I am in the backseat of a Volkswagen wagon on the highway from Zungeru. I just opened my last bag of chips and plugged my earphones to Kid Kudi singing The Prayer. The road is proving unsurprisingly thrilling and subtly revealing the reasons behind its pull on dedicated and professional travelers. It is very easy to get sucked into the love of the wind and occasional dust in your face. The freedom of being in a place where you are nobody. The glimmer in the eyes of the locals when they witness your astonishment at simple elements of their daily lives. They also respond with hostility when you try to objectify them, as in their physical bodies. They don't mind you taking pictures of their landscape or the livestock but you don't just take a picture of Almajiri boys hurdled by the roadside on the highway to Kontagora. They will throw rocks at you. Can't have everything right?
Something remarkable is happening in Nigeria. There is a new generation of pan Nigerians emerging onto the scene. A group of young, driven, hopeful and hardworking dreamers, developers, and leaders who see beyond the limitations and drawbacks of political and socio-economic issues and are buying into a vision of a new world, a vision which is exploding at an exponential rate worldwide. A dream so big that it overshadows with ease, decades past of mistakes and offers incredible opportunities for the future and indeed the very present. This group of people is not from Mars. They are amongst you and your friends. As a matter of fact, many of them have been dismissed by you and your friends as pipe dreamers or whatever else you might choose to call them. Call them what you will but they are here to stay and believe it, so are their dreams. I attended a conference recently where the majority of attendees were young entrepreneurs between the ages of 19 and 35. These folks and...
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