From Osun to Abuja: Youth Politics, Gubernatorial Silence, and the One-Party State Argument

 

By Abioye Tosin Lawrence 

From Osun to Abuja, the air is thick with anger.

A generation speaks loudly-often online, questioning power, denouncing leaders, and demanding accountability. Criticism has become currency. Yet leadership, unlike outrage, demands structure, patience, and sacrifice.

It is easy for many Nigerians to condemn those in authority. But when responsibility is placed in the hands of some critics-tested with real tasks at the grassroots, a sobering truth often reveals itself: urgency fades, commitment weakens, and execution suffers. This generation needs no pity; it needs discipline. Leadership is not sympathy, it is service.

In Osun State, as the next gubernatorial election approaches, silence echoes louder than slogans. The youth presence that once stirred political creativity appears diminished. There was a time when young Nigerians floated credible governorship candidates under new political platforms, bold attempts to challenge the old order. Today, the field feels thinner, the ambition less organised, the courage less collective.

Politics, like poetry, punishes impatience.

Beyond Osun, the debate widens in Abuja. Claims that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is steering Nigeria toward a one-party state dominate conversations. Yet history demands honesty. When Tinubu faced political isolation, internal rebellion, and attempts to push him out of the party he helped build, was that democracy in danger? When a single party once governed nearly 30 states while others clung to survival, did Nigerians raise the same alarm?

Memory, when selective, weakens truth.

What thrives instead is social media governance, a republic of rage, hashtags, and regret. Many young voices speak, but few organise. Noise has replaced structure; protest has replaced patience. The question remains unavoidable: which youth-led political party in Nigeria has held a successful national convention with a formidable outcome? Where is the institution that outlives the trend?

Elsewhere on the continent, the story reads differently. In Uganda, Bobi Wine’s movement, regardless of its struggles, is rugged and organised. 

In Senegal, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye did not emerge from outrage alone but from years of disciplined political groundwork. Power does not fall into laps; it bows to preparation.

Leadership is not accidental.

It is built quietly, painfully, and consistently.

From Osun to Abuja, the lesson is clear: democracy rewards those who prepare, not those who merely protest. Until Nigeria’s youth learn to translate anger into organisation and criticism into capacity, power will remain distant, no matter how loud the chorus becomes.

Abioye Tosin Lawrence is the publisher of Oriontimes Online Newspaper and author of Voices From The Fire: My Journey Through a Hollow Empire