Nothing good comes easy. You cannot become great by mere wishful thinking. If you desire greatness, you must work and strive towards it. In the same vein, great societies or nations don’t just become great overnight. They invest time, resources, values and people to become and remain great.
Nations like the US, Canada, Britain, are places we all consider great because of the way they have structured their national lives. There are systems and institutions in place, and both are working. The African continent is unfortunately still very far behind. We lack systems and institutions, and where they exist, they are ridden with corruption.
One of the main reasons for the pitiable and dismal state of the African States is the neglect of our societal values, and this starts from the home. The home is the smallest unit of any society and a society is an amalgamation of homes, while a nation is made up of societies. If our homes are functioning well, then our society and nation will function well.
We have lost it at the home front. Today, instead of encouraging our children to be studious and work hard for anything they want to become, we pamper them and take them to special centres during examination. We complain when teachers flog our kids, as if cane kills. We indulge our children with iPads, iPhones, and ieverything, without imbuing in them the spirit of working and savings to achieve one’s goals.
How come the generation that trekked miles without sandals to school produced better leaders than the chaffeur-driven generation? How come our post independent leaders were mostly in their thirties when they assume leadership positions while our ‘thirty year olds’ are still tied to their mother’s apron? Such a shame. Our youths now prefer near naked garments, while the youths of the sixties struggled to cover their nakedness.
Where do we go from here? How do we reverse the moral decadence that has permeated every part of our national and continental lives? What is the way forward?
First, we need to come up with National values that will form the foundation for the spirit and letters of our Constitutions. We lack common values that form the basis of relating and transacting. As religious as we claim to be, our words and actions are far from being godly, sometimes near demonic.
Two, homes must be reactivated. Most homes are in comma, or at best dysfunctional. As parents and guardians, we must begin to train our children well. Stop raising weak children, who eat and litter the streets with their sweet or biscuit wraps. Let your children know it is wrong to pee anywhere in the public. Cultivate in them the habit of working and saving during vacations, rather than ‘Disneylanding’. Disney land was made by the sweat of some people, let us produce our own.
Lastly, we must reawaken our enterprising and competitive spirits. The days of free money are gone. Oil money is vanishing. Communal spirit, inter-tribal or inter-ethnic competitions or contests need to be reintroduced. Literary and Debate Societies, where are thou?
It is time to wake up this slumbering giant. We have all it takes to excel and excel we must!
God bless us all.
Good morning!
adewumioni 