“And he became a ‘Yahoo-Yahoo’ boy (I)

Dear brethren, during the last two weeks, I shared a story that made me sad with you – the story of bandits, bed bugs and mosquitoes. But today, I desire to share with you another story: a story that has continued to frighten me. The story of our youths today who want to make it […]

Dear brethren, during the last two weeks, I shared a story that made me sad with you – the story of bandits, bed bugs and mosquitoes. But today, I desire to share with you another story: a story that has continued to frighten me. The story of our youths today who want to make it at all costs and as quickly as the devil can make that happen. Remember the instruction from the Almighty: “O you who believe! Protect yourselves and your families from a fire which shall be fueled by people and stones… (Quran 66: 6).

He got admission into my department. His father also happened to be a former student of mine while I was in that other university as a young lecturer. Thus as soon his son received his letter of admission, his father was very happy. He requested that I should kindly extend the same mentoring and monitoring from which he benefitted years ago to the fruit of his loins. I obliged. The boy eventually proved to be very disciplined and focused. Until early this year when he became ‘big’ boy.

He began by moving away from the university campus. We later learnt that he rented  a 3-bedroom apartment in a choice-area in the city. Each time he came to campus, he was always in a chauffeur-driven car, fully airconditioned. How old is he: 20 or 21 years. After a short while, he began to skip classes. Out of concern, I contacted his father. Perhaps he was oblivious of the new pattern of life that his son has devised for himself. With tears in his eyes, he told me that he was fully aware of the fact that his son has lost his ‘innocence’; he told me that his son had actually told him that he wanted to be rich; that he was not interested in university education anymore. The old man thought of severing his contacts with the boy but he was counselled to not do that. “prayers are what your boy needs”, he was advised. Then I asked him: “did you bother to enquire exactly what your son is into?” he responded by saying that that he was told that the boy was not into ‘yahoo-yahoo’ but that he is into something close to it”. Out of curiosity, I asked again, ‘exactly what could that be”? With pain and grief written all over his face, he said, and lamely too: “I don’t know”

Then yet another story: the story of secondary-school students who are equally into ‘yahoo-yahoo’. I asked my informant: “how did you get to know that?” He responded by saying: ‘whenever your kids spend hours on phone particularly at night, whenever they begin to put on earrings, wear ragged-jeans, display haircuts that belong neither to the male nor female gender, be on the look-out! In other words, by what shall they be known? By their brands and logo. By their names and sobriquets. They bear names of Fisq, of iniquities – Badoo. Eiye. Planks. Yahoo-yahoo. Aye. They bear cognomens that are unknown and unknowable to the loins that bore them.

The above story has suddenly become common nowadays; stories of our youths whose souls appeared to have been sold to Mephistopheles. These are youths who have become scribes and clergies in the cathedral of Beelzebub; the cathedral of materialism; cathedrals where ‘libations’ of blood and death are constantly poured to appease the gods of money, of wealth and the craze for quick fortune.

They are usually called ‘leaders of tomorrow’; we often refer to them as futures of the nation. Yes. They do consider themselves as belonging to the future; not to today. They prefer the pleasures of here and now; they prefer the chimerical and the delusional; they constantly run after the ephemeral not the eternal.

Youths of today. Not tomorrow. These are youths who compete among themselves not in erecting pillars of love and peace but in destroying the flowers of hope. They take drug. They kill. They plunder. They maim. They have chanced upon the magic of life- how to devour, like human lions in the jungle, their fellow humans in the pursuit of the world; how to ‘passionately’ copulate with beasts in the wild in this deranged pursuit of wealth.

Where exactly do they reside? In our homes. On our streets. In the underground. In our universities and colleges. In our secondary schools. They live in homesteads without address and direction. They are here and there. Young boys and girls. Yes. Girls. Girls in secondary schools who have incisions on their femininity. Incisions of darkness. They are like birds of Ababil –Ababil- birds of evil, of licentiousness, not of and for righteousness and good conduct. Back at home, they are angels but as soon as they arrive underground, they become devils with horns of thunder and fire.