Another factor that is closely associated with drugs abuse is immorality and prostitution, it fuel and sustains it, immoral conduct, acts, nude dressing and prostitution are encouraged by greed, avarice and quest for easy quick money, we must curb these through discipline and values in our homes, the hallmark of any society is the home, it’s the basis for a stable family.
The failure of our youths could be tied to our individual homes, when parents fail in their responsibility, when parents fail to instill discipline and enforce it, when parents are not there for the children, it becomes a case of nobody is there to guide the children and through peers learn strange values that are inimical to their development and this is how the “borrow, borrow” culture comes in, no society encourages evil because any society that does is consumed by it, some youths put on earrings, in their nose and hains in legs, they shampoo hair, dress half naked and go against normal social norm, they sustain their greed with crime, the question is where are the parents? Some parents are negligent but so many others are not, yet the children deliberately went astray.
However, in individual homes, parents must compliment government to have a stable, better society, the task of a good and better society does not lie with the government alone but with the society at large, if we must have a society sustained by the rule of law.
The youths have lost it, there is absence of patriotism and self-worth, many are ready to sell themselves including the country and their ancestral landmarks to feed their greed and the outcome is calamity plaguing our norms and values, you can see this for the love of foreign tastes and football, our youths have developed inordinate love and knowledge for foreign clubs that in every vicinity you have Arsenal, Manchester united, PSG, Inter Milan, Barcelona, Chelsea and Real Madrid et cetera club fans that whenever they are playing, the streets is Jam-packed with supporters, pro and against, making the vicinity a noise gong but ask them about Nigerian clubs, they know nothing and their attachment to these foreign leagues is another way we lose foreign exchange to these foreign interests.
The love and zeal shown to foreign leagues if showed to our local clubs could speedy development. Another factor is our women, the African woman have lost their culture and values, they act, think, dress in foreign attires, put on wigs and other attachment, they put on false hips, buttocks and renovate their body with eye lashes as Delilah did in the Bible, but the African woman have a culture just as the Indian because when you meet an Indian you know through their culture but the African woman is lost in Identity and even if those in power could not show us how much they value culture of identity, how much more would the downtrodden do?
Part of the colonial mentality of disrespecting Nigeria doesn’t only lie with our renegade youths but some adults who administer our sports and football, is it not strange we hire a foreign white coach to coach our football national teams when we have retired football stars that played football in the best of the leagues in Europe, won laurels before retiring? The question is why do we prefer unknown coaches who were never the best in their playing days in Europe to manage our football? We prefer foreign coaches maybe because of envy for one of our own, ethnic and other considerations, like corruption, because hiring an unknown foreigner with modest football knowledge, when we have the best is unfortunate. We could see that our football administrators who hire these foreign substandard coaches are not different from the legion of youths that deify and have unquenchable love, adoration and stigma for foreign football teams over love and patriotism for the development of Nigerian teams like Lobi stars, Bendel insurance and others. Our love for foreign goods over Nigerian goods is encouraging poverty, creating unemployment, stigmatizing production and services of goods which is not good for the Nigerian economy. We must produce what we use and eat if we must have a buoyant economy, if our women could have value for our culture as the Indian women do, they would do away with foreign European hairstyles, and wigs et cetera to embrace traditional African hairstyle that is distinct and save the country foreign exchange.
How can the naira improve in value when we don’t produce and our love for foreign importation is high? How can the economy revived when we patronize everything foreign, including strange culture, values and even food? We are the architect of the falling standard of the naira, our youths not only patronize foreign clubs and our football administrators hire foreign coaches to be paid in dollars not in naira. The value we give is the same depreciated value we get, Nigeria is not only sinking but dyeing, ‘Japa’ is a Yoruba word that has been elevated to a national slang of acceptance, similar to why the military government in the 1980s did the advert ‘Andrew’ to discourage illegal migration abroad but today it has assumed a very alluring proportion that important government agencies are not paying attention to discourage the exodus of our youths to Europe and this has encouraged professionals who too have joined in the madness called “Japa”.
The government must do something to curb the lures of foreign illegal migrations in the mentality of “Japa” by our youths, aggressive campaigns are needed in both electronic and print media, we also need to involve state governments and communities, we need to inform traditional rulers of the dangers inherent in the illusion called “Japa” by our youths, we also need to use same energy to campaign against abuse of drugs that is more common among our youths and while this is ongoing, we need to also engage critical stakeholders and strengthen law enforcement agencies to live up to expectation by not only arresting the youths who use these illicit drugs but by cracking down on the drug barons who are financially rich and powerful but above the law. It is very sad to see poor, vulnerable youths who buy and use these products; arrested but the drug barons untouchable! It is a sad reality that confronts our quest to fight against illicit drugs, and if one may ask are the agents of these drug barons and the drugs baron’s ghosts that cannot be arrested? Why arrest only the end users? The youth is very important to economic and political stability and that’s why nations invest on their youths, we cannot have a society with values, morals, economic boom, and political stability if we fail to invest on our youths, we just have to invest on the youths if we desire a better country now and in the nearest future.
Prince Akpo. Abugo
Wrote from Uzere
Delta State.
