Everyone desires to live a full and happy life. A life characterized by love, happiness, peace, wealth, and abundance, we all deserve this.
The challenge presents itself when we acquire all these at the expense of others.
Currently, as a country, we are faced with a myriad of problems, corruption, bad governance, ritual killings, kidnappings, internet fraud, looting of public funds, police brutality to mention a few.
At the heart of this, is the estimation of self above the collective interest of society and our shared humanity.
These problems do not just present themselves they are symptoms of a systematic failure across the different socio-cultural, economic, and religious strata of our society.
In this article, we examine the foundation of the distraught in Nigerian society as a cumulative failure, proposing the shared responsibility of every citizen as the only way to effectively counteract the current decadence that plagues us.
The family is the basic unit of every society, the values, and principles imbibed at the family level determine the quality and richness of every society. It is therefore right to say that the lapses in Nigerian society are first a product of a failed family system.
Parents are no longer as involved in bringing up their children leaving their training and education at the mercy of their peers, and the media. As a result, there is a constant influx of untrained individuals with scarcely any values or regard for the dignity of others.
Economic failure is also another reason behind the decadence in Nigerian society. Poverty, the struggle for daily bread, and hunger.
According to Simone Weil “It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let himself suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance.” what does this mean? Whatever means a man finds to satisfy his hunger he will.
Societal and National values are another area that has systematically eroded the humanity of Nigerian society. We celebrate the corrupt and shone those with integrity, we have set materialism above contentment and selfishness above selflessness. There appears to be no consequence for the evil and so evil continues to express itself unhinged. This is why ritual killings are on the increase, why kidnappers have no regard for the life of the common man, and why internet fraud seems to be the surest way for young citizens.
What about the failure of our religious institutions? Nigeria is one of the most religious nations in the world yet the impact of this is not represented in the quality of our lives.
This article will not be complete without the inclusion of the failed responsibility of the government to provide a secure and enabling environment that promotes the prosperity of the common citizen. Rather we are presented with a system with no vision, grossly incompetent, self-seeking individuals who neither care for the good of the common man nor the interest of the nation.
What then is the way forward?
It begins with the family. I grew up in a time when the saying, “it takes an entire village to raise a child” was true.
When the community interacted with its young. providing a safe and healthy environment for our growth and development.
Everything we had, we had to account for, we had nothing except that which our parents knew its source. A time when we were scolded for wanting more than our families could provide, this was how we learned to be content.
We must go back to those days.
The family must take back its authority as the chief institution for the instruction and education of a sane society committing to the moral, spiritual, formal, and informal education of their children and wards.
The government must rise to its responsibility in providing the basic social amenities, security, economic climate, and policies that promote the prosperity of the common Nigerian.
Values of respect, human dignity, equality, accountability, discipline, contentment, patriotism, teachability should be promoted and celebrated above corruption, selfishness, greed, materialism, looting, inequality, tribalism, and fanaticism.
Religious leaders must hold up to their responsibility in preserving the humanity and conscience of our society by ensuring that the spirituality of their congregations promotes the common good of every citizen.
Government should be accountable to its citizens, parents should be accountable to society, children should be accountable to their parents and leaders. Everyone must commit to performing their civil duties and duties to our shared humanity.
This is how we win, this is how we come from under the chaos that is the Nigerian society. Until every individual at every level recognize that they contribute to the overall health of our society we would never be able to have the Nigeria we aspire for.
It’s important to reiterate that we didn’t get to this point overnight and so it would require consistent unilateral efforts as opined above to get us out of our current predicament.
If Nigeria must be great again, we must put in the work, starting right now.
Michael Toryila.
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