Nigeria: Generational Capital in the Nigeria Project

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History teaches so many lessons. One of the most dynamic of the lessons of history derives from the role played by generations or their succession in the trajectory that gives birth to civilisations and especially the developmental state that all nations aspire to. This generational dimension of national evolution is already prefigured in the idea of the age grade in most cultures in Nigeria. The age group phenomenon, in other words, is our societies' own way of harnessing the collective energy and intellectual capital of its youth.

The logic of generational succession, however, requires that the achievements/failure of the preceding generation be inversely proportional to the failure/achievement of the succeeding generation. A summary of the trajectory of preceding generations in Nigeria reveals that each had a unique task demanded by the dynamics of post-independent Nigeria. For the first generation, it was the need to push the Nigerian state beyond the colonial constraints. The second generation, Soyinka's 'wasted generation', had its responsibilities set out in a template of crisis. The Civil War was already waiting to happen. Consequently, the generation emerged within this dysfunctional context of the urgent need to ameliorate the anomic condition that has become the concept of the national question.

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