THE YOUNG LORDS OF OUR TIME
In the past, gradualism was the guarding principle of our people. One needed to go to school from Primary to University level to acquire a skill in order to earn a living.
Others ventured into skill acquisition for a long period of time to start earning a living. In any of the above methods, time and money were expended, discipline and stern character inculcated and imbibed.
Artisans of different fields and callings had their shops filled with apprentices; learning one form of trade or the other.
Suddenly, just suddenly, there began a drastic population reduction in the number of students in school and apprenticeship. There was sudden upsurge of young boys with sudden wealth without history; boys with clean new state of the art cars.
New classic buildings with architectural designs that can only be seen in foreign movies began sprouting up everywhere in the locality. Old buildings in our ancient cities began to be demolished and replaced with fancy old buildings. Owners or inheritors of the old buildings are being offered irresistible prizes; the prizes offered were so attractive that some had to sell their old houses with the graves of their parents.
These young wealthy boys are surprisingly very young and have properties worth millions; they have no known means of livelihood. Some call them G-Boys while others refer to them as Yahoo Boys. They are colourful and flamboyant with alluring cars. They are everywhere all the time. They are centre of attraction one cannot but noticed them; weird hairdo, pierced earrings, adorning sports wears or tattered torn jeans with tattooed bodies.
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Some have security operative guarding them. Most are permanently resident in hotels. They live large and act large. Some of them have no respect for traffic light. Some can stop suddenly at the middle of the road to exchange pleasantries to the chagrin of other road users. When they appear in any function or ceremonies where celebrants dance and are sprayed monies, they outshine and overshadow every other person. They do not spray in trickles like normal people do; they dole out money in bundle. They make naira to fly at the occasion. They are the ‘lords’ of our time; they have become the role models of younger boys and other boys not on their lane.
Consequently, schooling has become a scam and learning of trade a drab and a total waste of time. Gradualism as a concept of life is increasingly becoming unattractive. Some unschooled parents send their sons abroad to acquire the ‘skill’ of living in fast lane.
Some uneducated ignoramus, consumed with greed are also engulfed in the craze to have their young sons become millionaires. It is so easy to become a judge and condemn these youths. Our society has since become mean, unfeeling and harsh, peopled with man and woman drained of all forms of compassion, pregnated with all corruptible vices of all colorations. Who is a saint amongst us?
The poor in our society are treated with disdain and as nobodies. They are the dreg of the society, mistreated, dehumanized and debased, and almost always denied of what ought to be theirs. A poor man is molested, insulted and assaulted. No redress is given, even when it is sought, it is denied.
It takes money to mobilize law enforcement agents against persons with criminal and civil vices. Almost always, justices are denied because justices are delayed. They poor man’s child struggles through school only to be rejected by the labour market.
He ventures into trade and artisans’ apprenticeship and realizes that it is capital intensive. He soon finds himself between the Egyptians and the deep Red Sea; a pure case of Devil’s alternative. He finds himself in scam business; he hits one, two and three with effortless ease and his account is flooded with millions. He is encouraged to continue because his source of income has not been questioned or queried.
Besides, who in any segment of government is a saint, they reason. Some of the educated scammers see yahoo cum scamming art as a means of pay back to what the whites did to the blacks during the slave trade era. It is reparation mentality.
Again, the society that has previously mistreated them, they hold them in disdain. Disregarding and flaunting every rule and regulation, becoming generally unyielding to constituted authority and notable norms. They become deliberately loud and flamboyant, striving desperately to become larger than life. An acquired disposition born out of complex, they are new generation, changing the narratives of lifestyle.
Hard work is an aberration, a jet age generation that seeks wealth and riches with dangerous satanic determination has emerged scamming, hacking, defrauding and sales of body organs has become an organized industry.
Buildings, otherwise known as ‘HK’ are rented where boys are housed to carry out their scamming and hacking trade. Boys are recruited or enlisted to learn the trade and make return to their masters. Nothing is done, nothing can be done; it has become a system, accepted, unquestioned and undisturbed.