The family as a business

WHEN the Jewish lawyer cum missionary, Paul, said in the last days, perilous times will come: Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, brutal, headstrong, he probably foresaw the evil times we are in today.

Otherwise, how do you explain the unimaginable and dastardly acts being perpetrated by humans the world over? The dramatic story of how a nanny-kidnapper, Funmilayo Adeyemi-Kareem, a.ka. Mary Akinloye, reportedly abducted three Orekoya’s children placed under her care in a Surulere, Lagos home, captures Paul’s prophesy in 2 Timothy 3:1-7.

Thank God the kids have been rescued in good condition and re-united with their parents. Reports say the evil nanny has also been arrested. According to reports, the Orekoya family needed a nanny and decided to place an advert on an online sales portal, OLX. One ‘Mary Akinloye’, 23, saw the advert and contacted the Orekoyas expressing her interest on the job. She was invited and a deal was quickly struck.

She introduced some people she claimed were her guarantors, who the Orekoyas naively talked with on phone without confirmation. Without doubting or suspecting anything, the nanny was quickly engaged even before the final paper agreement was finalised.

Just on the first day the Orekoyas left their kids aged between 11 months and 11 years to the nanny and went to work, she simply took the kids and vanished. The eldest of the four kids, who was left behind, alerted his parents that the nanny had gone out with his siblings. On rushing home, the Orekoyas could not see the nanny or their children.

They did not know that they had hired a kidnapper; she had abducted the kids. The police was informed and a search was mounted. Shortly, her gang contacted the Orekoyas and demanded the sum of N15 million to be paid as ransom before they would release the kids. All pleas by the Orekoyas that they could not afford such money fell on deaf ears.

eports say the traumatised couple were in the process of looking for the money when the police rescued the kids. This is another bitter lesson to parents who leave their children to strange maids. Parents should take full care of their kids and never leave them with strangers. Several of such ugly incidents involving housemaids, nannies, houseboys are happening every day.

No one registers a company/business and hands it over to someone else to manage. This is never done. If you do that, the business will most likely fold up.

People register businesses and take full charge as managing director/CEO. If that is the case, why then do people start a family, which in itself is a business and hand it over to a maid/nanny to manage? Most of the time, the maid is unknown to the couple, inexperienced and lacks the ability to manage the family.

Every maid is a mercenary with a different mission. From ancient times, maids have brought troubles to families. The maid, Hagar, brought by Sarah, wife of Abraham from Egypt; nearly robbed Isaac of his birth right as heir to the family. Genesis 16: 1-6. Hagar’s presence brought hatred, misunderstanding in the once-peaceful family as there are in many families today because of hired maids.

Abraham slept with Hagar at Sarah’s prodding, which resulted in the birth of Ishmael, Gen. 12:16. That sowed the seed of hatred between the Arabs and Israel till today.

Again, was it not the houseboy Joseph, bought as servant by Potiphar in Egypt, that made his wife make sexual advances to the young boy who refused and suffered imprisonment unjustly? – Gen. 39.

Sexual abuses either from the man of the house or the woman of the house are still prevalent today and have wrecked many families. The truth is that there is abuse in any family where there is a maid or servant. The husband could abuse the maid; sons could abuse the maid; madam could abuse the servant; servant could abuse the daughters; maid could abuse the sons.

There was this horrible report of a houseboy who abused a baby girl by giving her his organ to suck whenever the baby cried while the mother was away! There are other reports of big maids who regularly raped the boys without the knowledge of their busy parents. Mothers who drop babies at day care centres and go to work are guilty. Some of the kids are drugged to sleep. Some are abused.

Children raised by strange persons don’t get the best parental care. They don’t get the best training; they are often lazy; they grow up with traumas of abuse.

Most of the time, they don’t make good parents because they did not receive love as children. The Hebrew wise King Solomon enjoins parents to “train up the child the way he should go, and when he is old, he won’t depart from it”, Prov. 22:6. Children left uncared for suffer a great deal and turn out to be miscreants.

All the kidnappings, armed robberies, ritual killings and other criminalities plaguing Nigeria are traceable to wrong upbringing of children. It would be hard for a child who was properly raised by parents to stray into vicious criminality. Most youths in these crimes were abused and uncared for; hence, they have no love to show because they didn’t receive any.

Whether it is the five kids who perished in home fire in Lagos, or the woman in one village in Imo State who called the police to kill her first son who terrorised the entire kindred; or the son who came from abroad to shoot his mother in Anambra State or the widow in Warri who committed suicide because she could no longer bear the shame of her wayward daughter, or the three kids kidnapped by their nanny in Lagos, the blame goes to the parents.

Truth is, your business may not succeed you, but your children will, whether they are good or bad. If good, that is generational blessing; if otherwise, that is generational curse. Parents must choose between the two.