This debauched generation

NOT too long ago, MMM and ultimate cycler permeated the atmosphere of the country, seducing many Nigerians particularly the youths to succumb to investing tons of naira in the ponzi schemes against every caveat from experts. Reduced to the barest logic, these ponzi schemes offered a very simple but sly value proposition to the young generation of Nigerians: get rich easily and without any hard work.  And because of this, it worked like magic. What with the larger percentage of the over 180 million population of Nigeria being youths! On account of the hot chase for easy money and vacuous financial fortune, hundreds and thousands of mainly young people and over 3 million Nigerians in total— students, civil servants, business owners and even the common people on the streets – invested their money in MMM expecting to make more money in return for doing nothing.  We are, of course, all witnesses to the collapse of such intemperate and unbridled hope as many of these dim-witted and gluttonous people ended in misery and deaths. If explored further, however, we would find that the major underlying reason motivating people to fall prey to such void and nonsensical proposition is simple: the desire to reap without sowing, passion for shortcuts, the glitter and attraction to debauchery, interest in do-nothing-and get-rich!

Unfortunately, this shortcut mentality has become the defining ethos for our youths. We now have on our hands a generation of young people who set great store by the flaunting of riches without any interest in hardwork.  It is indeed frightening that our generation have a twisted mentality misconstruing Hollywood’s fantasies as what life is all about—the utter disregard for the concept of delayed gratification. The idea of waiting to work at a job, applying oneself diligently to the work, and earning enough to make ends meet while working from the bottom with an eye to the top of the ladder, upsets and frustrates emerging adults in today’s Nigerian society. As a consequence, the fast money infection at whatever cost presents to us a generation ready to cling on anything and do any and all things  to effect a façade of riches. It doesn’t matter how long the riches will last, to the extent that the society would applaud and celebrate the riches on display is enough. To put it differently, many of these youths engage in questionable acts and deals such as armed robbery, cultism and online fraudulent activities with ‘yahoo, yahoo plus‘ at the apex of the list, all in the bid to bypass the normal procedure to having legitimate wealth and riches.

As part of the shortcut culture that is speedily taking over the psyche of especially the youth in Nigeria, a research by NAN reveals that about 60 million Nigerians between the ages of 18 and 40 years spend about N1.8billion on sports betting daily as it provides an avenue to make it fast, beat the rat race and grab easy money. In the same light, millions of unemployed Nigerian youths follow and pledge loyalty to any gang leader who could lead them to anything, so long it would bring money. We have young people who would rather kill another human being in cold blood for ritual purposes to become one of the ‘big and happening guys’ than go through the rigorous process of legally earning a living. The same way we have girls who would become high class prostitutes on obscene social platforms such as TWOO, Badoo and others, dance naked as vixens in music videos to get paid than do a decent job as much as we now have students who would rather cheat or pay or sleep their way than read to pass their examinations. Yet, this is not to say that the easy money culture and syndrome in our society today is restricted or peculiar to the youths alone. As a matter of fact, it could be said that the youths themselves get introduced to the absurdity by learning from the elders as there is a sense in which debauched existence has taken over life generally in Nigeria with the relegation to the background of hard work while everybody strives after whatever offers easy money.

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What rules our social media space is the notion that hard work does not pay even as parents and the entire society encourage a culture of immediacy. We have unconscionably developed even in our children, starting from the earliest consciousness of the child, that gains could only come from shortcuts and instantaneous actions and not from deliberate hard work and delayed gratification by encouraging children to have instant rewards for every act. We encourage children not to see value in work, and particularly in hardwork, when we give them rewards to do anything even for themselves. We see children grow up expecting large, instant reward for their years of schooling including the buying of results and certificates for them by the parents. In return, the children revels in acquisitions that are not supported or supervised by the parents.

We live in the age in which children are taught to see getting their own things as the most important objective in life, and is it any wonder then that they pursue this with singular devotion without any thought as to principles and ethics!  The end of riches justifies any means for the children including even when they grow into teenage and youthful years. This especially as to many parents now, it is the child that brings money home that is the ‘good child’ without bothering about the source of the child’s money.  And which child would not want to do every and any and all things just to satisfy the desires of the parents for him/her to bring money and riches home! The bottom line is that we ultimately cannot expect anything good to come out of the current debauched process the society is reveling in.  We ought to know that get-rich-quick gimmicks and schemes are only that: gimmicks – and nothing good or lasting is ever built on gimmicks. Both at the level of individual and society, the truth is that shortcutting our way to wealth and riches would only result in disaster as we end up getting cut short! In reality, there is no shortcut to anything good or lasting, just as there is no substitute to doing the hard work.  Shortcuts are illusory and which is why the life of debauchery built on them would be ultimately disappointing. We must let our youths know that no pot of gold exists in the future outside of hard work and dedication.  And that the quickest way to reach good destination is to stay on the true path which is defined by patience, perseverance, endurance and, above all, hard work. Definitely not through shortcuts and debauchery.

• Yakubu is of the Department of Mass Communication, Kogi State University, Anyigba.