There are and will always be all kinds of children. They consist of those that are well brought up and those that are ill-bred. There will be good children and vagabonds will abound. There are deprived ones, evincing a lack of parental responsibility and care. A legion of them flooded the streets during the recent tagged EndBadGovernment protests which they seized as cover to break into shops and department stores, looting. There are on the other side of the divide a host born into indulgence in the name of love and chest-beating showmanship but with an attendant blighted future. It cannot be for nothing that the Scriptures admonish parents: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it”. (Proverb 22:6) Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible; King James Version (Proverb 22:6). And here following is an account I received during the week which is thought-provoking. It is a letter written to all parents. The writer starts with her experience observing child upbringing in the United Kingdom and the same discharge of parental responsibility in Nigeria. The account is better in her own words and it reads:
“Dear All—Let’s be real. I wish to start by adding the benefit of my time as a student and then resident in the UK. Living in Abuja now. The first thing that I discovered about UK-born White, English undergraduates was that all of them did holiday or weekend job to support themselves—including the children of millionaires amongst them. It is the norm there—regardless of how wealthy their parents are. And I soon discovered that virtually all other foreign students did the same—except status-conscious Nigerians.
“I also watched Richard Branson (owner of Virgin Airline) speaking on the Biography Channel. To my amazement, he said that his young children travel in economy class—even when the parents (he and his wife) are in upper class. Richard Branson is a billionaire in Pound sterling. A quick survey would show you that only children from Nigeria fly business or upper class to commence their studies in the UK. No other foreign students do this”. When the writer lived in the UK, and until recently, there was no aircraft attached to the office of the Prime Minister in the UK. “He travels on BA (British Airways, a commercial airliner). And the same goes for the Royals”. The Queen did not have an aircraft for her exclusive use.
“These practices simply become the culture which the next generation carries forward. Have you seen what Kate Middleton (the wife of Prince William) drives? VW Golf or something close to it. But there is one core difference between them and us (generally speaking), they (even the billionaires) work for their money, most of us steal ours.
“If we want our children to bring about the desired change we have been praying for on behalf of our dear country, then please, please let’s begin now and teach them to work hard so they can stand alone and most importantly be content and not having to ‘steal’ which seems to be the norm these days. We have Nigerian children who have never worked for five minutes in their lives insisting on flying ‘only’ first or business class and using the latest cars fully paid for by their ‘loving’ parents.
“I often get calls from anxious parents: ‘My son graduated two years ago and is still looking for a job, can you please assist!’ ‘Oh, really! So where exactly is ‘THIS CHILD?’ is my usual question. ‘Why are you the one making this call dad/mum?’ I am yet to get a satisfactory answer, but between you and I, chances are that the big boy is cruising around Abuja with a babe dressed to the nines, in his dad’s sparkling new SUV with enough ‘pocket money’ to put your salary to shame. It is not at all strange to hear a 28-year-old who has NEVER worked for a day in his or her life in Nigeria but ‘earns’ six figure ‘salary’ from parents for doing absolutely nothing.
“I see them in my office once in a while, 26 years old with absolutely no skill to sell apart from a shiny CV, written by his dad’s secretary in the office. Of course, he has a driver at his beck and call and he is driven to the job interview. We have a fairly decent conversation and we get to the inevitable question—So, what salary are you looking to earn? Answer comes straight out—N250, 000. I ask if that is per month or per annum. ‘Of course, it is per annum’. Oh, why do you think you should be earning that much on your first job?’ ‘Well, because my current pocket money is N200, 000. 00 a month and I feel any employer should be able to pay me more than my parents”.
“No wonder corruption continues to thrive. We have a society of young people who have been brought up to expect something for nothing, as if it were a birthright. Even though the examples I have given above from parents of considerable affluence, similar patterns can be observed from Abeokuta to Adamawa. Wake up mum! Wake up dad! This syndrome—‘my children will not suffer what I suffered’ is destroying your tomorrow. You are practically loving your child to death.
“I learnt the children of a former very senior public functionary with all the stolen (billions) monies in their custody, still go about with security escort as wrecks. They are on drugs; several times because of the drug, they collapse in places. The escort will quickly pack them and off they go. What a life! No one wants to marry them.
“Henry Ford said, ‘Hard work does not kill’. We are getting everything wrong in Nigeria now, including family setting. It is time to prepare your children for tomorrow, the way the world is going, only those that are rugged, hardworking and smart working that will survive. How will your ward fare?”
All that is narrated in the foregoing is borne out of ignorance of the purpose of life on earth on the part of the parents concerned and the children who are the beneficiaries of misplaced love. As the writer has rightly observed, the attitude of the parents is “My children will not suffer what I suffered”. The suffering of the parents itself had its origin, all in ignorance, not even just of the purpose of life, but also of the unswerving mechanisms that govern life in which they will find their role as parents. There may have been over-breeding by equally ignorant forebears of the parents themselves necessitating scarce resources being spread thin. That was also where the forebears had a faint sensing of the place of education, using the old Western Nigeria as an example. Children were sent to school with the provision that after school hours or/and during holidays, the wards would join them on the farms. In 1954, wards joining parents on the farm soon became a campaign weapon. The NCNC campaigned that the free primary school education of the ruling Action Group was designed to deprive parents of their children joining them on the farm. They also incited voters against the capitation tax levied on taxpaying adults to fund education and health. It was one of the four reasons the Action Group lost the Federal parliamentary election into the Federal House of Representatives of that year but won the elections into the Regional Assembly of 1956 and other subsequent elections as enlightenment through education ensued and spread.
The other three reasons were land acquisition for agricultural development particularly of rubber plantation for domestic use as well as for export. The landowners organized to vote against the Action Group. Another reason was the Customary Court reform which ended illiterate and old men being Presidents and members of customary courts in the region. They were replaced by educated people. The aggrieved backed by Mabolaje/NCNC alliance mobilized to vote against the party. The fourth reason was the 1953 law which brought about the democratization of the local government councils. The law required that councillors were thenceforth to be elected. Hitherto, they were nominated and handpicked. As of that time elections were held into only the Lagos Municipal Council in the whole country. These were the hot potatoes which the Opposition sold to the electors. However, as the bandage dropped from the eyes of the electors, especially as more illiterates began to benefit from the government’s adult education programme, the ruling Action Group party won all subsequent elections from 1956. This distinction by way of digression has to be made so that the 1954 federal polls are not confused with the 1951 elections into the Western House of Assembly which Awolowo’s Action Group won, beating the NCNC with a wide margin: AG, 38 seats to NCNC: 24. Independent parties’ alliance with AG, 15 and similar alliance with NCNC: 3. The total number of seats was 80.According to the Daily Times publication of 08 January 1952: “Action Group majority in the Western House of Assembly was publicly and officially acknowledged at the first meeting of the Western Regional Legislature held here this morning. Forty-nine of them with badges pinned on their dresses waited outside the hall and posed for photographs. They insisted on sitting together as a party and the Civil Secretary, Western Region, granted their request”.
What I am getting at is that in the early days, many struggled to pay their way until the free education revolution in the Western Region came about in 1955. The next stage of struggle was to have secondary education and university studies. Many had to be sponsored by the church and their communities. Many after the secondary school education fought their way to Europe where they combined work with studies. They returned to form the first crop of the elite circles, and these were and still are those who, remembering what they went through, mostly vowed that their children would not go through their thorny and harrowing paths to get to the summit of the mountain. In the realization of their resolve, they took away the struggle from their children, the souls lovingly put under their care by the Creator in answer to their supplication. They did not know that their own experiences were good for them and, indeed, greatly beneficial to them. Lacking in knowledge, they sought to spare their children of similar struggles and experiences. They were unaware that life is a struggle.
Today, children have been made to develop a sense of entitlement and make demands on their parents. In struggle lies the unfolding of talents and abilities. It is through friction with material substances that we gain in consciousness to move into self-consciousness which is the whole purport of life. This cannot be achieved by standing aloof and distancing oneself from struggle. Dr. Stephen Lampe puts it this way in his book, The Spirit of Truth Brings the Everlasting Testament: “The variety of experiences acquired between the Spiritual Realm and the earth activate consciousness and then self-consciousness”. In the struggle we break from within to recognize the omniscience and omnipotence of the Most High. The more successful we are the more we recognise the greatness of the Most High Creator—that it is immeasurable; it is inconceivable.
Daniel Swarovski, industrialist and author, says in his treasure book, The Time is Ripe: reflections, essays and lectures: “The tendency of physical and mental laziness is contrary to the necessity of life on earth which requires movement, for without work, without industry we cannot master life…Many strangers to nature find the necessity to work irksome. And politicians try to soften the blow, wooing the masses for votes…”
According to the enlightenment of these times, each human being is here on earth at his own request or because of his own fault to atone for, and he is led to the parents and circumstances that he deserves and which will facilitate the fulfilment of the purpose of his sojourn. The journey is far and great the exertion, it is revealed in higher knowledge. Children may therefore not make claims on their parents. The incomparably unique Work, In The Light of Truth, The Grail Message, states: “Parents merely provide the possibility for an incarnation and nothing else. And every incarnated soul must be grateful for the opportunity offered!
“The soul of the child is only the guest of its parents. This fact alone gives sufficient explanation to enable one to know that in reality, a child can claim no rights in regard to its parents! It has no spiritual claim on its parents! Earthly rights, however, have arisen solely out of a purely mundane social order, brought about by the State so that it need not take any obligations upon itself”
As I have stated often, man is a spirit. The wrappings around him in which he manifests as a body are his garments he needs for his sojourn on earth and which he discards at death. He enters the Beyond as a soul in which he is encased, another set of wrappings made of substances of that plane. The Message states: “Spiritually, the child is a complete personality in itself. Apart from its physical body, which it needs as a tool for its activity on this gross material plane, it has received nothing from its parents—only a dwelling which the already independent soul can make use of.
“Still through procreation, the parents assume the obligation to care for the dwelling place they have thus created, and to maintain it until the soul which has taken possession of it is itself capable of undertaking its maintenance. The natural development of the body will indicate when the moment for this has come. Whatever is done beyond this is a gift from the parents”.
Because of the relatively inner maturity of a sizeable population in Europe, permitting them considerable inner radiance, the White community is closer to the truth with children learning early in life that they are on their own; they do holiday or weekend job to support themselves. We Africans may be beating them in class and examinations; intellectual sagacity is different from inner maturity which is evinced in their refinement, nobility of spirit, etiquette and standards, and the beauty of their environment as well as their sense of orderliness. Of course, there is no gainsaying that decline has set in everywhere, in all parts of our world.
