I was walking home some days ago, and my mind drifted back to an event that happened some years ago. We had a client that my boss, Engineer Luke, used to work for. When I was still in the company, we knew this client as someone who hardly spent money on himself. But when you saw his wife, you knew immediately that he was a wealthy man.
I remember the first time I saw him at the site. He was outside, packing sand. I had to ask, "Who is packing sand this early in the morning?" When they told me he was the owner, I was shocked. I thought to myself, "Why are you hiding your money? You are building five-story buildings everywhere, yet you are out here packing sand?"
Sometime later, he bought a house from another rich man in a housing estate in Onitsha, and we went there to renovate it. That was when his wife arrived. Her skin was sparkling, she was driving a very beautiful car, and we all just had to laugh. Look at the husband, and look at the wife! She was the one cruising the money.
It’s a very common sight among our Igbo men. They love to let you see their wealth on their wives. You’ll see an average Igbo man controlling millions of Naira, yet he's using a beat-up Nokia torch phone with hard-to-press buttons. Then you look at his wife, and she is wearing the most expensive wigs, shoes, and necklaces. It even aligns with what the Bible says about women being the glory of men: they express the glory of their husbands.
But as visible and proud as men can be about their wealth and their wives, there is another kind of responsibility we are almost entirely neglecting: the quiet and intentional work of raising the next generation.
The Danger of the Protruding Nail
It was in Nsukka, the client’s hometown, that the lesson finally caught up with me. We went there to build a fence for him after he acquired additional plots of land to add to the ones he already had. We had good experiences there; I remember observing the local children and noticing how respectful they were. It’s almost becoming a lost art, so seeing respectful children felt like reliving the old days.
After the construction was done, I was on a wooden scaffold counting the number of blocks laid. It’s customary to count the number each bricklayer laid, so that they can be fairly paid. As I was up there, I noticed that the nail used to connect the wood was protruding. My mind immediately told me to bend the nail so that when I was climbing down, it wouldn't catch me. But I told myself, "I will do that later. Let me just finish calculating the work at the site first." And my mind completely left it.
When we were finally done with work, my safety boots were already off. I was about to climb down to properly calculate the workers' pay, and guess what happened? That exact nail pierced my leg.
As I thought about that incident recently, it reminded me of something Dr. David Ogbueli used to say: "The young men you don't disciple today will become a problem for you tomorrow."
He would warn that the youth we ignore today are the ones who will grow up to become thieves, rapists, and fraudsters. They are the ones who will dupe you at your place of work and contribute to the chaos in society. The lesson from the scaffold was clear: every evil that goes unaddressed will always come back to haunt us.
The Loss of Communal Parenting
That nail piercing my leg was a wake-up call. Today, I look around and see the decadence in our educational system. I see young men getting deeply involved in fraudulent activities, and it concerns me. It pushed me to finally start doing the youth mentorship I had always wanted to do, because I was seeing the horrific after-effects of neglecting our young ones.
Growing up, we experienced what we called "communal parenting." Parenting was never limited to immediate parents; it was the duty of the community. If a neighbor saw your son or daughter misbehaving, they cautioned them, and sometimes they even punished them. Because of that, it was easy for the community to train children.
Now, everybody is "minding their business," and it is destroying us. You see a young boy smoking, or a young girl following a Yahoo boy or dressing inappropriately, and your only concern is making sure your own children aren't friends with them. We are too afraid of the insults we might receive from their parents if we try to reprimand them.
Our older parents didn't consider the insults. They were more concerned about how bad behavior would affect society as a whole.
I remember another time I was in Onitsha, waiting to board a bus to Awka. A young girl came onto the bus and started making a nuisance of herself, arrogantly demanding that a young guy give up his seat for her. The young man calmly told her that if she had asked respectfully, he might have done it, but because of her arrogance, he wouldn't. Eventually, we didn't allow her to sit down.
An elderly woman sitting at the front of the bus commended us. She told us she would have been angry if we had let that young lady sit down, and she would have come down to reprove us. Why? Because she knew that standing up to these girls limits their misbehavior. Pretty soon, her son might bring that same young lady to the house saying he wants to marry her! The older generation had sense. Like Dr. David Ogbueli warned, they knew that an evil left unattended always comes back to pierce us.
We Must Rebuild Our Pillars
This is why, as men and women, we need to look beyond ourselves. We need to actively mentor young boys and girls who we see going astray. Let them know there is a good, honest path to follow: one that will pay them in the end, even if it delays.
Many of us turned out well because we received corrections from multiple places. I am a product of that. The church used to punish and flog us, which meant the mere threat of being reported to the church made you quiver. Today, if you discipline a child, the parents stop coming to church entirely. It is a menace.
We need to go back to communal parenting. Let's look out for each other. If you have trained your children well, don't stop there. When you see other people's children going wayward, look after them too. That is how we raise sane communities. A community where girls are not afraid to go out at night without being molested. A community where young boys are safe from predators.
Saying, "My son will not turn out bad," is not enough. What are you doing to create a sane community for your boy to live in? Some of the parents of these misbehaving youths simply don't know better. So, those of us who do know better must go out there and help parent the young ones.
In building construction, the structural members you don't pay attention to will eventually crack. The children and youth are the pillars of our society. If we don't address them and make them strong, society itself will not be strong. Just like a building with only a few strong elements and weak structural supports, it will inevitably collapse.
Let’s go out there, do our part, and help raise a morally sound generation that will replicate itself for years to come.