By Chief Olusegun Obasanjo
Let me welcome all of you as colleagues and alumni of the same Institute – Royal College of Defence Studies – to the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, OOPL. Secondly, please accept my unreserved apologies for not being able to be physically with you today after I have had the honour of planning this program with you including suggesting the theme of our discussion. I have to attend a meeting in Washington DC, which has to do with the issue between DRC and Rwanda where some of us have been appointed as facilitators. I thank you for your understanding.
The theme for discussion and for robbing of our minds at this get-together is “Challenges of Youth in a Fractured World”. This topic is relevant and should be of concern to all of us for the present and the future.
The four key words in the theme are: Challenge, Youth, Fracture and World. I will want us to digest first, the three words, less the word ‘youth’. I propose that we look at ‘youth’ last because it is the most important. I believe that this is one of the occasions when we should leave the most important to the last for concentration of thought and minds. I begin with the word ‘challenge’ which is situation or position that is difficult and/or problematic and will require maximum and concentration of mental, emotional and physical efforts to surmount it or succeed in it. It will be taxing, perplexing, maybe agonizing and prone to failure. It can test ability and capability to the limits. In positive terms, it can be beneficial as attributes developer and character builder.
Let us consider ‘fracture’ which means cracking or complete breaking of a hard object or material and when fracture takes place, the object or material becomes impaired and less useful for the purpose it is meant to serve. Fracture on the human body is a complete or partial break in a bone that occurs when the force that is excerpted on the bone is greater than the strength of the bone. Like ‘fracture’, in general, it makes the bone not to be able to perform the service that it is designed to perform.
The world is the planet Earth and its constituents, components, makeup, the land and the water, the countries and the people and the pursuits and activities of the people, with national and international laws, rules, regulations making for orderliness, rule or code of behavior, stability and predictability.
Where we are now, we can start to put the words together to see and understand the implications. A fractured world is a broken world with chartered system, disorder, uncontrolled behaviour, impunity, no peace, no security, no predictability. It is a world of anything goes. What is the present and the future for the youth in such a world? Before answering that question, let’s consider the youth.
Who are the youth? Youth refers to the time of human being in life which is the period between childhood and adulthood often characterized by vitality, idealism, hope, expectation, dreams, a bit of adventure and naivety. It is a glorious time when the whole world is in front of you. We have all passed through the period with fancy, energy, beauty and fantasy. It is also defined by age range of 15 to 35. Some extends to 40.
Now, that whole world ahead of the youth is fractured with all that a fractured world means and entails. The youth can see evaporation ahead of them. Hope turning to despair, expectation unrealizable, plans frustrated and programs unrealized. These are the challenges of the youth in the fractured world we are in today. That is the reality.
My dear brothers and colleagues, some of us were youth immediately after the Second World War. I was. Most of you were youth at the height of the Cold War. The world was not perfect but there was some order, respect for international law, rules and regulations. There were threats but no impunity. They talked of balance of terror in those days with reasonable stability, predictability, peace and common security with shared responsibility and prosperity among the leading nations of the world. The developing nations could breathe reasonably freely. The super powers negotiated and consulted among themselves. Today, the youth face herculean challenges which they must not be left to handle alone.
Here we come. What should the youth know and do and what should we their parents, brothers and sisters do in the circumstances? Let me make a few suggestions. The first and most important thing for youth and adults particularly the leaders in our community and our situations is to understand ourselves and understand the world which is very dynamic and non-static. The world does not feel that it owes us anything but if we understand the world and know our ways around, we can get the maximum out of the world but only if we play it right. That was my experience when I was negotiating for debt relief. We cannot hide anything from the present day world. They know us more than we even know ourselves. We must be honest with ourselves. No matter what goes on in the world, the adults and the leaders of our society owe the youth to be told the truth and give transparent, transformational and selfless leadership. We are neither doing enough for ourselves for today nor for the youth for tomorrow. We are borrowing money thoughtlessly to sustain our recurrent wasteful expenditure on consumption. And we wallow in theatre of lies, deceit and corruption without leaving anything for the rainy day nor invest in the future. Saudi Arabia, one of the largest oil-producers in the world is furiously investing in solar energy, other sources of energy and Artificial Intelligence, AI, for the future when oil will be no more. The adults and leaders of today must stop consuming the resources of today and tomorrow with reckless abandon and be proactive to invest in the immediate future for the good of the nation.
The youth must be incorporated into all aspects of our family, private and public lives. Youth are not leaders of tomorrow, they are leaders today. Let them be part and parcel of leadership today in preparation for tomorrow. Otherwise, the leaders of today with their capricious avarice will deprive the youth of their tomorrow if they are kept out. The future is too serious, too delicate and too important to be left in the hands of only one group and one group whose performance track record is less than glorious. If the world out there is unwelcoming to our youth, the adults and the leaders here must give them hope and assurance of a great future.
When I talk to youth, I always tell them that in my days, we had little facilities but more opportunities. When I left secondary school, there was only one university in Nigeria, but before seeking university admission, I was invited for employment in five places. Today we have over three hundred universities that I regard as facilities galore, but job opportunities are not there.
For the youth, the first three things that I strongly recommend for them are closely linked together. They are attitude, attributes and character. If these three are right, the sky is the limit of how you can go. First is to develop ‘can do’ spirit. With Nigeria’s population fast running to 250 million, opportunities are bound to continue to grow. The challenges that we have talked about earlier could be turned to advantage by developing tough and resilient character disposition that a fractured world demands. Self-reliance, thinking and acting out of the box is required and demanded in a time like this. Tough times and situations are not for picnic, they require tough minds and tough hearts in tough bodies.
I am often amused when I ask young university graduates what they read in the university and they tell me ‘bus admin’ meaning Business Administration. But business has to be created before it can be administered. May be as government policy in our universities curricula, we should develop Business Creation as a course of study with entrepreneurship. For all of us but particularly for the youth, we are essentially the architects of our fortune or misfortune. In my conclusion, let me reiterate that it will amount to height of insensitivity bordering on cruelty for the adults and the leaders not to understand the challenges of the youth in today’s rapidly changing fractured world. In addition to some suggestions I have made in this address, the youth have one great resource and that is resource of number which goes with what I term positive disruption. These two, in one resource, are available to the youth for societal development and improvement and to help them deal with a fractured world by joining hands in creating a better community, a better society and a better nation within the borders of their country.
Finally, I see a fairly more peaceful, secure, stable, predictable world with a multipolar world which the world may attain within the next ten years.
Thank you for listening and I wish you a very successful deliberation.
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR former President of Nigeria delivered this address at the Grand Reception/Lecture Organised by the Alumni Association of Royal College of Defence Studies, RCDS Abeokuta, Ogun State, on October 17, 2025
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