These Children Need Someone To Talk To; A Shoulder To Lean On.

Amidat Mustapha

To the society, you can chose to adopt a nobody till he or she becomes somebody. In the story above, Dr Soyombo said the lady in question stopped prostitution, graduated from university and also became somebody important in the country.
Giving a listening ear to those who are helpless will enable them say out the challenges that make them seemingly bad and could turn a new leaf.

it’s been a busy week, I had to visit schools advocating and enlightening the girl child wherever they are. so as part of my advocacy visit to secondary schools in Offa, I went to several schools. What I discovered was torching and I saw what I passed through as a young person, though older now and I reflected on this topic to write on.

In other schools, I spoke in “THE FUTURE STARTS NOW” and was able to drive home my messages but getting to Community Secondary school, something told me i should change topic to “LIFE OF PURPOSE IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE” I related with the girls because these are the group that I actually went to see. I asked few of them on which course they intend to do and who they want to be in thé nearest future. Sadly, some despite being in SS2/3 do not know a course to do and why chose a course to study. I asked some if they know the reason they were created but it’s like I was speaking in strange language. After about thirty minutes of speaking to them, I saw many shedding tears, sobbing. It’s not as if I insulted them, I saw on their faces, a need for a counsellor, a mother figure who can talk to a child about the future. I see many are astray not because she is not brilliant but because the guides, parents are busy looking for material wealth instead of buying their future in the children.
How many hours will a child spend in school compared to the hours with their parents? Parents have become so carefree about what their children becomes or what becomes of them. It has gotten to a point that government should criminalize parental negligence in our laws.
I met a young man, about fifteen years old loitering around in the streets when other children were in school learning. I asked him why not in school and he replied that he has not paid his tuition fees and was sent out of school. Why not go home and tell your parents? His reply made me almost shed tears. “My mother is dead and my step mother told me she would never allow my dad pay my tuition fees.” This is one mother to the child born by the husband she married and claimed she loved. I further asked the boy, if his father knew about all these? And he said no. He explained that, his father actually gave him 75% of the tuition to his step mother and the woman said she would borrow it for a different purpose and pay later? That later spanned into one whole school term and the school had to send the boy out. This is just the case of a step son, being so treated by a step mother. I reflected further on what house helps experience in the hands of house wives and husbands of their bosses. I knew Hajara a Togolese house help that her madam husband sleep with and had done abortion more than four times, to conceal the crime. Hajara could not tell anyone because no one gave her a listening ear and any such attempt could send her packing thrown out of the house into no where in particular. Hajara had to endure all these because she had no alternative. What future is she supposed to live after leaving this family to start her own home? The question is why send your child out to work as house help? Economic adversity is the excuse many will give which is untenable. An intelligent, futuristic young person sent in as house help to work with a visionless, cruel minded, jealous family, who can deem the vision in their house help. Yes, such family can kill the vision of the young house help. It’s not the fault the evil family but the visionless parents who sent their glorious child into slavery.
I was at a book launch last weekend where a book reviewer, Dr Soyombo, a commissioner in Ogun state told a story about plight of girl child. She spoke about some girls in our institutions of higher learning who despite being students are also bread winners of the family they came from, what a challenge! The girl is brilliant and pursues a brighter future, read well, passed her examinations and gained admission into the University but also added prostitution to her curriculum. She leaves hostel every Friday, to sell her God given gold to men if easy virtue. We have very many of such helpless young girls in the society, who needed a shoulder to lean on but because there is none went to the street, hawk their private part to make money. Sadly, many have become victims of ritual murder, some had been run mad while many are out there exchanging their glorious future for peanuts in the hands of men who steal their glorious destiny through sex. The society, government, has a role to play but parents has the bigger share of the role to play. No man goes into crime because of economic situation but criminals are a people who lack mentorship and fall into wrong hands of friendship, bad companies.
God made every human being for a purpose and until that purpose is fulfilled, God cannot be happy. A life of purpose is the purpose of life and all parents must sit down, give more time and ears to the children, male and female so that we can give them proper orientation on waylays of facing the future that lie ahead.
Back to the story of Dr Soyombo, the humanist and another room mate of theirs way back in school after close observations ask and know that their room mate was into prostitution and took the bull by the horn. The two out heads together to gather their pocket money, share into four; one part to each of them for upkeep, one part to the girl and the last portion also given to her to be sent to her parents for their upkeep. Two like minds deciding to Bai their lovely sister out of street danger. Prostitution is dangerous, there is disease, their the danger of being used for rituals, there is the danger of these girls ending up barren or having difficulty in having children when they get married or of having issues with loving their man with their whole heart because, they enjoyed every man for money and so their husband will look like just every man.
To the society, you can chose to adopt a nobody till he or she becomes somebody. In the story above, Dr Soyombo said the lady in question stopped prostitution, graduated from university and also became somebody important in the country.
Giving a listening ear to those who are helpless will enable them say out the challenges that make them seemingly bad and could turn a new leaf.
In the news recently, an undergraduate of the University of Ilorin committed suicide and his reason, according to news was frustration. The economy and the feelings that he had become a burden to his mother, a widow . Perhaps the mother goes a borrowing to send him to school and unfortunately, because he had no one to share his heavy heart with, suicide was the best option.
Look around you today, adopt a nobody, make them feel important and listen to their stories, help them out and you will realize that this soul you are helping might turn out to be your helper tomorrow. Remember, what good that you sow today, you will reap tomorrow and that one good turn deserves another. Bear in mind that the purpose of life is a life of purpose..