A Clarion Call to the 'Alaye 40s' to Change today's Developmental Narrative

                                          ''Ti ilu o ba dun, tilu o ba toro, eyin le mo be sese''. -- ASA

The above lyric taken from Asa's track, Ilu, is an existential challenge that attempts to connect the present commonplace lack of access to basic needs, economic downturn and insecurity to a collective failure and our inability to sustain the glorious past in the present. 'Eyin' (You) as used by Asa is a reminder that we (with the leadership of the land) have a part to play in development. This is in sharp contrast with today's blamegame of failed leaders of the past, like Obasanjo and Co, as it directly places the failure of the past at their doorstep.

Yes, development is collective but the collectiveness is bellied in participation: EYIN. Eyin refers to both the failed leaders and the followers at the time of opulence. It is an indictment of ineptitude, complicitness and convert/overt connivance with failed leaders to ruin a thriving and booming economy. Just as I and my colleagues in midlife can look into the eyes of those in their 60s and above few years ago and today, and sing this particular Asa's track to them, now those in their 20s are preparing to ask us, awa alaye 40s, the same question ''bo o le se se'' (how did you do it?).

Of course the stubborn ones among us, who has never held political office before, might reply: ''se kinni?? (What did we do?). They have forgotten that even our failure ''to do'' does not exonerate us from the failure of today because by then we would have become ''eyin', by our action and or inaction. The future shall not separate the ''leaders from followers'' when the time to blame comes. And like Obasanjos of today, the 'Ajala ta n na o' riddle shall be put to us by the younger generation.

So, my midlife colleagues, we must, and indeed, it is time to work more assiduously towards changing the future narrative for better so that tracks like Asa's will become meaningless and a mere reminder of how the 60s of today ruin the past, while we, the alaye 40s of today, corrected the past in the present, for better future for the 20s of today. Ilu wa a toro o!

-Adeyemi J Ademowo, sociocultural analyst and development anthropologist, works at Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria