“We have exposed our children and youth to a very rotten and spoilt Nigeria, and one can only imagine how their early exposure will influence them in the future-hopefully for good, but possibly for bad?”
– Omagbitse Barrow, Businessday 7 April 2016, p10.
Reflecting on the above opening quote made me gaze into the future of our children, particularly those who are below the age of ten. As a Nigerian, when I gazed into the future through the crystal ball, what did I see? I see a developed Nigeria in the comity of nations only if we take care of our children. Nigeria must be a nation that guarantees gender equality irrespective of tribe and religion.
Our children are the future of this nation called Nigeria. The future of Nigeria is bright if we take care of our children. Recently, I read in an article that history as a subject is no more taught in our secondary schools. In most instances however, an interesting ambiguity taints the word “history,” as it can either denote past events, or denote the study of past events. History is one of the indispensable studies. No one can be educated or civilized, if the person does not make a study of history, and develop a habit of reading history.
No matter how clever politicians are, they cannot distort our history. This is because history is one of the richest and best sources of understanding human experience and human condition. It enables us as a people to understand ourselves, organize our lives and our society and to meet the future as best as we may.
Most Nigerians know our past as a nation, and we cannot feign ignorance of the present. We may not be able to predict what the future will look like using the past. Indeed in strategy, there is inherent risk in applying a straightforward extrapolation of the present to determine the future. This is because you cannot capture all accounts of interactions in development, changes occurring daily in economic and political landscape, the unexpected and unforeseen, and the unforeseeable, to project linearly into the future.
As an illustration of how wrong we can be about the future, we need to look at a few examples. A few years ago, there was the report making waves in the local and international media that Nigeria was going to disintegrate in 2015. Thank goodness, this did not happen.
So too is Margret Thatcher’s remarks, ten years before becoming the prime minister of the United Kingdom in 1979, that no woman will be prime minister in the country in her life time. She was deeply wrong. Indeed the one I found interesting is the assertion by one Charles H Duell, an Officer of the US Patent Office, who said in 1899, “everything that can be invested has been invented.” This is equally incorrect as we now have robots, internet, mobile phones, computers and unmanned aerial vehicles among others.
All over the world, people make assertions as to what the future will bring. But the speed at which events are happening in the global arena as well as technological events calls for extra caution. Today, the rapid increase in computing power is enabling scientific and technical research to explore many horizons of knowledge hitherto inaccessible.
Hardly can anyone predict what kind of knowledge humanity will have access to in years to come through the use of computers. I know that most people of my generation are referred to as “technological tourists,” while the younger generations are referred to as “technological natives.” It does not really matter which side of the divide you belong to. What matters most to me is- how the Nigerian child engages his or her peers in other parts of the world with the use of technology in the future.
This is because in the future, our children will need to apply increasing knowledge of the human genome to the prevention and cure of diseases, provide medical care for the aging and those injured, counteract the effects of human activity of the natural environment and climate by technological means. The Nigerian child may need to explore further regions of space and hidden corners of our own planet such as the deep oceans.
Children, they say, are a heritage from the Lord. I have always said that an American child is America. You dare not do anything unpleasant to the child because America will commit reasonable amount of resources to protect the child. This was examplified by the US Secretary of State, John Kerry’s recent statement that “an attack on any American is an attack on America.” A Nigerian child on the contrary, is the child of his or her parents. This is my view for very many years, such that I have always encouraged close relatives and friends to ensure they take care of their children irrespective of gender.
When the Chibok girls were abducted by Boko Haram on the night of 14 April 2014, there were conflicting reports- the report from Borno State government says that 129 Chibok girls were abducted. Of these, the government says 14 escaped, while only 115 girls were held by their captors and thus, missing. Two days later, the military spokesman, then Brigadier General Chris Olukolade, claimed all the girls have been rescued but only eight were missing. This was very sad although he later apologized about the misinformation. About 4 days later, one Christian priest raised alarm that about 300 girls had been abducted. To further compound the problem, the Borno State Police Commissioner, one LawanTanko, told reporters that the “Police believe 276 girls were abducted.” Thereafter, government issued a press release stating that it was not 127 Chibok girls that were missing, but that the missing girls are 219 in number. The ugly incident was, unfortunately politicized along partisan lines.
As I write, it is exactly 2 years that federal government’s security agencies have been searching for these 219 missing Chibokgirls. The most painful aspect is that there are several controversial statements about the where about of the missing 219 girls. The Cable Network News (CNN) just last week showed a video of the missing girls recorded since 25 December 2015. The Nigerian government was alleged to be in possession of the video but it was not made public. Besides the Chibok girls, there are several cases of girl abduction, rape, incest amongst other ills too numerous to be discussed. What has the girl child done to Nigeria to deserve this cruelty?
Inequality is at the root of the problems the girl child is having not only in Nigeria but all over the world. Even in civilized climes, it is a challenge to be a girl child. I have always told any female either adult or a child that she has to work twice as hard as her male counterparts in any endeavour. Otherwise, she stands a risk of being slighted or passed over for an assignment or appointment based on gender even when she has the qualification.
(To be continued)
MA Johnson
