The Southerner –OPEN EYES 

Thursday, February 26, 2026

There are moments in a writer’s life; quiet, sobbering moments, when the ink pauses mid-sentence, not from want of words, but from the weight of purpose. This is one of those moments for me. And I welcome it not with shame, but with the kind of clarity that only comes when a man looks honestly into the mirror and asks: Is what I am building worth the noise I am making? Nigeria deserves better than noise. We have too many noise makers. She deserves a voice that does not merely wound, but one that tends to wounds already bleeding. She deserves a pen that does not just point fingers, but dares to point the way forward.

I have been blessed, or perhaps burdened with the gift of words. For ten years, I have wailed on several National Dailies critiquing the social political challenges bedevilling our beloved country. And then, came this column some months ago, which has been my pulpit, my courtroom, and sometimes, my battlefield. I have named names. I have raised alarms. I have rattled cages with what I believe is righteous indignation.

And some of it needed to be said. But last week, something shifted. Not because powerful people were offended, powerful people are always offended by truth, but because I began to ask myself a different question; beyond identifying what is broken, am I helping to build it either? Like many other writers, I have been crying wolf, what changes has that made? A hammer that only knows how to strike eventually breaks the very table it was meant to fix.

Therefore, today, with the full awareness of what this declaration means, I am announcing a new course for OPEN EYES — a season of “constructive reckoning” anchored on one simple but revolutionary act; listening to Nigeria’s young people and amplifying their voices on the national stage. Nigeria is not a country without solutions. She is a country whose solutions are trapped in the hearts and minds of 70 million young citizens who wake up daily with ideas, energy, and an unquenchable desire to matter, but who are consistently shut out of the rooms where decisions are made. That changes here. That changes now.

Beginning with our next edition, OPEN EYES will launch “Youth Voices, National Choices”— a recurring series in which young Nigerians, from Maiduguri to Okene, from Aba to Ekiti, will co-author this column with me. They will bring their proposals on security, governance, unemployment, education, and the economy. I will bring the platform, the context, and the seasoned analysis.

Together, we will create something this country has rarely seen in its media landscape; an intergenerational dialogue that treats youth not as beneficiaries of political goodwill, but as architects of national destiny. I am not stepping back from OPEN EYES. I am stepping forward with it, and I am bringing an entire generation with me.

It is instructive to urge you not to misunderstand this shift as retreat. The eagle does not stop being the eagle because it changes altitude. I am an Adoke, and Adokes are warriors! Hence, Truth will still be spoken in this column, unflinchingly, courageously, without apology. But truth is not only accusation; truth is also aspiration. Truth is the young woman in Kano who built a waste recycling co-operative employing forty youths and has been waiting for someone in the media to notice.

Truth is the nineteen-year-old in Calabar who designed a digital tool to track local government budget implementation and whom no newspaper has ever interviewed. Truth is the corps member in Benue turning rural classrooms into tech learning hubs with nothing but passion and a secondhand laptop. These are the truths OPEN EYES has been neglecting. Not anymore!

I know there are readers who will wonder if this is surrender. No, it is not. I know there are others who will say I have been silenced. I have not. What has happened is far more dangerous to the status quo than anything a sharp editorial can accomplish; I have been awakened. I have seen that the most subversive thing a columnist can do in a country that thrives on cynicism is to relentlessly, defiantly, celebrate what is ‘possible’.

To show young Nigerians that our country is not beyond saving and that we are the ones to save it is a more radical act than any political takedown I could engineer from this desk. The pen has always been mightier than the sword. But a pen that builds is mightier still than one that only draws blood.

So I invite you into this new season of OPEN EYES. If you are a young Nigerian with a story, an idea, a project, or a dream for this nation, I want to hear from you. If you are a student, an entrepreneur, a community organizer, an up and coming digital activist, or simply a patriot who refused to give up on Nigeria even when Nigeria seemed to give up on you, this column is now yours as much as it is mine.

The weeks ahead will not be comfortable, they never are when a nation is trying to be reborn. But they will be honest. They will be hopeful. And they will be LOUD with the sound of a generation that finally knows someone is listening. Nigeria’s best days are not behind her. They are sitting in classrooms, typing on phones, walking the streets aimlessly, farming in fields, and dreaming in the dark. OPEN EYES is here, wider open than ever, to let in the light. May the sun shine tomorrow.

*The author writes from Abuja. Feedback, youth submissions, and community stories for the “Youth Voices, National Choices” series can be sent to my email address as displayed on this newspaper. The conversation has only just begun!

muhammedjamiuadoke@gmail.com