The family is the axis of all human existence. Whatever you see today is the product of a man joining a woman for augmentation.
A government is formed from the family, leaders are made and prepared; the number of followers is monitored and the children are counseled. 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 gifted with the revelation of things not yet seen, a man who sees when all else is not. You can perceive one thing, a clear and persuasive communicator, with a good command of respect and follow-up through trust – it is only done, nurtured and prepared in a family (home).
Good leaders spring from home, to be sure, but only where there are good parents. Most parents are just parents who raise children with reckless abandon, only succeeding in destroying their children’s tomorrow with the wanton and lavish ways they have chosen to live in the present.
With the abundance of the gift of nature – human and material – we still find our relatives living in anguish and despair, assuming habits that are inherited from us; wandering in the desert of uncertainty and crime. What excuse do we have when we see these children carrying weapons and ammunition, challenging the government to fight? What excuse do we give when we helplessly watch as the seeds we sow in our children are reaped in the form of riots, armed robbery, banditry, money laundering, arms trafficking, drug trafficking, kidnapping, child labor, etc.? How do we feel when members of our families graduate to join the armies of “Area Boys”, “Almajiris”, “employee and unemployed militias”?
Are we not aware that everything a child knows, he learned from his environment? Besides the initial crying at birth, the child picks up everything else from his parents and from the rest of the adult world. The language he speaks, the rules and codes of his community, the conduct and spirit of his nation. A child steals because his teachers -the parents and the elders of the village- steal, and it seems normal to him. A child runs from such reprehensible characters if he grew up in a dignified environment where such evil characters are unknown or considered a deadly crime.
As children, we have learned the most tangible 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 a lot to steal. When we look back to those days when politics was for service, championed by men and women with vision, anger and frustration overwhelm us. We see them not as patriots and committed heroes, but as people with no future. They had “nothing” to show for their many years of leadership, no stealing from the public treasury, no mansions or castles built with stolen funds, no foreign bank accounts. They were overthrown 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 empty of billions of dollars. Banks have become houses of money laundering by people brandishing the national check they are sworn to protect.
Our homemade fountains are in shambles. Both mother and father are now in active politics. Children are left to grow up on their own after being incubated in a hopeless society. In the old days, old people pray that their children look like them, or rather look like them, but not anymore. Parents today are not really like parents, they are just babysitters. They have left the children without breast milk, they only give them artificial baby food. This makes it difficult for anyone to pronounce such sentences. Ours is a society in which so-called fathers and mothers specialize in all manner of despicable and demeaning acts of baseness and debauchery, the kind that make children not only want to disown them but seek to murder them if they had the means.
Where have we got it right in our generation? The issue of divorce, same-sex marriage, and other alternative marriages make everything meaningless. It would not be out of place if one can ask here, “what kind of society are we building?” Is it a society where children might find it more of a damned curse than a blessing to want to look like their parents, or a society where they would like to step on the platform where their mothers and fathers once stood? The choice is truly OURS!