Yesterday was Father’s Day. Celebrated every third Sunday of June, it’s a day that presents a double opportunity. It’s an occasion to take a look at our families and at our society, an opportunity to recognise and appreciate the place of fatherhood in a society that seeks to be humane, just and peaceful.

This year’s Father’s Day comes at a time when all is not well with Nigeria, a time of intense discomfort and apprehension for the average Nigerian.  Twenty-five years after the cessation of a second bout of military rule, it is clear and beyond any reasonable doubt that beneficiaries of the dispensation that began on May 29, 1999, are not average citizens of Nigeria but the Nigerian political elite.

The people have been further impoverished and disabled by a political elite perching on and misappropriating Nigeria’s wealth, aided by a political arrangement with many dangerous defects.  The consequences are undeniable.

Our dear Nigeria, an oil-producing country, is derisively described as the poverty capital of the world. But it’s not just a matter of what the international community says about us. It’s about how the quality of life in Nigeria has become scandalously low, especially in recent times.

Corruption, insecurity and poverty pervade the length and breadth of our vast country.  Repeated and recurrent failure to manage our ethnic, religious and regional diversity engenders mutual distrust. Failure and or inability of those holding the reins of government to lead the country in the right direction have made Nigeria into a land where nothing seems to work for the Nigerian.  Young Nigerians, out of sheer frustration, are constantly looking for a way to abandon their fatherland.  Living in a societal void created by deprivation of values, many young Nigerians believe they can find solace in addiction to drugs, cultism and reckless sexual activity. Many express dismay at being failed by Nigeria.

But fathers and mothers have the role and capacity to change the course of this land.  They can, and they must do this by simply being good managers of their homes.  For fathers and mothers form families, families form towns and cities, and towns and cities form nations. The strengths and the weaknesses of a society are the strengths and weaknesses of families within the society. Heroes and villains are born into and nurtured in families.

Their first teachers are their fathers and mothers. That is why the condition of a nation is shaped within its family.  That also underscores the vital importance of exemplary fathers in our families and our society.  Their offspring will either build or destroy the society. In his address to the Nigerian family during his first visit to Nigeria in 1982, Pope John Paul II emphasised the relationship between the good health of the family and the good health of society. Our era and our land need to heed those wise words.

Here and now, we are in dire need of responsible fathers— fathers who will take responsibility for their children, and who, by so doing, take responsibility for society. This is not to promote patriarchy. This is to promote a society in which fathers take collaborative responsibility with mothers. It’s about exemplary parenting.  It’s about every child’s right to two parents living together. It’s about complementarity in parenting for which fathers and mothers are responsible, but which some fathers have abdicated, leaving some mothers to bear the burden alone.

Father’s Day is a day to recall and emphasise that, within any civilisation, the role of fathers is not merely biological. It does not stop with the conception of a child. Fathers are not just donors of genes. They are, and they ought to be positive role models who pass values on to their offspring. While nature and common sense teach us that we would have no biological life without our fathers and that the human race would go into extinction without fathers, it is also to be pointed out that society stands and falls on its values, and that fathers are conveyors of values necessary for building a humane and just society.

Nigeria is gravely afflicted with an acute deficiency of moral values. That largely explains why ours is a society of dehumanising tendencies, an increasingly inhumane land that bears the heavy burden of bad leadership, and a reputation for incivility and insecurity.  But agents of these societal disturbances had and or still have fathers. This challenges fathers to have the vocational consciousness of positive role models.

Father’s Day is a day to salute and celebrate the courage of many fathers who fulfill their paternal role in exemplary ways. It’s a day to encourage those fathers who are impeded, out of no fault of theirs, from playing this vital role.  It’s a day to challenge men who have simply neglected paternal responsibility. It’s a day to call out fathers who are simply irresponsible. It is a day for every father to search his conscience to know to which of these groups he belongs and should belong.

If a nation is made of cities, if cities are made of families, if the good health of the family is of vital importance for the good health of society, if the good health of nations and the good health of our world go together, we in Nigeria must act accordingly.

If we in Nigeria wish to build a just and humane society, we must, through our fathers and mothers, build our families.  It’s a lot more than building beautiful mansions.  It is about building human beings.  It’s about building the temple of society.