Nigeria, Dec. 16 -- Nigeria weighs on the heart like an ancient city gate - leaning, creaking, weather-beaten, yet still standing by some strange mercy. And at the foot of that old gate stands a generation unlike any before it: bruised but breathing, tired but not finished, stretched yet still strangely hopeful. It is the generation that refuses to give up. It reminds me of the remnant in Elijah's day - seven thousand who had not bowed, even when the nation seemed swallowed by dysfunction. Its resilience is not naive optimism; it is a kind of faith that refuses to die, like the seed that still grows even when the ground is hard.

This generation was born into a country that promised more than it prepared. It inherited the ruins of broken ...