The family is the pivot of all human existence. Whatever you see today is a product of one man uniting with a woman to bring about increase.
From the family a government is formed, leaders are made and groomed; followership is monitored and children are mentored. Every leader who must see ahead of others – a man who knows where he is going and how to get there, a man of vision, a man endowed with the revelation of things not yet seen, a man who sees when all else cannot perceive a thing, a clear, persuasive communicator, with a good command of respect and followership through trust – is only made, nurtured and groomed in a family (home).
Good leaders spring up from the home, no doubt, but only where there are good parents. Most parents are just parents who breed children with reckless abandon, succeeding only in destroying their children’s tomorrow by the wanton prodigal ways they have chosen to live in the present.
With the abundance of nature’s gift – human and material – we still find our family members living in anguish and desperation, taking on habits that are inherited by us; wandering in the wilderness of uncertainty and crime. What excuse do we have when we see these children carry arms and ammunitions, daring the government to a fight? What excuse do we give when we watch in helplessness the seeds we sowed in our children being harvested in the form of riots, armed robbery, thuggery, money laundering, arms running, drug peddling, kidnapping, child labour, etc? How do we feel when members of our families graduate to swell up the armies of “Area Boys”, “Almajiris”, “employed and unemployed militias”?
Are we not aware that everything a child knows, he learned from his environment? Besides the initial cry at birth, the child picks up everything else from his or her parents and the rest of the adult-world. The language he speaks, the norms and codes of his community, the conduct and ethos of his nation. A child steals because his teachers – the parents and older ones in the homestead – steal, and it seems normal to him or her. A child flees from such condemnable characters if he/she grew up in a decent environment where such evil characters are unknown or regarded as a mortal crime.
As children, we have learned the most palpable lesson from our families – do not dare to be or die poor! This has been working for us, especially in an environment where there is so much to steal from. When we look backward to those days when politics was for service, championed by men and women of vision, anger and frustration overwhelm us. We see them not as committed patriots and heroes, but as people without future. They had “nothing” to show for their labours of many years as leaders – they could not steal from the public treasury – no mansions and castles built with stolen funds, no foreign bank accounts. They were toppled to be “corrected” for their inability to transform corruption into a national culture.
Today, we know better. We have been bastardized by our present actions. Our national vaults are emptied of billion of dollars. The banks have become house of money laundering by people who waffle the national cheque which they took oath to protect.
Our home fonts are in shambles. Both mother and father are now in active politics. Children are left to grow on their own after hatching them out into a hopeless society. In the olden days, elders pray that their children will take after them, or rather resemble them, but not any more. Today’s parents do not truly look like parents – they are just nannies. They have left the children without breast milk – they only supply artificial baby food. This makes it difficult for anyone to utter such prayers. Ours is a society where the so-called mothers and fathers specialize themselves into all manners of despicable and debased acts of turpitude and profligacy – the kind that makes children not only want to disown them but seek to murder them if they had the means.
Where have we gotten it right in our generation? The issue of divorce, same-sex marriage and other alternative marriages make nonsense of everything. It would not out of place if one may ask here, “what manner of society are we building?” Is it a society where children may find it more of a damnable curse than a blessing to be wished to resemble their parents or a society where they would like to rise to the platform where their fathers and mothers stood? The decision is truly OURS!