reading is the Facebook, where they promote themselves and abuse people in rotten English. A generation to whom Instagram is more respected than grammar and television more important than vision. A generation that believes that language does not matter; forgetting that language is what differentiates us from animals and most often, is the way other people judge the quality of our mind.”
Read the full text of his presentation below:
Not Too Young To Run – Beyond the Legislation
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