It’s been ten days since the Federal Government suspended Twitter. As I suspected, my life has not come to a cataclysmic end. Yup, I’m still here. And so is my mind. A luxury these days.

Now, it is not that I do not care for Twitter or support the government’s brutish machismo. I like Jack Dorsey and don’t mind his little blue bird nesting on my phone. The problem is, I’m not a bird lover. I don’t bird-watch. And I don’t like ceaseless chirping. Which is why I don’t have notification enabled for Twitter. When I get notifications, I want it to be of something really important. Like a 200km-wide-asteroid-is-hurtling-towards-Earth important. Or Man-United-just-signed–Jandon-Sancho-Rafael-Varane-Marco-Veratti-and-Erling-Haaland important. Besides, I’m wary of social media addiction. I’ve seen The Social Dilemma on Netflix. Scared the bejesus out of me.

Where do I stand on the ban? Well, last time I checked, our demonym is still ‘Nigerian’. Not Chinese, North Korean or Iranian. That being the case, I have come to expect a great measure of free speech and liberty to tweet as a Nigerian. So, while I only check Twitter once or twice a day, I am yet filled with a righteous, if hypocritical, rage at this denial of my right to use Twitter.

Mr. Dorsey’s algorithm hasn’t done him much favours though. It should have picked up the IPOB tweets that so clearly violated the much-vaunted Twitter’s Rules. It didn’t. I can therefore understand how the government can accuse Twitter of double standards. I’d be miffed too.

And spare me the drivel that the government should have reported the IPOB tweets to Twitter. OK, yea, maybe messers Lai Mohammed and Tolu Ogunlesi should have reported the IPOB tweets. But so what they didn’t? Social media companies owe society a duty of care to protect us from seeing evil and hearing evil. The burden of spotting violative posts is on them and not on us. The algos have to do better.

But enough of my faux adjudication. What has got under my skin is the role my demography is playing in the ban. I have come across many forty-something-year-olds glorying in the Twitter ban. They cite the ‘disrespectful’ and ‘uncouth youths’ that inhabit the platform as desert. The so-called ‘children of anger.’

‘Children of anger’? For speaking up? For developing allergies to bunkum, tosh and codswallop?

Shame on you lot!

When the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) terrorized the country, it was the youth that bore the brunt of the oppression and malfeasance. Not we the forty-something-year-olds. When that yoke of police brutality was heavy on our necks, it was the youth that mobilised. Not we, the forty-something-year-olds. And thanks to them, we were rid of SARS. We are not the ones struggling to find jobs. They are. We are not the ones who have hardly tasted the good of the land. It is they. It is, therefore, to be expected that they would be the most uninhibited and vehement segment of society.

But how quickly we forget the past. We, the forty-something-year-olds, were once these ‘children of anger.’

We were the ‘disrespectful’ youth that marched when our mandate was annulled in the June 12 1993 elections. The ‘children of rage’ that stormed the streets when the acclaimed winner of that election died in prison in 1998. A few decades earlier, it was the youths that marched against the military power in 1978 in the Ali Must Go nationwide protest. How quickly we forget we once wore this badge with pride.

The only difference between us and today’s youths is that back in the day, we didn’t have social media to amplify our grievances and mobilise. Today’s young bloods do and are using it in very effective ways. We may not always agree with their tactics or language but when has the old and the young seen eye to eye? It’s the circle of life. Hakuna whatever.

I get it though. We the forty-something-year-olds are risk-averse. Age does that. We’ve become the old and lazy cats we railed against when we were younger. The scared lot afraid and tired of speaking the truth to power. I suppose it’s understandable. We have a lot more to lose than these young Turks. Family, security, position, power. Best let sleeping dogs lie. Since it’s a kennel of feral Dobermans, Rottweilers and Pitt Bulls.

So, here is the obvious: the youths are going nowhere. With or without Twitter, you can’t gag them. And they are coming. Over 70 million of them. Oh, they are coming!

It was once our time. It is now their time. Best get with the program.