A commemorative address delivered Akogun Tola Adeniyi Special Guest of Honour at IMCOSA Class Set of 1966-70/72 on their 60th Anniversary Celebration held in Ijebu Muslim College Grounds, Ijebu Ode on April 25, 2026*
Ladies and gentlemen, —alumni of the verdant soil from which this nation sprang forth, you who have borne faithful witness to as w the storms that shaped our Nation into what it is today: I welcome you. I greet you. I salute you.
Special greetings to old members of the Social and Cultural Society.
I think we can all agree that we have lived through interesting times. These times have birthed a proud yet fractured entity called Nigeria, a nation teetering perennially— it would seem—on the edge of uncertainty and internal tensions. We have watched our beloved country oscillate between moments of extraordinary promise and seasons of profound despair. We have seen hope kindled and hope extinguished, sometimes within the same news cycle, within the same administration, within the same heartbeat of national existence.
My message today, distinguished dignitaries, is that the young shall grow.
This sentiment is apposite when speaking of a Nation, but it is doubly apposite because youth is the crucible in which ALL civilizations forge their identities. And you—this very generation—you, alumni of these hallowed halls, have been those crucibles for a nascent nation. You have been the vessels into which the molten ore of independence was poured, the anvils upon which the shape of our republic was hammered, the fires that tempered the steel of our national character.
But let us pause to consider what this maxim truly means. “The young shall grow” is not merely a statement of biological certainty. It is not simply the observation that saplings become trees, that infants become adults, that students become graduates. No. It is a declaration of faith in the inevitability of maturation—not merely physical, but moral, intellectual, and civic maturation. It is the assertion that potential, once planted in fertile ground, will reach toward the light despite the shadows that seek to choke it.
Yet here is what we must not forget: growth is inexorable, but it is not patient. The sun that rises on the seedling will not pause for the farmer who sleeps. The rains that fall on the valley will not return for the village that failed to harvest. The young shall grow—yes, this is the law of nature—but they shall grow whether we are ready or not, whether we have prepared the soil or not, whether we have sown wisdom or left the field to weeds. Time is the one creditor that never extends a deadline. It is the one river that never flows backward. The young shall grow, and in growing, they will either inherit a nation we have built or a ruin we have neglected. You bear witness to a nation that once believed it could walk on water, a belief neither misplaced nor unfounded, a belief well-founded, I say, upon an abundance of palpable evidence, NOT blind faith. Yes. Our faith that all things were possible for our fledgling nation rested firmly upon a prodigious and incomparable wealth of precious natural resources. In this very regard, Nigeria is blessed above all nations with bounteous resources beyond the dreams of avarice. The black gold beneath our soil, the fertile earth above it, the rivers that snake through our territories like arteries of life—these were not gifts we asked for; they are endowments entrusted to us by Olodumare.
But, it must be here stated: our collective endowment has NOT translated into collective prosperity.
In the very short history of our nation, (sorry I hardly use the word nation when discussing the contraption called Nigeria) varied administrations have come and gone; a multitude of campaign promises have gone unfulfilled and all the while our economy has spiralled downward under the nebulous and unholy trinity that is currency devaluation, inflation and persistent austerity— oil revenue continues to flow in yet fewer and fewer citizens are able to meet their basic needs; politicians pontificate in self-congratulatory oration about “growth” but the common people see no evidence of this bounty. Quite the contrary. It would appear based on all evidence that we have imported the Western world’s primary export, Corruption. It took root and it festered until we had to ask: What good is progress if it benefits only those in power?
Here we encounter another dimension of our maxim: the young shall grow, but not all growth is healthy. A child may grow tall yet if malnourished during maturation, the outcome will be a tall adult with weak fungible bones. A nation may expand in GDP yet contract in human dignity. The young shall grow, yes—but into what? Into citizens of integrity or subjects of graft? Into builders or into predators? This is the question that haunts our national conscience.
You, my dear fellow alumni—those who studied economics in our libraries or debated policy in lecture halls—know only too well that progress isn’t just numbers on a balance sheet; it is how we measure our humanity. The young shall grow because they must learn to measure wealth not by what accumulates in Swiss accounts, but by what accumulates in the human spirit. They shall grow because they must redefine prosperity not as the enrichment of the few, but as the elevation of the many.
Consider the agricultural maxim: the young shoot must be pruned if the tree is to bear good fruit. Is it fair to say that our national growth has been wild, untended, overgrown with the parasitic vines of patronage and the thorns of ethnic chauvinism? The young shall grow—but they shall grow straight only if we have the courage to prune what is crooked. They shall grow strong only if we have the wisdom to cut away what is diseased.
Today, the stakes are different, but the lesson remains: The young shall grow, not because they’re ready to lead, but because they are unafraid of leadership.
Here is a paradox that our maxim conceals and reveals simultaneously: growth is not a reward for readiness; it is a consequence of necessity. The acorn does not wait for permission to become the oak. The chick does not postpone its flight until the wind is favorable. The young shall grow because the alternative is stagnation, and stagnation, dear friends, is a form of death.
Here’s where you come in: We need visionaries who don’t just talk about unity, they build it. You alumni, the ones who once walked tightrope bridges across Nigeria’s vastness, now stand at the helm of change. You who navigated the precarious footpaths between ethnic suspicion and regional rivalry—you who learned, in these very halls, that a Yoruba economist and an Igbo engineer and a Hausa historian could sit at the same table not as representatives of ethnicities but as citizens of ideas—you are the living proof that the young have grown.
But let us not mistake presence for power, nor position for purpose. The young shall grow, but growth without direction is merely expansion—bulky, inefficient, vulnerable. A nation that grows without vision becomes obese rather than muscular. It accumulates rather than achieves. It swells rather than strengthens.
We are in a time of recalibration—a time when politics splinters families into rival factions, social divides deepen like ethnic lines long ignored. But remember: Growth doesn’t come from the comfort zone; it demands the courage to confront our own shadows. The young shall grow because they are willing to walk through the valley of their own failures, to acknowledge that the generation before them—yes, my own generation and your generation—did not always get it right, did not always choose the difficult right over the easy wrong, did not always sow seed in the right season.
We were educated in these halls not just to memorize facts, but to question them. The young shall grow because they will challenge the status quo: They’ll demand reforms. Change.
This is perhaps the most revolutionary interpretation of our maxim: that growth is inherently disruptive. The child outgrows his clothes. The student outgrows her textbooks. The citizen outgrows her government. The young shall grow—and in growing, they will inevitably strain against the containers that once held them. They will burst through the boundaries that once defined them. They will render obsolete the structures that once protected them. As my father always told me, the son eventually becomes the father to his parent*.
Do not fear this disruption. Embrace it. For what is a nation if not a continuous act of becoming? What is a constitution if not a promise to outgrow itself? What is a democracy if not the institutionalization of permanent revolution—the peaceful, procedural, perpetual overthrow of the old by the new?
But I say this to you—growth is not linear; it’s nonlinear. It requires patience, persistence—and yes, leadership.
Here we must correct a dangerous misreading of our maxim. “The young shall grow” does not mean “the young shall grow easily.” It does not promise a straight line from poverty to prosperity, from exploitation and oligarchy to representative government, from fragmentation to unity. No. The path of growth is jagged. It doubles back. It encounters resistance. The seedling breaks through soil that crushes it. The adolescent endures growing pains that awaken them in the night. The nation stumbles through civil strife that tests its very will to exist.
The young shall grow because they endure these interruptions. They do not interpret a setback as a sentence. They do not mistake a detour for a destination. They understand that the graph of genuine progress is not a smooth curve but a jagged heartbeat—irregular, urgent, alive.
And so, my fellow alumni, I leave you with this final meditation on our theme. The young shall grow—but they shall grow only if we, the not-so-young-anymore, create the conditions for growth. The farmer does not command the seed to germinate; he prepares the soil. The teacher does not force the pupil to understand; he lights the lamp. The elder does not dictate the path of the youth; he clears the brush from the trail.
But the farmer who delays his planting loses his harvest. The teacher who delays his lessons loses his student to the street. The elder who delays his guidance loses his youth to the wilderness of trial and error—expensive, bloody, irreversible trial and error. There are lessons that can only be learned in youth, muscles that can only be built in youth, alliances that can only be forged in youth. The young shall grow, but they shall not grow young again. The hair that turns gray will not turn black. The joint that stiffens will not loosen. The idealism that curdles into cynicism will not sweeten again.
We have been given the extraordinary privilege of witnessing Nigeria’s awkward, painful, yet magnificent adolescence. We have seen her stumble. We have seen her rise. We have seen her forget her own name and then, in moments of crisis, remember it with a clarity that shook the continent. The young shall grow—but they shall grow into the image of what we model, what we reward, what we sanctify.
If we venerate corruption, they shall grow corrupt. If we reward mediocrity, they shall grow mediocre. If we model ethnic supremacy, they shall grow divided. But if we model integrity, if we esteem excellence, if we sanctify justice—then, my friends, then the young shall grow into veritable giants. They shall grow into the leaders we deserve. They shall grow into the outstanding citizens we always needed. They shall grow into the nation we always dreamed of.
But I warn —do not sleep on this promise. The young shall grow, and they are growing now, even as I speak, even as you listen. The clock is not paused for our deliberation. The sun is not held in the sky for our convenience. The narrow window of youth is open, and a draft is already blowing through it, and that draft will either ventilate the stale air of our old failures or it will slam the shut on our last chance to matter.
The young shall grow. This is not a wish. This is not a prayer. This is the law of life itself—the irrepressible, irreversible, irrefutable momentum of existence toward its own fulfillment. Our task is not to doubt it. Our task is to deserve it. Our task is to stand aside where we must, to guide where we can, and to cheer always—always—for the astonishing, inevitable, world-changing fact that the young shall grow.
Make hay while the sun shines. The sun is shining now.
Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Federal Republic that must grow into meaningful existence, grow in mutual respect and human dignity, grow into true meaningful federalism, grow into accountability and respect for the rule of law— OR DIE and in its place, new sovereign nations shall emerge and flourish.
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