THE WORST THINGS PARENTS DO IN NIGERIA AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

My country is in the worst shape it has ever been since we gained independence from Great Britain. What was happening earlier  was kids’ stuff compared to  whet is  presently taking place.  It was ignorance then. Now, it is total barawo, a sort of obodo ndi ori (city of armed robbers), the West African  Sodom and Gomorrah. Something  has not been clean in the milk since we came out of colonialism. Now, the milk is putrid and full of ikpuru (maggots), and no one can drink it. Something got to give. There is so much confusion in Nigeria. There is grave insecurity in the daily life of the common people as lives and property are being brazenly vandalized. Poor Nigerian leadership is a function of poor parenting, of being raised by ignorant Papa and Mama  who do not know where N and A go in the spelling of N-I-G-E-R-I-A.

 On the whole, things are relentlessly falling apart. President Buhari and some morally upright Nigerians have decried  Nigerians’ anything-will-go  lifestyle of utter indiscipline. Our country teeters, totters, stagers, dodders, hovers, wobbles on the brink of anarchy. The Battle of Armageddon looms in the horizon. Nigerian parents have abdicated their responsibility to nourish the young who continue to be sheep without a sensible shepherd. Who shall help snatch us from insanity in our disordered Nigerian society? Who is messing us up? Look no farther than Nigerian parents. They are the people we expect to be our rescuers, our indomitable Papa and Mama. Are they doing meaningful rescuing jobs? The answer is an emphatic “No”! They are worsening the situation.  All the bad Nigerians masquerading as so-called leaders from A to Z are products of households headed by Nigerian parents who lack self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy emanates from the social-learning theory of psychologist Albert Bandura, and is concerned with "the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required managing prospective situations. In other words, self-efficacy is a parent’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation, such as raise a responsible child. Can the parent believe he or she can influence how Nigerians think, behave, and feel?

                The purpose of this essay is not to reinvent the old wheel of acrimonious and sanctimonious, blame-the-innocent-victim sermonizing. Nigerian parents are not a group of the innocent they appear to be. They are the deplorable. They are not the guiltless victims of unfortunate Nigerian circumstances; they created the circumstances in the first place. Our Nigerian parents have guilt painted on their faces, and they know it. The Nigerian parents are willing participants in crime if one considers that our children are being cheated out of a glorious future, while everyone stands by, watching the demise of what once was “Our Own Dear Motherland/Fatherland.”  

Listen up, Nigerians parents!  You cannot continue to go scot-free as you have been doing from generation to generation. We’ve caught up with your games.  You’re not even doing the job entrusted to your care by Jehovah. Your pretenses are deplorable and should be over and done with. Get rid of your pretenses with very deliberate speed. The survival of our country depends on how deliberate that speed was.  Many serious and grievous charges are being laid on your parental shoulders.

                First, you fail to give the babies you are uncontrollably producing the opportunity to experience normal childhood. Why don’t you practice birth control as the rest of the world does? You keep stretching Nigeria’s population beyond manageable limits. Though you may mean well, but you are going about it the wrong way. Why do you believe what your warped thinking mind tells you? How did you figure it out that your oversupply of children is your  insurance  policy against poverty ? Have you forgotten  to ask  if these babies would be fed with solids from the bottom of Your  latrines? How come you have it all figured out that your children’s education can be sacrificed on the altar of family convenience such that you are deciding that private schools are the best way to raise your spoiled/spoilt brat? Your definition of education is incorrect because it encourages diversion of public funds from public schools to religious and parochial systems that have no proven benefits.  

Worse than that, Nigerian parents, you deny your child the benefits an education confers when you violate  the international labor laws. You balance wooden boxes atop  the heads of your young daughters and son, and then you say to the young people: “Go and sell akara balls, moi-moi, chinchin, opupa (peanuts), osikapa (fried  rice), and  kpuff kpuff  and fried plantains, and suya (roasted beef).“  Aren’t aware that  you  are contributing to the destruction of the morals of Nigerian girls. Many of your “trader” daughters have been raped and impregnated by male customers  several times your daughters’ ages, all because of your greed and desire to amass wealth at the expense of our young, impressionable teenage children.  Now, Nigerian parents, you are being ordered to “Bring back the innocence of our sons and daughters; bring back our childrens’ ezigbo omume (good character). You  must stop destroying future generations of Nigerians.

As parents, you run around, scratching the back of your child, encouraging him or her to be ungovernable, asking them to rubbish our rich culture of hard work; disrespect for our elders; and renounce our cherished ethos/philosophy that honest labor bears of lovely faces. You bribe your child’s teachers to socially promote your child from grade to grade and even you pay yearly fees to  professors at the Nigerian universities to give your children worthless diplomas. The result has been that your graduates have empty brains filled with mashed and lumpy  ede (coco yams); and garri that has too much water (water pass-garri). The  empty brains of our secondary and university students  are responsible for creating  the  unemployment Nigeria is best known  f or.

You have heard it said that empty barrel makes the loudest noise in the forest that is Nigeria. Everything in life is not concentrated in one word:  money . It s concentrated in two words: love and character. Life is not about the size of your bank account nor is it a  test  of the influence of your tribe and nuclear family; it is not about  or how much you are born with. Life is an experiment in comportment, meaning manner, behavior, air, deportment, attitude demeanor, posture, and the contribution one makes to the betterment/improvement of one’s Nigerian community.      

 Secondly, your marriage is a sham to say the least, and destructive at its worst.  Your children know you don’t have a marital life. When your daughters enter adulthood they do see marriage as half-hearted, often confusing, and  loveless relationship based principally on exploitation and self-seeking  selfishness. A Nigerian girl being married to a Nigerian  man is coming to overseas not to consummate marriage as unbreakable bond of unity, but to break up the man’s house and line  her parents’ pockets with unjust enrichment. Nigerian parents, listen up: your daughters are unsuitable for marriage; they are as unsteady as the sand castle at the approach of the slightest storm or gust of wind.  They are the weak link in the family, and they jump off the marriage train at every faint strain, sprain, or pain.

Your daughters are  earning  0% (zero, zilch, or naught) on  the Marriage Test. You can multiply any number with a zero, and the product is often zero. We Nigerian men do not want your daughters who are bitches that would sleep with any man who has a Naira or Dollar. A bitch is derogatory term for a female canine animal, especially a dog. We Nigerian men consider your daughter to be mean, overbearing, uncouth, vulgar, contemptible, and rude on top of that.  Additionally, we the responsible Nigerian women consider your Nigerian sons as unsuitable husbands. They are lazy, unmotivated  mama’s boys often given to drunkenness, drug use, and fraudulent activities.

Third, you fail to give your child structure, in that you push your child into an array of incompatible activities that lead to turmoil. This writer knows an Abuja mother who pushed her daughter into every beauty pageant and competition In Nigeria and beyond.  Some of the competitions the daughter had participated in included Miss Africa, Miss Naira, and Miss Excellence. While classes are going on at her university, this woman’s daughter is flouncing and switching oversize buttocks around, parading her body in scanty clothing in order to win prizes.

To flounce is to  prance, storm, stomp, or strut seductively in ways to get attention from  Nigerian governors and other politicians who would donate vehicles , houses, or jewels  to pageant winners. Therefore, Nigerian mothers are in the competition  to turn their daughters  over to traffickers as virtual ashawos (prostitutes); the types that fucked a Nigerian leader named Abacha to death. When a man dies in bed  while copiously engaged in sexual gymnastics , he is said to be Abachanized . If a Nigerian girl disappears while being turned into a sex slave by her mother, she is said to be a Chikok.

While this writer was  teaching at an institution in Nigeria, a woman came to his office with a petite daughter no older than 12 0r 13 years of age. The woman, who called herself a businessman trading in garri and soup ingredients,  had a very simple request. It was tit-for tat. “ Please  introduce me to school official in charge of buying foodstuffs for students, then have my daughter in bed as you like.” The idea was a type of trade by batter (toto for foofoo).  I rejected the offer because it was immoral., unconscionable, unscrupulous  Then, if you think I accepted or should have accepted, you are as foolish as the politicians messing up my country.

                Lastly, but not the least you Nigerian parents ignore or fail to heed the dangers of sacrificing your own country’s health and emotional  well-being on the altar of material goods, Additionally, you appear to wash your hands off activities that mean life or death in an orderly Nigerian society. Nigerian children do not have the opportunity to experience normal childhood. Child neglect, child trafficking , child abandonment, and child endangerment are not  uncommon in Nigerian society.

The  acts of Nigerian parents to impede the progress of my country  are open secrets  that some Nigerians want to sweep under ute ( rough mats made from a raffian or fronds of palm trees). These are open secrets that no one can deny. Nigerian mothers  and fathers, listen up one more time: you are too busy thrashing  around as headless chickens, chasing after toro na afu (Igbo for pennies, farthings,  and chicken change), while you neglect your most important responsibility for raising children that would replace current corruptionals. The corruptionals  are the  thieves, tax evaders, money launderers  in present day Nigeria.

The Nigerian parents  are notoriously incapable to raise healthy children. Parents  are chasing after material things like the deplorable akwunakwuna (prostitutes) they are. Nigerian fathers .especially those greedy, money-crazy, shiftless  rude, Lagos-type traders,  do not want anything to do with childrearing which they consider to be “work for women”.  Papa thrusts child rearing tasks  on the laps of confused Mama, and goes about drinking  Heinekens, palm wine, and kaikai  (alcohol distilled from corn ) at beer parlors and darkened liquor joints infested with harlots .

Manipulative  trader fathers convince materialistic, luxury- loving wives to send two-year-old Cecilia and her 4-year-old brother Abimbola to a boarding  school rather than to nearby local public school. They claim that private, boarding schools are better. They lie. They want unfettered, opportunities to engage in unregulated sexual activities while mothers take off in the morning to run businesses that  do not make sense. Frying akara balls and selling mudus of garri and rice are not more important than taking good care of our most precious resources: our children.  Such businesses are cover-ups for illegal, unhealthy activities.

Fathers impregnate each other’s underage boarding school girls whom they send to their friends’ dirty clinics usually out of town to obtain illegal abortions.  Wives fuck any man in sight that have some Naira, though they go to church on holy days and can quote Biblical sanctions against every sin in the two Testaments of the Holy Bible. The Nigerian parents want a free-for-all   sex, orgy, a debacle, disaster, and catastrophe. Muslim men send their wards to distant Islamic schools in North Sudan or Saudi Arabia so they can buccaneer South Nigerian Christian women.  A buccaneer is a pirate, adventurer, a thief who specializes in stealing women’s private parts.

HOW CAN PARENTS TURN THINGS AROUND IN NIGERIA?

·         Insist that all children go to the public schools; stop wasting money on so-called private schools.

·         Cease exploiting children as babysitters, and sellers of akara balls, agidi (corn meal), opupa (peanuts), oka (boiled and roasted corn).and suya (roasted beef)  while schools are in session.

·         Parents ought to model good behavior for children to emulate by remaining faithful to spouses.

·         Insist that children give back to society by serving as unpaid volunteers at hospitals and facilities serving the disabled.

·         Parents should educate themselves at least to be able to spell, write, read newspapers, and do simple mathematical computations in order to better to assist children with homework  and career choices

By Dr. james C. Agazie, jamesagazie@gmail.com, jamesagazies.blogspot.com