Parents and rising cases of social vices among youths

Recently, some boys, aged 13 and 14 years, were arrested for allegedly trying to rob and rape a married woman in her matrimonial home. What is more worrisome about these boys is that when they were arrested, they showed no sign of remorse or fear and confessed to acting under the influence of hard drugs. […]

Recently, some boys, aged 13 and 14 years, were arrested for allegedly trying to rob and rape a married woman in her matrimonial home. What is more worrisome about these boys is that when they were arrested, they showed no sign of remorse or fear and confessed to acting under the influence of hard drugs.
Cases of very young boys engaging in criminal activities such as murder, robbery and rape abound in the society with many caught and remanded in prison custody.
On the slightest case of provocation, arms are drawn by children of tender age, most of them ready to shed the blood of each other. Bad as it is, the trend is spreading like wildfire and become a topic of discussion among the public, most especially parents.
A retired civil servant, Hajiya Binta Abdullah, speaking on the trend, traced the genesis of the current problem to two main factors. The first, according to her, is the way and manner in which marriages are conducted in most Hausa/Fulani society and, secondly, how fathers feed their families with ill gotten money.
Buttressing her point, Binta said: “Our religion, Islam, has advised men, while choosing their wives, to look for God-fearing women. The reason for that is because training of the child is mainly done by the mother. But by the time a man chooses a woman of ungodly characters, she can only train her children in an ungodly way. But where the mother is God- fearing, the end result, God willing, will be blessed children.”
The second issue responsible for breeding bad children is the consumption of some forbidden food by the mother during pregnancy, she said.
 She said: “We have heard from the Islamic scholars that consumption of some unlawful food by a woman during pregnancy affects the child in her womb and by the time the baby is born, this will manifest itself in the child as he or she grows.”
According to her, the way people steal public fund to take care of their families would yield nothing good for the families. “So, we will be seeing many drug addicts and thugs because they have been fed with ill gotten wealth,” she said.
On his part, Malam Sanusi Abubakar attributed the problem to the breakdown of the extended family system where children are brought up under the care of parents, uncles and grandparents.
He said under that system, hardly would a child spend a day without having what to eat. There was security all over.
 “At that time, wherever a child turned to, there was an eye watching him. But now, relatives are living apart, everyone caring for his own immediate family,” he said.
Apart from the influence of the extended family, the good neighbourliness that characterised that period and had played an important role in the training of children is now gone, he said.
“We are witnesses to the way a neighbour could punish the children of his neighbour for misbehaving without fearing that their parents will reproach him for disciplining the child. In fact, the neighbour would be very pleased with the action of his neighbor. But now, if you touch a person’s child, you might even end up in court, if care is not taken,” he said.
According to him, parents and government must find a way of engaging the youth, saying idleness is the weapon used by the devil to destroy them. He added that government must curtail free access to hard drugs.
“The fight against social vices among youth will not succeed as long as they can have access to hard drugs,” he said.
Commenting, an Islamic scholar, Barrister Habib Dan Almajiri, said laxity on the part of the parents, in terms of training their children, is responsible for the unfortunate condition.
He said: “Parents are more concerned about a child’s worldly life than his hereafter. That is why they spend more time and energy to ensure he gets the best western education but his religious education is not their concern, this is dangerous.”
He said that whatever it is that a person will get out of worldly wealth has been predestined for him.
“If this is the reality of our life, then, it will be foolish of us to train our children solely on how to acquire worldly wealth, leaving his hereafter, which is inevitable, in total neglect.
“Parents must teach their children about their religion and culture, they should not let the children learn it from outside. They have to bring their children closer to them so they can know what kind of life their children live and monitor the kind of friends they keep,” he said.
When contacted, the Kano State Ministry for Women and Social Development, through its spokesman, Sanusi Abdullahi Kofar Na’isa, said the Kano State government was doing its best to the curtail drugs intake among youths through sensitisation.
He said that the ministry was also empowering women and youths to reduce the problem of unemployment in the state.