By Kayode Emola
Over the past two weeks, I have written about how our fortunes in life can be affected by the country of our birth or where we reside and also on the implications of national debt on our individual lives. I want to focus this week’s article on the role of the family in society, particularly the role of the father as the head of the family and his responsibilities to his children.
When we take a critical look at the role parents play in the life of their child or children, we see that it is the very basis for the development of the family and society at large. I cannot and would not trade my Yoruba family values for anything else in the world. However, it seems like these family values are now being lost in our modern society without us paying due attention to what we are losing.
We inherited a system from our forbears where the father was the breadwinner of his family and was expected to be able to provide for all of the needs of his children, no matter how small or large the family may be. If the father were to pass away, an inheritance would be left in place to take care of his children and wife or wives, depending on how many he has.
In my exploration of how the European societies are run, I discovered that they have integrated these values, our precious, traditional, African Yoruba values, into the running of their economies and today they are the better for it. In contrast, we, the Yorubas, who should be in the better position to implement this system, are rather found wanting.
In a typical family sense, and in today’s modern society, people are encouraged to give birth to no more than the number of children they can cater for. In the time past, our forebears maintained a large family environment, where no child lacked the basic things of life, as there were either large farms or, in my family’s case, the opportunity to go fishing. This setting worked for thousands of years and still continues to hold true in the face of the world’s dwindling resources.
A typical advanced European country, having learnt this art, employs this family model to ensure that all their citizens have the basic needs of life. Take the United Kingdom for example: the government behaves like a typical parent for all its citizens, from cradle to grave. The government provides free, quality schooling for all its citizens, from primary school to college (the final qualifications before university) irrespective of their background. The government also provides free, quality healthcare for all its citizen, as well as adequate security and pensions for its retirees. When someone is unemployed or looking for work, the government provide for them Job -Seekers Allowance until they can find paid employment. All of these sound to me like what a typical father would do for their children when they are in need.
On the contrary, these family values are not replicated across the broader society in Nigeria today. It is not because we lack the capability to reproduce this model in a national setting; it is because we have greedy leaders who think only of themselves. This has led to the many societal woes that we as a people now face, where nearly all the basic things of life are becoming luxuries that only a few can access. For most Nigerians today, it has become the responsibility of the individual to provide for their own needs: needs such as education, healthcare, and even security, which are supposed to be a basic function of the government.
It is widely known that many people in the north of Nigeria do not value education; however, this should not have affected our ways of life in the south. Yet as the saying goes: “Show me your friends and I will tell you what you will become,” this principle seems to have affected us even ’til today, and will continue to affect us if the Yoruba nation does not sever itself from these declining ethics of Nigeria.
We, the Yorubas, have prided ourselves on being the shining light of Africa, but it seems to me that this light that we are projecting to the world is failing to shine back home. We have been reduced to a position where we can no longer provide quality education for our citizens. Many of our medical doctors are leaving the country for greener pastures abroad, and the security of lives and properties cannot be guaranteed.
Despite all these failings, the government of Nigeria continues to borrow money that they have no intention or means to repay, leaving the citizens’ to bear the burden. With over 75% of Nigeria’s revenue going into servicing loan repayments, if this is not quickly checkmated, it will be only a matter of time before it all blows up in our faces.
It is obvious that when the reins of power in Nigeria were handed over to the Fulani during independence, our fate in the south was irrevocably sealed. We should have known better than to expect any good to come out of the end product. Nigeria, which should have become a beacon of hope for its citizens and Africans in general, has turned into an onerous burden, encumbering both its citizens and the world at large.
I urge the Yoruba people to be reassured that our values have not left us. They are still very much intact and have been obscured only because we share our space with people who do not believe in them. We need now to reawaken the zeal for rebuilding our society with these family values, where the government takes responsibility for the citizens they produce. We have seen that Nigeria will not present to us that opportunity to build the society that we all long for, therefore the best, and indeed only, option is to negotiate our exit from Nigeria. Until the next time that I come your way again, continue to stand strong, speak out, and together we will make the world hear us.
