Some fathers do have them

When growing up in Kano metropolis we were conditioned to know the two main scandals any family could be afflicted with. A daughter getting pregnant outside wedlock was the very worst scandal for girls while for boys, it was the son who turned out to be a thief or an armed robber. In both cases […]

When growing up in Kano metropolis we were conditioned to know the two main scandals any family could be afflicted with. A daughter getting pregnant outside wedlock was the very worst scandal for girls while for boys, it was the son who turned out to be a thief or an armed robber. In both cases the families were never allowed to forget they harboured such a black seed, especially in times of a quarrel.
The pregnant girls usually disappeared from their family homes and we got to hear snippets of gossip that they had been taken to the village (their home towns) to deliver. Then later we will hear that they had been married and that an elaborate lie had been made up in the village about the young ladies being ‘widowed’ in the city to enable them get husbands without reference to their questionable morality. The thieving young men also ‘disappeared’ sometimes or they remained at home but were ostracized by people who feared their children could be exposed to their negative influence.
Either way, no family with a scandal was ever allowed to get off lightly, after staining the moral fabric of the society. But I am not sure this is what obtains in our society today. Maybe unmarried pregnant girls are still made to disappear. Or the babies are ‘disappeared’ through abortion, now that that option is available, but thieving sons are no longer a thing of shame, I think.
When I look at the faces and names behind the arms purchase scandal that’s been making news, I can’t help thinking here is a source of great odium for some great families. Will they ever be able to livethis down? I mean it isn’t just the fact that the funds were unlawfully diverted to other uses, it is the fact that what was done could have spelt doom for the country. I mean here is a country at war and the only way to win it was to get it armed, yet the very source through which these arms could be bought was blocked.
When I read stories of such greed, impunity and gross lack of patriotism, I always wonder where we went wrong. I mean when, even in a matter of life and death, the citizens of a country chose to rather have their country die than lose their personal gain, you have to wonder what went wrong. And looking back at the very important people in the arms deal scandal you have to wonder what they ever lacked in life that could make them so unscrupulous.
Some of them were products of wealth, influence and privilege. One can almost say they have no reason to be so enamoured of wealth. An$d yet …I had the privilege of interviewing one of the fathers of the men involved in the arms purchase-gate sixteen years ago and I came out thoroughly enriched by it.  Here was a right honourable gentleman. A thoroughbred civil servant, a sincere and patriotic man who remininsiced about the days when things were being done right in this country. He told me about the time development plans were being done every five years to ensure that certain targets were achieved before the region embarked on another phase of development.
He talked to me about checks and balances that ensured that corruption and self-aggrandisement had no place in the Northern Nigeria of the first Republic. Yet here is the next generation doing exactly what these great patriotic men would never dream of doing. Whenever I sawhis son among the faces in the arms scandal, I had to ask myself where did that honourable old man go wrong?
Did he try to advise and was ignored? Did he say to himself ‘my son is old enough to know what is right and wrong’ and so he didn’t advise? Or did he do all he could for the son and fail because, well, some fathers do have them? Whatever the case, I know that this is one of the situations that puts a family in shame and which the neighbours never allows them to forget. It is my sincere hope that the young generation growing up to read about his unscrupulous and unpatriotic behaviours, will shun them as did their grandfathers. As for the present fathers, may God give them a chance to repent and pay back what they stole. And may their compatriots find it in their hearts to forgive them