Street children, ‘Yahoo boys’ and degenerate elders: What does the future hold?

Last year, I cautioned a woman about her children’s activities within her beer parlour space, telling her that it was not the best place/way to raise children. The woman shockingly retorted that she had no time for them! That was at Aba.

Two years ago, I was at Ijebuode Park on my way to Lagos. Three children came to their mother’s shop from school, dropped their bags, replaced their uniforms with ‘home clothes’ and joined other shop rats, running all over the place. Their mother just acknowledged their greetings perfunctorily; she did not know, and did not bother to know, what they were up to! When I was an ‘overgraduate’ student at UNILAG, a small boy, whose mother was an admin staff member in my department, returned from school, dropped his school bags (yes, they now carry bags), and turned the office into a playground, distracting everybody and making it difficult for his mother to do her work.

Before, mothers were at homes or around homes. The few working women were teachers and returned around 1 pm – the same time as their kids because there were no out-of-school activities. Women who did business did so in front of their houses or in the neighbourhood. Fathers also stayed around. Eventually, the economy dictated that all hands must be on deck. More women started working, and many more started trading. Even teachers stay up to 6 pm nowadays in the name of compulsory lessons to make ends meet (forgetting that the only way to make ends meet is to burn the candle at both ends).

Most mothers and fathers abandoned their kids in pursuit of material succour, leaving their children to the maids, social media, peers or to roam the streets. The parents would leave by 5 a.m., giving the kids money for breakfast, transport and lunch. Some of the kids would don their uniforms but never go to school. At times, you would see some of them wandering about during or after school. Some children joined their parents (mostly mothers) at their shops and returned at 8, 9 or even 10 pm. As the mothers are doing their things, gossiping or simply minding their phones, most children join other unknown children, playing wicked pranks and all that, learning some unholy things in the process. Is that how to groom children? I warn that society as a whole, not just parents, will pay for the children whom we abandoned at this delicate stage of their lives. We abandoned our children because we are busy looking for daily bread, but those for whom we seek daily bread and sustenance are wasting away. And this is the critical stage where people are equipped with the fundamental physical and soft skills for life: integrity, humility, commitment, work-result nexus integrity, appropriate life-support traits and citizenship behaviours.

Well, before long, they enter the higher institutions, some ‘facilitated’ by their parents, while others drop out of school. Already, some of them have joined some vicious cults at secondary schools. What do you expect when students in their thousands school in one ‘academic village’, where the teachers are busy minding their phones or hawking this and that? In the universities, life goes on, but they are now independent. They were not taught the importance of reading, that work goes before success, or appropriate mannerisms at home, and nobody forces or teaches them to read at universities.

The loafing continues, and before long they join more serious cults and perfect the act of Yahoo, Yahoo+, and joining other ‘money na water’ gangs. As students in the days of yore, we looked forward to graduating; getting jobs; obtaining car loans to buy a Volkswagen or 504; securing a flat; getting married; and joining the queue of life. But now, students in their teens ride the cars that no lecturer can dream of, live in posh houses, ‘marry’ several women simultaneously, openly parade their side-hens and spend money as if it were going out of fashion.

That is why waiters at various canteens in the academic community prefer to attend to students rather than the lecturers. While you are agonising on how to fuel your car to school, they keep their cars running with the ACs on for hours while waiting for the members of their harm to finish exams so that they can go and continue living life. If they already have all those things we looked forward to as students, why should they work harder or plan their lives?

And then they graduate (if they ever graduate) and join the society peopled by degenerate elders, most of whom practise politics without principles and acquire wealth without work. It is posited that none can get wealthy in politics without being a crook, but our politicians are the wealthiest and without any visible sources of livelihood. Their brand of beer is AGIP; they brazenly loot the public treasury, and when they are caught, their only defence will be ‘It’s not only me.’ Go through the media and see frauds in billions and now in trillions, and you see the elders living in awful opulence, spoiling their children with funds mostly looted and, of course, setting the stage for asset wars after their death. Politics has also become a family business, where those ruling us now are replacing themselves with their children. Because politics is the only THRIVING industry, everyone wants to become a politician. A good number of the elders are also into pastorpreneurship, doing signs and wonders, befuddling gullible fellows, performing fake miracles and living larger than life while encouraging their followers to await the life hereafter. Some of them migrated from native doctors to pastorship and combined pastorship with Yahooism.

Last weekend (May 9 & 10) I was indoors, thinking of what the future would be with this kind of scenario. I know that I will not be there in the future, but for those who will be there, what does the future hold for our society when street children (and area boys) become yahooists and then become corrupt and criminal-minded elders? Surely, there are some exceptions, but as our society and economy continue to go downhill, the number in these categories increases, especially as those who are clear-eyed emigrate in search of greener grass.

I ask them again, what does the future hold? As I signed off, I did not get the answer, but I know that it will be ‘horrible’.

Ik Muo, PhD, Dept of Bus Admin, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye. 08033026625