AMILOADED MEDIA HUB NEWS UPDATE
The eighth edition of the Osun Youth Ambassador Award, a project of Aminat A. Ajibola, CEO of Amiloaded News Agency, has been hailed by the Akire of Ikire-Ile Kingdom, Oba Abdulazeez Olatunbosun Adebemiji, Ogunkojo II, as a noble and extremely praiseworthy one.
The king also urged organizations to take inspiration from the Youth Reformer Initiative by recognizing the diligence and hard work of young people who have been carefully chosen and who genuinely deserve recognition in order to inspire others to strive harder.
The traditional ruler revealed these during the 8th Osun Youth Ambassador Award, which was hosted by the Youth Reformer Initiative on Sunday, December 10, 2023, at the Aurora Event and Conference in Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria.
While praising the facilitator, Aminat A. Ajibola, Oba Olatunbosun denounced the behavior of certain people or groups that demand exorbitant sums of money before granting recognition or awards.
He lamented that society had gotten so bad that we no longer exercised due diligence when choosing recipients, such as checking to make sure a candidate for an award truly merited it.
The wicked things we witness all around us are now accepted and even celebrated in our culture. Who is going to save us as a people? The king asked.
Furthermore, he promoted the idea that if we don’t start with ourselves, then we’re only giving room to wrongdoings.
He continued, “Redeeming ourselves must be seen as a collective duty that leaders, followers, artisans, teachers, doctors, engineers, and other professionals see imperative.”
Concerning our society’s alarming rate of moral decline, the monarch also voiced concerns.
The speech in parts;
When I was growing up in Ikire-Ile, society had tremendous appreciation for hard work, honesty and uprightness. As a child you dare not bring home a piece of chalk that did not belong to you for fear of your parents who would search your bag daily, just in case you have any strange things they did not provide for you in your bag. God saves you if you have another person’s belongings in your bag. You would explain ‘tire’, to use a trending expression. This attitude inculcated honesty in us. It also shows that parents would not condone stealing, or corruption and criminal activities of any form in their children.
Nowadays, young boys of 18 in the universities ride the latest vehicles on campus. Vehicles their parents could not afford with their sweat and daily toils. Vehicles that cost several millions of naira. Yet you find parents, nay the society, looking the other way and hailing them. They have become intimidated by their own child to keep mute and ask no questions. “Who question epp?” Sorry, that is another trending slang that has enveloped the society with docility and acquiescence. If you inquire, you are a busybody and you are marked for all sorts of opprobrious media attacks. Who will redeem us?
These days, what the youth learns from the adults is nothing to write home about too. Or why will a person in charge of a pension agency steal the pension funds of retired and retiring workers and got just a slap on the wrist from the judiciary? Why should an Accountant-General of the Federation embezzle money that is more than the annual budgets of five states, only to be given a chieftancy title and be recognised as worthy in the society? Why will a lecturer insist that he must sleep with his female student before she could graduate? Why will a banker steal the people’s funds and impose harsh policies on the masses to cover his track or to prevent someone from emerging victorious in an election? Why will the electoral umpire upend the will of the electorate, only for the politician to tell the aggrieved to go to court? The question once again is who will redeem us?
I am not here to lament. I will be failing as a royal father at this occasion if I didn’t point us to the way forward. It is the duty of all of us to redeem ourselves from the shackles of corruption in which we have found ourselves. Awarding bodies must only honour and celebrate genuine contributions. We have so many brilliant chaps and talented youths in this country that are wasting away because no one looks their ways, and because they have no one to help them and guide their talents to national assets. So many of them are always being showcased on social media but that is where it ends. At the end, we reduce these achievements to tribal, religious and several other parochial and selfish sentiments.
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