How to Write About Nigerian Youths If you are an author, there is so much to write about Nigerian youths and get your book flying off the shelves. What is worth writing about the youths is the plight not the exuberance, because there are plenty of pieces of information to gather and make titillating stories about the quandary of this army. Choose a suitable title that has no ethnic coloration to avoid being dubbed a divisive” or bigoted writer by your readers. If you need a prologue to your work, explain there that the book is about an average Nigerian youth so as to avoid rebuttal from the scions of the few rich and middle class families in the land. Define the term “Youth” as a time between 18-40 when a person can say YES to all the wrongs and NO to all the rights. This range is fair enough to include all youth leaders of political parties and associations in Nigeria. Your cover page picture should be a picture of a young man. If you must use a northerner use a picture with haggard and cavernous eyes. That kind of eyes that continue looking at you everywhere you move. It should be in a sitting posture to depict an idler harboring phantom hopes and ambitions. If a southerner, use a picture of a young man in standing posture, with shaggy hair and his hands tucked in his trouser pockets, to depict swagger. Your readers will self-consciously blush on sight of such a picture. Note that Nigeria is very interesting country, with a rainbow of some 40 million literate unlettered and socially advanced youths of different ethnic backgrounds, who are busy trading blames and ethnic slur, and pelting one another with catchwords, along ethnic lines. This can be a whole chapter in your storytelling but don’t set it as a handicap to the youths in your plot, because they (Nigerian youths) find it reasonable and expedient to explore solutions to their shared problems of corruption and underdevelopment through such interchange of ethnic slur. In your text, the socially advanced youths include those fresh university graduates who are busy pounding the pavement, busy stampeding and dying, from one interview venue to another until their freshness is dulled. And those who are fun-employed to hog the social media and pour the most concentrated vitriol upon their adversaries from the other section of the country. Remember, the destiny of the country is in their hands. The unlettered youth are also important to write about and cause your readers to flip the next page. They are burly young men who think with their muscles. They are busy growing to become employed or inducted as thugs, mafia henchmen and poster boys by the nouveau riche politicians. Throughout your work, words and phrases like “Ethnic” “ Prejudice” “Aboki” “Ogogoro” “Sentiment” “Individualism” “Nyamuri” “Qabila” “Wee-Wee” “Jungle justice” “Counterfeit” “’Con” “Swindle” “Unemployment” “Scholarship” “Stampede” “419” “Nepotism” “Thug” “Materialism” should be frequent. Some words and phrases like “Favor” and “Follow-up” should appear in different contexts so that the other surrounding words will explain their meaning other than the standard. You should never mention “Patriotism” “posterity” “cohesion” or “creativity” in affirmative way, because they (Nigerian youths) don’t give a damn. Don’t attempt to translate literally, some Hausa words like “Aboki” or “Mallam” into English, so as not to confuse the southern youths. I reckon that your characters should include; professional kidnappers, ethnic chauvinists, school drop-out, perennial job seekers, pathological liars, urchins, street beggars, drummers, poster boys, youth association leaders, okada riders, truck pushers, watch men, fraudsters, Yan Kalare of Gombe, Yahoo boys of Ibadan, Area boys of Lagos, Qauraye of Katsina Yan daba of Kano, fake degree holders and looters of tomorrow. Treat the youths of North and the youths of South as citizens of two different regions who are insensitive to the plight of each other. In one chapter show that the youths in Kano outnumber the youths in Lagos, in another, contradict yourself. It is just as well. In your book show that all youths in the world love watching football and Indian films through the TV screen and are ready to trigger scuffle when their favorite soccer team loses a game to its opponent. Show that studying abroad is as easy as sleeping and as such, every youth should develop excessive love, and be constantly looking for scholarship to study abroad. Make sure you describe the hallmark of their education; a checkered past of schooling from primary school to university, patterned with Child labor and series of failed examinations, and indefensible certificates obtained by dubious means. An average Nigerian graduate can’t write a good report even in his mother tongue. The common belief is that the end will justify the means. While writing down your text, don’t trust your intuition so much. Words like “Vigor”, “Spirit”, “Hope” and “Ambition” that we intuitively think of, when we are discussing “Youth” as a subject should be avoided. In Nigeria proposals are shifted, hopes are carried over and some ambitions will never be achieved. Youths nowadays achieve their goals way later than the time youths of the yesteryear did. Achievements that are conventional of 25 years are achieved in 35. Some ambitions will never be met. Another issue worthy of mention is the popular catch phrase “Unity in diversity”. Nigerian youths believe in their differences, and are every day intensifying it. That is the reason we have different youth clubs and associations protecting different interests. Make sure you explain in details, the role of United Arewa Youth Organization (UAYO) in making the North towering other regions, and the contribution of the Niger Delta Youth Assembly (NDYA) in making the enclave better than others. Show that, like product market, healthy competition between North and South will present more than one Nigeria before the citizens to love the best-- and hate the worst. End your book with a story of how Nwanko Kanu or Tijjani Babangida made a successful career in football in such miraculously few years. Your readers of all ethnic backgrounds would love to hear this story. Never end with a story of the “labor of our heroes past” or a narrative of how Chinua Achebe became a writer of international refute. Ibrahim Muhammad Kurfi, Ibrahimu1012@gmail
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 10:08:34 +0000
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