Nigeria’s Lost Generation: A Letter to the Children of Fire

By Abioye Tosin Lawrence

“Dear Children of Fire, this is not the letter I dreamed of writing you.”

I wanted to send you poems laced with rhythm and prophecy. I wanted to tell you that the battles were over, that the altars had been cleansed, that the future had finally found its feet. But the truth drips like blood from an old wound: you were born into a lie.

They dressed it in uniforms and prayer shawls. They called it tradition, culture, obedience. But behind the pulpits and podiums stood men who auctioned your birthright for crumbs of power. They told you to study hard in a country that spits on its scholars. They told you to be godly in a nation where devils wear agbada.

You were handed a flag stitched with silence. Told not to ask, not to fight, not to dream too loud. Your heroes died young, gunned down in protests, crushed under the weight of broken systems. And yet, you rise.

You, the ones with eyes like embers and tongues like whips. You, the tech rebels, the street poets, the quiet builders. You, the children of fire.

The Betrayal, What We Inherited

We inherited silence packaged as wisdom. We were told to respect our elders, even as they danced on our futures with polished shoes and pension scams. They handed us a Constitution that trembles before truth, laws that bend for the rich, and justice that wears blindfolds only when the poor cry out.

They gave us churches that compete in architecture but not compassion. Mosques that echo scripture, yet echo nothing when a child is killed by a stray bullet from a uniformed ghost. They gave us prophets who prophesy about elections but say nothing about corruption. We were baptized not in truth, but in denial.

We inherited a nation where talent is a threat. Where honesty makes you jobless. Where leaving is praised more than staying. A country that treats its best minds like foreign currency, only useful when spent abroad.

Look around, our siblings are scattered across the diaspora, working three jobs to buy back dignity. Some never made it. Some lie in the Mediterranean, their dreams swallowed whole by waters that remembered what our leaders forgot: that hope floats only when anchored in truth.

The Fire, What Burns Within Us

And yet, in the ash, something burns.

It is not the fire they lit to destroy us, but the one we carry in our bones, the one they cannot extinguish. You see it in the coded tweets, the protest chants, the midnight poetry. You hear it in the voice of the street vendor who won’t be cheated, in the rhythm of afrobeats that conquered the globe without a minister’s permission.

It is in our tech kids building apps with cracked screens and no power supply. In the girl who learned graphic design between hawking and homework. In the boy who remixed his pain into punchlines and sold hope as mixtapes. We may not have stable light, but we are becoming lightning.

They do not understand us, these builders of failed empires. They mistake our silence for submission. But we have been watching, recording, remembering. Every slap, every lie, every broken promise, they are kindling. And the fire remembers.

We are the generation they tried to erase with poor education, mental chains, and spiritual manipulation. But we are still here, writing, coding, farming, healing, resisting.

This fire is not just for warmth. It is for war, against apathy, against amnesia, against the tyranny of “this is how things have always been.”

The Call, What Must Be Done

Now is the time to choose.

Not between tribes or political parties. Not between East or West, North or South. The real choice is between becoming the fire or becoming the fuel for someone else’s illusion.

We must stop waiting for messiahs wrapped in agbada or anointed oil. The age of personality cults is over. We are the generation that must uncrown false kings and build councils of conscience. We don’t need saviors, we need systems. We need discipline, memory, and a rage that creates, not just destroys.

Refuse the comfort of cynicism. Do not laugh your way into despair. They will call you too angry, too radical, too idealistic. Wear those words like armor. The price of your voice is the silence of your children, never forget that.

We must document everything. Archive our battles, our betrayals, our tiny wins. Raise monuments in our writing, in our art, in our resistance. Vote, but don’t stop there. Build. Question. Organize. Mentor. Refuse to become what wounded you.

You are not powerless. You are simply unplugged from a system that fears your awakening.

The Sign-Off, A Voice from the Fire

I write this not as a hero, but as a scarred witness. I too have bled. I too have bowed momentarily to survive systems designed to crush us. But fire purifies. And what I lost in comfort, I gained in clarity.

To the children of fire: you are not mad for wanting more. You are not weak for crying. You are not lost, you were never shown the map. But now, we draw our own.

Let them mock your dreams. Let them call your refusal rebellion. One day, their children will kneel to the justice you bled for.

History will not remember those who bowed.
It will remember those who burned.

With ash on my hands and hope in my lungs,
—Abioye Tosin Lawrence
A voice from the fire.