SIR: We can heap all the blames of the nadir of infamy into which we have sunk on the children who are mere victims of the criminal society we have built as much as we can. All I know is that children are mirror in which society sees its own ugly shame or glorious future!
Teenagers slaughtering teenager for ‘ritual money’ is a lesson’s output from adults! The truth is that the mothers and fathers have eaten sour grapes; and the children are gnashing their teeth. Any society that glorifies ostentation is doomed to perish at moral battle! There has arisen a new generation of children that slaughter their mothers for money and kill their fathers for fame; untrained generation of active idiots and callous urchins that know the price of everything but the values of nothing. Generation without scintilla of either empathy humanity, generation that thrives on epicurean hedonistic adventures and rejoices in plethora of pains it can afflict on others.
Today, ostentatious lifestyles have become the emblem of class by which even rulers in the country are identified. Senators, ministers and government officials recklessly display automobiles and parade estates that their earnings cannot explain the sources. The music airwave in the land is infused with songs that ridicule honesty and hard work but glorify short cuts and violence. The movie industry also sells fake lifestyles to the young persons who have thoughtlessly adopted actors and actresses as role models, glamourizing the basest of evil conducts and practices. It is apparent that regulators of what goes into airwaves and motion pictures have closed shops in Nigeria leaving reckless practitioners to make comedy out of existential tragedies. Example of this sort of role modeling has become a monumental moral tragedy for the young population in Nigeria.
A nation that cannot preserve the sanity of her children and protect their characteristic innocence has lost her future. Due to these and other problems, there has been an unprecedented rise in the number of adolescents and young people recruited into cult groups committing diverse crimes, including ritual killings, sexual violence, Yahoo Plus and other sundry crimes. The Nigerian state has simply failed to address the issues concerning youth involvement in violence which has more or less become a permanent feature in all parts of the country.
For so long, the nation has carried on as if it does not care about the youth and child development, there will be no respite for the horrors going on in the country. If we fail to act now to address the drivers of youth engagement in violent crime and extreme violence, the day will come when it will be too late to halt the impending conflagration which the youth are likely to unleash on a nation that has more or less abandoned it to its fate. With the burgeoning youth population in Nigeria they constitute the bulk of the Nigerian population. But this fact is often ignored in governance and development. We have built a society of irresponsible rulers and committed criminals in positions of authority; the youths are merely emulating the father-vipers!
People in a society of rights without responsibility will get the liberty they asked for, only that there will be no street for them to enjoy the liberty they get! For some of us who understand the importance of countries planning adequately for its youth, it is not strange that Nigeria is this volatile on account of its youth being neglected. A country in which over three million young people graduate every year from secondary and tertiary institutions, with additional 13 million children out of school and governments at all levels have made no plans, whatsoever as to what is to become of this army of youths is a time bomb. Hang the blame on the society and parents who are the real vipers, not the children who commit the crime society prepares!!
- Gbenro Olajuyigbe,
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