The recent tears-jerking report by some section of the media that the Nigerian Police and vigilante group in Ogwashi-Uku, Aniocha South Local Government Area, Delta State, caught two boys suspected to be Yahoo boys”(internet fraudsters), with a coffin loaded with female pants and brassieres, has again reminded us that our dear state and of course the nation in general are not only morally bankrupt but that moral principles have lost their distinctiveness.
According to news reports,
The suspected Yahoo boys, who were apprehended in Agidiehe Quarters of the community at about 9.30 p.m, on Wednesday night, were intercepted by the vigilante members, before policemen were invited.
Confirming the arrest, the Police Public Relations Officer in the state, DSP Onome Onowakpoyeya, said the suspected yahoo boys were in possession of the coffin for alleged ritual purposes. Onowakpoyeya said the female pants, brassieres and other items were seen in the coffin when the suspects were forced to open it.
She added that the Command had stepped up investigation into the matter.
Without any shadow of the doubt, Ika Weekly Newspaper, like every other well meaning Nigerian is seriously terrified by this development. As it has brought to our consciousness the fact that the country is in danger-not from attack by external aggression, but from unprecedented changes in its environment. More specifically, the emphasis here is not on the physical environment but the moral environment. And it is simply no longer possible to ignore particularly as this negative onslaught is being spearheaded by the youths who will provide the future leadership of the nation.
read also: THE INCREASING INSECURITY OF BANKS’ CUSTOMERS IN NIGERIA
As the clamour for their prosecution to serve as deterrent to other youths involved in yahoo yahoo rends the political wavelength, the incident in some ways raises the question as to what brought about this ugly development on the nation’s political shore? As parents, grandparents, teachers, religious leaders, political leaders, and traditional ruler, what are we teaching these children/youths in our society via our actions and inaction? Who are they learning these anti-social activities from?
As a responsible media group that cannot support an opinion based on sentiment or allow emotion to rule our decisions, we hold the view that providing answers to the above question will be more rewarding in social and economic terms than prosecution of the suspects.
To shed more light on the above argument, the vast majority of parents have, in their concern with values such as work, success, prestige, and money starved these children of good moral upbringing and through that process failed to remember that the formation of children is a delicate one. And experts have described adolescence as a period of the storm, a stage in the developmental growth of the youths that drives the youths to explore and express their psychosexual self to possibly know more about the world around them. Once the point is missed, such ignorance and mistake by the parents causes the child an opening that many a time is wrongly filled by ‘friends’.
read also:CURBING SPORTS BET MENACE ON NIGERIAN YOUTHS
To arrest, and change this social and moral drift, it is the newspaper’s opinion that the time is ripe for parents to teach these youths that they must not judge success by the index of their income or size of their automobiles but by the quality of their service and relationship to humanity. That ‘proper order of things is to start now and be who you want to be, then do the action that goes along with being that person, and soon you will find that you easily have everything you want in life-health, wealth, and fulfilling relationships.
Aside from the failures of parents, there are evidence that this present national malady is rooted in what James Ter Tssoiur, a Professor of media and cultural communication, termed politicide. Politicide according to him is the death of progressive politics. It is the entrenchment of the act of political corruption, electoral fraud, empty political rhetoric, false electoral promises, electoral violence and blatant subversion of the dictatorship of the electorates. It is avaricious loot that terrorizes and dehumanizes the people they are supposed to protect.
Politics in Nigerian context entails get money quick/instant gratification syndrome, corruption and falsehood. And Nigerian youths are learning very fast.
Let’s tackle this social malady from its root.