The Adamawa state police command recently arrested one Aliyu Yaro, a nineteen-year-old man for the murder of his three-day-old baby. The teenager was said to have collected the child from his mother, strangled him before burying him in a shallow grave in Mubi,Adamawa State.
What a way to go for a three-day-old child for whom cruelty crawled into the cradle from the fingers of someone who was supposed to protect him against the whole world.
What an act of betrayal against innocence; a desperate crime against a child who, at only three days old, was the quintessence of innocence.
In a world where wickedness sits in many, biding its time to strike, it is incomprehensible that it is a child who is blissfully ignorant of the cruelty of this world that is at the receiving end. From where does one summon the coldness to do this to a child?
That question can perhaps be answered by a generation that is fast showing great invention in the art of wickedness. The same generation heavily churning out internet fraudsters is one which whose sexual indiscipline is fast becoming its undoing. It is a generation seemingly fated to flip Nigeria over the precipice.
As the institution of the family has crumbled in many homes, ruining moral structures and the strictures by which they are captured and kept from fracture, immorality has acquired the force of a gale.
For many young people today, anything goes. Whether it is debauchery of the worst kind, internet fraud or causing death and grievous bodily harm to others, there are absolutely no limits to what can be done in enforcing a cut-throat code and culture.
Quick to shirk responsibility, greedy for pleasure, and eager for the gospel of instant gratification, it is a generation which is showing unmistakable signs of peril.
A core member of a generation which excuses its self-destruction, the teenage killer blamed his crime against an innocent child on the economic challenges prevalent in the country today.
Economic challenges never prevented him from prematurely going into a sexual relationship, neither did they stop him from conceiving a child. Yet, when the time came to fend and care for an innocent child, he suddenly remembered that the country was facing economic challenges and became a killer to avoid responsibility.
He is a metaphor for the systemic decay plaguing Nigeria’s young people society today. No one wants to take responsibility for anything. People want to stampede into farms that do not belong to them, sow winds and not reap whirlwinds.
People don’t want to work but want to eat. Protesters want to destroy buildings built with taxpayer’s money and not be tried.
Nigerians need a reorientation. Without a reorientation, an entire generation faces the grave risk of losing it all.
While it is true that it is only for that this malaise has been passed from one generation to another, it is clear that things cannot continue this way.
Youth and consciousness of youth are gifts that life gives to those whom it desires to make hay while the sun shines. It should never be misused. It is neither a time to wield an uncontrollable phallus or sticky fingers. It is rather a time to contribute to personal as well as national growth.
Youth is also no excuse for crime. People who commit crimes against Nigerians or Nigerians should never be heard to plead their age to escape punishment.
One of the cruelest ironies of life is that innocent children sometimes meet an unimaginable fate at the hands of shockingly stupid and irresponsible adults who should be protecting them. A child who was supposed to be the cynosure of all the love in the world was instead strangled by someone who was most likely intoxicated with the cheap drugs criminally rampant in the North.
If only children had a choice, there are many people who don’t deserve to have children. Ever.
Kene Obiezu,
