My fears

The sons of PDP chairman Bamanga Tukur, Ibadan businessman Arisekola Alao and former PDP chairman Ahmadu Ali are in the first batch of suspects currently facing various charges filed before the high court in Lagos by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in connection with fuel subsidy scam. It is alleged that Mahmud Tukur […]

The sons of PDP chairman Bamanga Tukur, Ibadan businessman Arisekola Alao and former PDP chairman Ahmadu Ali are in the first batch of suspects currently facing various charges filed before the high court in Lagos by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in connection with fuel subsidy scam. It is alleged that Mahmud Tukur and Abdullahi Alao are being tried for fraudulently obtaining N1.8billion from the Petroleum support Fund (PSF) for importation of 80.3 million liters of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS). Mamman Nasir Ali and Christian Taylor along with Nasaman Oil Services are facing charges on an allegation of fraudulently obtaining N4.4 billion as subsidy payments for purportedly importing 30.5 million liters of PMS.

If, hypothetically, the present-day crop of Nigerian leaders and political office holders were to have a fraction of the great opportunities which foremost leaders of the First Republic in Nigeria had but by which they neither got intoxicated nor corrupted; the former would have registered “Nigeria” with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) in their wives’ or children’s names! Selfless leaders of the First Republic including Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Alhaji Sir Ahmadu Bello, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo have collectively become reference point for most Nigerians who in their daily discussions are compelled by the very unfortunate state of the nation to painfully look back with nostalgia every now and then at events of the past five decades. Nigerians keep recalling their legacies as if the country though never had leaders since the overthrow of the First Republic.

If you doubt the possibility of current leaders converting “Nigeria” into their personal property, it is enough evidence for you to clear such a doubt by looking back merely at the past one-dozen years of civil rule (of course you can not refer to what Nigerians are experiencing on the political stage as democracy). Attaining political offices is almost a matter of right for some Nigerian families or ethnic groups in Nigeria today. If a politician who was appointed, for instance, as a minister felt obliged to leave government either for health or other reasons; he was succeeded either by his wife, son, daughter or somebody from his state.

Leadership positions have been turned in recent years to seem as if they were compensations for those appointed into such offices. If leadership were made to be so, Nigerians deserve to know how successive administrations in the country “compensated” or ‘settled” First Republic leaders as well as those who paid the supreme price of giving their lives for the unity or territorial integrity of Nigeria. Worst still is the public knowledge that when children of those who consider political appointment as “compensation” get to office, they are sooner or later accused of corrupt practices. What happened when Iyabo Obasanjo was Chair-Person of Senate Committee on Health?

Honest leaders of the First Republic left behind them incorruptible children who, unlike the children of today’s leaders and politicians are worth their parents’ pride! Maybe, leaders of yester-years forgot to teach their children the meaning of bribery, fraud, kick-back, forgery and money-laundering or they probably did not know that such words existed in the dictionary. And so, their children “missed” the opportunity of learning about the meaning of these words. Contemporary political leaders though it appears are happy to see their children take after them as EFCC, ICPC and SSS regular customers; and as big-time clients who provide jobs that keep poor Nigerian lawyers busy.

Challenges orchestrated by the total collapse of values as well as the consequences of irresponsible parenting go beyond the transmission of vices from leaders to their children. Every social class of parents in today’s Nigeria has brought one or more negative influences, consciously or unconsciously, to bear upon their children. Many Nigerian parents are guilty in different ways for the very hopeless attitude, alienated mindset and very lowly intellectual capacity of the present day “face-book generation” in the country.

A situation where some parents do not see anything wrong in hiring mercenaries to write national examinations for their children leaves much to be desired. There seems to have evolved a perilous pattern along which line children grow for reasons of over-pampering, irresponsibility, poverty or affluence; to become liabilities and social menace to government, society and their respective families. While children of politicians and the elites grow to become drunkards and/or drug addicts; those from rural and poverty-stricken homes grow to become thugs, hooligans and thieves.

It is sad to note the extent to which some parents involve themselves in the wedding ceremonies of their children. Due to their deep involvement in what ordinarily should be the affairs of their children, some parents during their children’s wedding exceed their limits so much so that you begin to ask whether the father-in-law is the groom. You could also mistake the mother-in-law as the bride. Marriages are beginning to fail sooner than expected because of excessive and unnecessary interference from fathers and mothers-in-law. Are we doing children any good by wanting to breast-feed or spoon-feed them even when they should be fathers or mothers? Some parents, by this, are already transgressing religious and cultural borders.

Since ‘youths’, they say, “are the leaders of tomorrow”; my fears as much as they are heightened equally deepened by the kind of political misfortunes and socio-economic calamities that would bedevil this country when that aspect of destiny called future eventually transfers the fate of Nigeria in to the hands of the very maladjusted generation of our youths. May Allah (SWT) guide those who have gone astray among our leaders unto the right path in the same way we pray that He guides parents (as He guided Prophet Lukman) to distinguish between what they should and should not bequeath to their children in the course bringing them up as Allah’s obedient servants and as good citizens, amin.