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The Nigerian child is that child who is faced with unending illusions and unfavourable methamorphosis. Melliloquent notes are being played into the child’s ears to discourage him/her from facing the harsh realities of the highly stratified commune. The child is disillusioned but his/her life is laced with trickery of hopefulness. He/she is being encouraged by the-powers-that-be that life is good and will be better despite the deliberately inflicted shortcomings as he/she is being shortchanged in all spheres of life.
The old people in government routinely continue to encourage him/her that he/she is the leader of tomorrow. Tomorrow that never comes. The child is told by the religious leader that sin, in any form, is a sacrilege. Yet, he is encouraged by the same person to offer religious financial contributions out of joblessness or job hopelessness(job hopelessness is a situation where a worker can barely survive on an income let alone save out of it).Invariably, a thief is being made out of somebody.To me, that theology is ungodly! Worse, still, the child is made to or brainwashed to spill innocent blood wantonly in the name of religion as he/she is recruited as a religious freedom fighter to earn a quick get-away to “heaven”. Yet, in most cases, the mentors are roaming the so-called hellish earth free and enjoying the spoils of “the war”. On other occasions, the child is the tool used for championing ethnic sentiment. The child is the bandit, the fanatic, “youth”, herdsperson etc. He/she is in the mist of vulpine leaders at all levels. It’s that bad! Mentorship is less. Value copying is declining.
This child is the expendable piece in the national chess game. He/she goes to schools laden with archaic or broken down facilities (since he/she is an offspring of a ploretariat). He/she would spend between sixteen to twenty years educating himself/herself (i.e. gettiing through the system is timely). This educational attainment is achieved out of excruciating financial pains/burden on the hapless parents. At the end, the jobs that were elusive are now in the process of sublimation. Nobody plans for him/her. He/she is often left at the mercy of the few entrepreneurs who are genetically unscrupulous. Even, if there is a scratch of job somewhere, he/she is deemed unemployable because he/she went to a higher institution for a certificate and not for an intellectual attainment (so they claim). On the other hand, his/her employability could depend on the whims of the foremost political actors of the society who may wish to fill an unprofitable employment void in a ministry, agency or parastatal.
However, he/she fared better because. At least, he/she is “educated”. There are still those who couldn’t go and finally resolved to do drugs, thuggery and prostitution. There are those who went anyway but still engage in these vices and more. There are still those who are encouraged by the society not to go for obvious reasons.
The child is deceived and cheated left, right and centre. They are under developing him/her but over modernizing him/her .e.g. in gadgets and fashion. Modernization and development are similar but they are never the same. Development of a human being is when the authority is able to provide the person with basic dividends of good governance; especially in significant reductions in poverty, unemployment and level of inequality. Simply put, modernization represents a change in value, behaviour and attitudes of a particular society towards what’s practiced in advanced societies. Modernisation is an elder sibling of globalization.
The child is brought up in a world shrouded in deception and insatiable greed. He/she is faced with latent dangers but he/she is made to believe that he/she is immune to their manifestations. The worst of all these is that the child ignorantly revels in self-deception.
To make matters worse, the Nigerian child is at cross-roads in terms of ethno-religious scheme.. Ethno-religious scheme is that scheme devised by the Haves of the society for the Have-nots of the same society to bury themselves in so that the Have-nots would be oblivious of stacking up of the commonwealth in private vaults. In this scheme, whenever an ethno-religious war/crisis is going, the child is usually the ethnic or religious local champion. The poor child is usually the the tribal warrior and religious canon folder. Whereas, on the parallel, the enablers are dining and “wining” together elsewhere. His/her duties ranges, inter alia , from being a bodyguard/thug/wench to an extremist. In the final loot, he/she earns a few thousands while his benefactors earn billions and rising.
This child is in serious trouble only if he/she is aware. If he/she knows, well the end of the troubles could be near. But, if he/she does not or pretended not to, then the problem we have at hand is minuscule. .In Albert Einstein words: “It is insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expect change/different result”. Yes, the child can be the instrument of real change but, first, there must be acknowledgement of a problem.
By,
Bismarck Patrick ,
Ogaminana (Adavi LGA)
Twitter:@oziziva
Facebook:facebook.com/pat.bismarck
Mobile: 09044583075
