In the past year, I have become a sad man. Not just for myself, but for our youth and more so for Nigeria. I watch with dismay as a generation that should be the future of this country surrenders its intellect to Artificial Intelligence (AI).
We are mortgaging our future by trading away intellectual growth for convenience.
I recall my childhood with nostalgia. At nine, I was already reading my elder sisters’ Mills & Boon novels and Agatha Christie mysteries alongside Hausa classics like Magana Jari Ce, Iliya Dan Maikarfi, Ruwan Bagaja, and Dare Dubu Da Daya. Magazines like Drum, African Film, and Spear Magazine featuring Lance Spearman, our “African James Bond” were staples. By primary school, my friends and I had consumed Tarzan, Captain America, Mighty Thor, Spider-Man, and even the World War comic books that subtly glorified the West.
Books, libraries, and newspapers shaped us. Our schools encouraged not only reading but reflection. Assignments required research from multiple sources. Examinations tested understanding, not regurgitation. Plagiarism existed, but it was frowned upon and punished.
Then came the Internet. “Copy and paste” replaced research. Students stopped wrestling with ideas; they merely patched together borrowed thoughts. If that was bad, today’s reality is worse: machines now do all the thinking.
With a simple prompt, AI churns out assignments, applications, proposals even WhatsApp chats. Many young people proudly submit these outputs as their own, but ask them a single question about the work and they look lost. Their voices are drowned in highfalutin jargon, “soulless” sentences that reveal nothing of their own intellect.
This is not learning. It is the death of imagination and deep thought.
Our youths now come in troubling categories. Some, unable to apply themselves intellectually, turn to fraud “Yahoo Yahoo” or ritual killings in the pursuit of quick wealth. Others, lazier still, flood recruitment centres by the millions for a handful of vacancies. Then there are those who, cushioned by their parents’ ill-gotten wealth, drift through life playing video games, watching Netflix, and frequenting nightclubs.
Their parents worked hard or stole hard to provide opportunities, yet failed to instill discipline. Now their children, hollow and entitled, parade the empty rhetoric of “Do you know who I am?” while leaning on machines to do their thinking.
What we are witnessing is not just academic decline it is intellectual suicide. A generation that cannot think, read, or write independently cannot lead. And a nation that sacrifices knowledge for artificial convenience is a nation that has lost its soul.
If Nigeria is to reclaim its future, it must revive the culture of reading, critical thinking, and true scholarship. Otherwise, our youths will remain trapped in a cycle of dependency on parents, on fraud, and now, on machines.
The danger is not that AI exists. The danger is that we are surrendering our minds to it.
