Nigeria: Rich dad, poor child

Many generation parents indulge their children to pointless heights. And this remains the status quo

Sir: Many generation parents indulge their children to pointless heights. And this remains the status quo. While they can claim to have succeeded in industry, in the military, etc., the scions children are dancing away their lives in clubs and driving customised Chevrolet Impalas with friends and no plans to make an impact positively on the national landscape.


And despite privileged upbringing of these children in Ivy League schools around the world provided by parents where children are exposed to the best environments for learning and cossetted.

Yet 80 per cent of the children of noble births are hiding under the radar of their parents with no appreciable bearing to society. They are not as popular as their parents that chose to spoil those children skywards they find it hard to better the big-feats of their parents. But some parent- clerics have not fared better as well in grooming their children properly.
Most couldn’t have been educated but for grants from government and religious establishments but today several – have established institutions of higher education but instead of giving back to society, as society did to them in those halcyon days, they have chosen to deprive poor children from attending such schools with impossibly high fees which only widens the gulf between haves and have-nots.
Colleges during their day were established to bring education to poor children because all children should have the same starting point in life and educational opportunities didn’t exist. But when clerics decide to make their institutions money making foundations then the gap between the rich and the poor will certainly widen as it has.
Schools are a great source of revenue to create elitist institutions that only the rich and favored can attend.
Though, they received very good preachments in their day, clerics – at this time, welcome worshippers who come to seek the Lord’s face, wearing a birthday suit.
What matter is the heart they say – appearances don’t matter anymore. Many do not care to preach conformist sermons that will make people who have embarked on self-destruct ways to overturn.

Rich dad teaches that success is measured by how many cars are parked in the garage of children, the private jets children should fly in, the influential people they consort with and the beautiful women they engage with in a palsy-walsy relationship. Children are lost. And it is reflecting critically in the country’s affairs today.
At work places today, unlike dad that consorted with all Nigerians devoid of ethnicity during their time and even picked up the dialect of many people, children love to create an imaginary wall for all those not in their ethnic clique and always comfortable to change from the English language to speak their local dialect especially when other staff members happen into a meeting between they and their tribesmen.
However, hard you try, the language factor which children  assume wrongly to be a plus for stakeholder-ship at the work place becomes a serious challenge for growth because laid down procedures are always undercut by these children who should be directing efforts to achieve corporate goals.

Currently unlike dad, who can discuss issues on ideological grounds without daggers drawn, children cannot without being pugnacious, they come to discussion table with a restrictive vision of the mind, hold court in places where there are elders look at elders straight in the eye and even go further to address some by their names.
The religion of love for humanity and acts of kindness to all is better than the love for philistinism and both generations need not let the sun set until they have saved our country and the future of our children.
• Simon Abah.