MY ALLEGORY OF THE CRIPPLED COCKROACH

Yesterday a strange fellow limped casually into the four cornered territory where like it i crawl out from every morning to find my future. it was a rather diffident chap, each step from this five and a half legged little monster we all love to hate was informed by an impending knowledge of a likely and sudden death by crushing.

I watched this irritating little gimp with a sense of curiosity as it meandered its way to a heap of loose junk which i has carefully stacked at the corner of  the cubicle where i lay my head. The junk, which had been gathered were tell tale signs of a room which had been left unkept for weeks.

That vermin is a cockroach, this one had five good legs with a sixth as crooked as a politician. Irritating to the sight, it was an icon for utter disgust.
My first instinct was to put the rascal out of its limping misery and end the whole drama but on second thought i took a pause, i was awed by its will to survive, it reminded me of the rose that grew from the concrete but it further reminded me of something even more disturbing, what was it? Yes, the average Nigerian youth.

In a great way the life of the typical Nigerian youth is no different from the life of a cockroach. Lets highlight a few intrinsic characteristics common to both species.

1. Environment: by its very nature a cockroach thrives in a filthy and disorganized environment, a clean and organized setting is an abomination to the nature of a cockroach. Present day Nigeria is characterized by chaos, corruption and unmanageable disorderliness which give  typical Nigerian youths their very nature, even when they leave the shores of the country they tend to create a replica of the Nigerian rot in their new environment, this probably helps them feel more at home. The result is the shameful stories we read every now and then about Nigerians abroad.

2. Scavenging: this is a roaches appeal, just as they rummage through the junk of an unkept vicinity, Nigerian youths scavenge through the junks of life for objects of little or no substance to their immediate person. They want the latest phones, diamond studded champaign bottles, Brazilian hair worth hundred of thousands, and many other crap of ephemeral value. When these shadows are faded, the real things are often nothing to write about.

3. Lack of any sincere futuristic plan or vision: its a "grab and tear" mentality with these two species, unlike the ant  these two are not big on preserving things, for instant gratification is there ultimate goal. To understand this, we can conduct a little experiment.

• Step 1. Place an advert for vacancy on a position (any position), for maximum result make the position sound big. You would have at least 500 youths turn up.
• Step 2. Pick at random 200 youths and tell them to return at a particular time.
• Step 3. when they are all gathered at a given time, give them a single center sheet of a full scape notebook and leave them for the next 15mins.
• Result: You would come back to find the sheet in at least 4 different pieces, such that one person would have his first name in on one piece while his surname will be on another.

Reason: same as why Nigerians will prefer to get battered and have their clothes torn in the process of getting a bus than have a single line for smooth access. Its a "grab and tear" mentality.

4. Back door, corner and window syndrome: it is a known fact that the cockroach hates the front door. similarly, the Nigerian youth shares such strange quality, its only in Nigeria you find human beings who want to get into a bus through its boot.

5. Blind and unguarded courage towards acts of negativity: the cockroach is imbued suicidal courage which is often kamikaze to it, the reward for its destructive nature is death. The Nigerian youth is also imbued with a similar courage toward disastrous acts that mortgage their future for short time glory, acts like, cultism, yahoo plus, aristo plus, vandalization of pipelines and many other grotesque and picaresque pattern of behaviour.

6. Survival and Resilience: I would commend the survival instincts of a cockroach, very resilient in nature, it is about the only creature on the planet that has the ability to survive a nuclear disaster. In the same way I salute the tenacity of the Nigerian youth, given little or no opportunity they always manage to seize happiness for themselves regardless of the sorry state of whereever they are, the ability to suffer and smile in situations where youths from other parts of the world develop nervous breakdown and even go on to commit suicide is a strong point.

The truth of the matter is, I doubt if there would ever be a total change of mentality, but i know as times drift by and generations of societal misfits continue to wash away like sand against tide, there would be a conscious re awakening of human dignity in the young Nigerian heart. When this is done, only there and then would we begin to think as human beings or at worst, ants.