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Who is sexualising our children? – Part 4

By Sonnie Ekwowusi
05 May 2022   |   3:35 am
More importantly, the Nigerian crisis is also a crisis of improper parenting. Sexualisation of our children is self-inflicted.

More importantly, the Nigerian crisis is also a crisis of improper parenting. Sexualisation of our children is self-inflicted. It is the outcome of irresponsible parenting. We now live in the so-called post-truth age or so-called global human rights age that permits all sorts of choices. Juvenile delinquency is no longer the only known vice holding us captive today: adult delinquency equally wrecks our society. The causes of most societal vices are traceable to poor parenting and dysfunctional families. Most young parents are not good role models for their children. Many modern women, for instance, now argue (although irrationally and illogically) that they are the owners of their bodies and therefore nobody should dictate to them how they should use their bodies or dress their bodies. Some married women, with the greatest respect, dress like street prostitutes. Nowadays it is not difficult to see married women in their 60s or 70s, who ordinarily should have been an exemplary grandmother, gallivanting around town in their respective revealing mini-skirts.

Not to talk of married men who go about bare-chested and in ordinary pant that exposes their protruding beer stomachs. Where are those dignity, respectability and candour that are synonymous with proper parenting? What has happened to the age-old wisdom of parents admired in those days when men were men and women were won by those who deserved them? Where are those cherished family tradition and family values which bring honour and respect to the family? We have lost everything. And that is why some children can have the effrontery to summon their parents to a meeting to scold them, sorry, to advise them on why they should be good role models for their children and for society.

So, we must begin to parent the parents. Parenting is an art. Only parents who have learned the art of parenting can become successful parents. It is not enough to bring children into the world. Even animals bring their offspring into the world too. If most young parents do not have proper parental upbringing they cannot properly parent their own children to be responsible citizens. How do lawyers say it again in Latin? Nemo dat quod non habet (Nobody can give what he or she doesn’t have). By analogy, irresponsible parents cannot bring up responsible children. Once upon a time someone I know attended the graduating ceremony of a certain co-educational school. The obscenity he saw at the school almost killed him.

Amid the obscene music, some girls of the school bent down and opened their buttocks for some boys of the school to be violently sexing them them, to the cheering of their visiting mothers. Time was 3.30 pm. Traumatized by what was going on, he quickly left the school and went home. In the past, the family provided the bridge that allowed the youngsters to graduate from childhood to adulthood with a certain sense of security. In the past, motherhood was revered. Decency and modesty were synonymous with motherhood. Unfortunately today, many youngsters cannot rely on the formation they are getting from their parents because their parents were not properly brought up. Our values are warped. In some homes, the parents shamelessly watch internet pornography with their children. Therefore to reinvigorate the family, parents, especially young parents, should be parented to enable them to parent their own children to be responsible citizens.

Solution: I have carefully studied the various Nigerian laws and international laws and there is nothing therein guaranteeing sexualisation of children or teen sexual right or condom teen “safe-sex”. Instead the various sexual perversities and sexual assaults are punishable under the Nigerian law with or without the option of a fine. Therefore the Federal government should stop implementing the adolescent sexual reproductive which sexualises Nigerian children. Hon. Minister of Health Ehanire and the Federal Ministry of Health should be stopped forthwith from promoting sexual promiscuity among Nigerian children by distributing to them (free of charge, of course) dangerous abortificients, substance and contraceptives. The family institution, unarguably, is indeed the fundamental unit of society. Therefore destruction of the family may lead to economic failure. Therefore the family institution should be reinvigorated. As I earlier said, we must begin to parent the parents. How? By organizing family orientation courses for parents to enable them to become capable of parenting their own children to be responsible citizens. Another way is by organizing marriage courses for would-be parents and for young people who are about to get married. Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) otherwise called sex education or Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Right or Family Life Education or teen-sex education should be banned in Nigerian schools. Any school teacher caught luring school kids into sexual immorality should be arrested and prosecuted. The Federal Ministry of Health should be revamped. Staffers of the Federal agencies conspiring with the WHO to sexualize our children should be fired. Sex-related textbooks such as Tears of a bride, Precious Child should be banned for use in our schools. The UNFPA should be expelled from Nigeria. Ditto for UK abortion international. Moral instruction should be a compulsory subject in our secondary schools.

Our future is built on the triumph of the potential of our children. Therefore if those potentials are ruined in sexual immorality our future is invariably ruined. To destroy the character of school children is an unpardonable crime. School children constitute the real treasure of Nigeria. And the greatest crime anybody can commit is to destroy the treasure of the country.

Concluded

Ekwowusi is a legal practitioner.

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