If there is one thing that has made for the directionless state of the family, the church and the nation, it
is the lack of leaders. The saying holds true, “a pride of lions led by a sheep will fail where a flock of
sheeps led by a lion triumphed.” A people are only as focused or as good as their leader. Where good
leadership is lacking, good followership is non-existent. A nation will thrive better, even sour in growth,
if her leaders are men and women of integrity, truth and valour. It is no coincidence that a child who
grows up without a father figure is more prone to falter in life than one who does.
In America for
instance, the Black Community or African Americans there is notorious for homes where kids grow up
under the tutelage of only their mothers. For it is either the mother had them out of wedlock, or the
father is serving jail term or was gunned down while doing drugs or engaging in gang related violence.
The result? A 13% minority that is grossly underdeveloped, abounding in high mortality rates, crime and
a teeming majority that depends on the Government’s welfare package.
Movies like 21 Bridges, starring
the late Chadwick Boseman and Naomi Harris’s Black and Blue, are cinematic depictions of the result of
leaderless homes.
This paper is on the effects of failed parenting, especially failed fathering, on the society. If memory
serves me right, a society is made up of families. If families get it right, a society or a nation is very likely
to get it right too. Where families fail, nations and civilisations are eroded. What makes a great nation is
not tall builders and a blossoming economy. On the contrary, what makes a nation is the values it holds
or has. Europe and by extension, America, thrived most when they held Christian or Biblical values close.
Europe, once a den of barbarians, was revolutionised when Christianity spread across the continent. If
Europe is failing today, it is not because it is poor, it is not because the Euro is weak, it is because it has
forgotten the values that once made her great, so great that it spread civilisation across the world, even
if it did so through colonialism and the demon that is slavery.
The Proverb is true, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” A family, and by
extension a nation, built on this tenet will stand the test of time.
The book of Malachi points out that
God desires godly offspring, not just any child, but one that is godly, Malachi 2:15. So if a family must
hold together, if it must succeed at its goal of raising godly offspring, it must have godly leaders. Life
begets life. A pig has never given birth to a cat. Parenting or leading at the home front is therefore more
than paying school fees. If the relationship between you and your children is that of you paying their
tuition and them going to school, your family is a scholarship scheme, no different from NLNG, TETFUND
or any other scholarship body you can think of.
Leadership is therefore not something to take lightly. It is not something you start today and master
today. Leadership at the home is cultivated not in the confines of the pleasures of the matrimonial bed,
but in the asceticism of puberty or adolescence. In other words, to be a good leader or a good parent,
one must learn during puberty, if not in their preteens, the all important virtue of self discipline.
Denying oneself of the passions that come with the onset of sexual maturity. It is a known fact that men and
women who kept themselves from sexual promiscuity, drugs, drunkenness, wild living and other forms
of sensual indulgence during those formative years of life, make better leaders. For a man who is
capable of leading his body right, when he has the freedom to do wrong, will most certainly do well in
leading other people.
Therefore, leadership is the capacity of one to lead others. And this capacity is not taught in the
classroom, if it was about the intellect, the most intelligent people would have been the best leaders.
But history has proven that to be false. What did Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt, and Obama have in
common? Thomas Sowell figured it out: dangerous intelligence. What are the bad things smart people
have done? Here are some: The Great Depression, the Vietnam War, the Third Reich, Argentinian
economic disaster, to mention but few. Sowell puts it more succinctly, “To create a truly monumental
disaster, you need people with high IQs.” Many crucial things in life are learned from experience, rather
than from clever thoughts or clever words. Indeed, a gift for the clever phrasing so admired today by the
media can be a fatal talent, especially for someone chosen to lead a family and by extension, a
government. Formal education is good, but informal education is more important in making leaders.
G. K Chesterton captures it more brilliantly, “the school master may at best teach morality mainly in
theory: while the mother (and father) is obliged to teach it in practice.” A new trend is developingparents
leaving the duty of parenting to the teachers. But just because your paid 100k for a 3-year-olds
tuition doesn’t mean the teacher can do everything.
The preoccupation should never be in how much
you paid or can pay for your ward, it should be in what kind of life or values are being formed in your
ward. There is nothing in the Nigerian educational curriculum that deals with morality, CRS used to try,
depending on the type of teacher that taught it, but now it has been watered down and merged with
Islamic Religious Studies in most curricula found in schools. Some parents frown more when their kids
fail exams than they do when they are caught smoking Indian hemp, watching pornography, or with
unwanted pregnancy. How did we get down to this level? This level where J. S. S 3 students clamour
around Symbols and Balcony till night all because they have finished Junior WAEC.
Mothers and
potential mothers should not be sexualizing their daughters according to pop culture and later complain
when they come home pregnant at age 16. Father’s should not spend time with their sons in football
halls and beer joints and later complain when junior sees a future in the green bottle. Lead by example!
A Panacea, a conclusion
The MOSA Class of 2009 has now come of age, with most if us in our 30’s and a good number of us
married or planning to, and as such, this message could never have been more timely. The onus now lies
on us to be better parents and leaders of our homes. Those of you that already have kids, don’t leave
the training of your children to teachers and the television, be actively involved. If your role models are
Kidwaya, Laycon and Nengi, don’t expect them to be any different. A child follows in the footsteps of his
or her parent. If in the past you lived carelessly because you have nobody’s life depending on you, now
you may be the only Bible your children may ever read.
So be that example that they will want to follow.
Finally, to change our society, we must first change our families. The family as the basic unit of the
society is the foundation upon which great nations are built. And what better way to build the family
than to have strong fathers and mothers who can raise strong sons and daughters to champion the course of world transformation? You must make up your mind today to model your life after the
greatest leader that ever lived, Jesus, if you want to salvage posterity. It is only in Christ that this life
holds together. And it is only in Him that any family or society or nation can hold together.
