Our Daughters Are Like Herds Of Sheep Without Shepherds

Our Daughters Are Like Herds Of Sheep Without Shepherds

They are like herds of sheep without shepherds.

Our churches have failed to guide and guard them.

Our Mosques have failed to guide and guide them 

Their fathers and mothers have also failed to be their role models.

See the.birthday parties of these impressionable and vulnerable teenage girls, they play and dance to psychedelic songs about romantic and erotic pleaures in the presence of their parents who claim to be Christian or Muslim families. 

I have left one of such dirty parties by a family fellowshipping with the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in Surulere. The parents ignored my call to stop playing pyschedelic songs of Davido and Wizkid to their teenage sons and daughters.

Their principals and teachers play the same songs at the school parties. 

Many years ago when I was mentoring a young woman and never touched her and she told her father, he laughed at me and asked if I was impotent. And many parents are like that.

We have seen young daughters of poor parents are pimped to Rich older men. And life goes on.  

They said "Mind your business!"

Yes. It is my business when anyone in my community is showing misguided lifestyle to others in the community. It becomes our business when little girls are raped by men and some gruesomely raped to death and dumped on.the streets and horrifying deeds terrify us with headlines of the news.

If you want to help a poor girl, you can sponsor her education without making her your fifth wife or girlfriend and making her a mother when her mates are in the university. 

Many years ago, I had a dream of Rev. Chris Okotie leading a group of male secondary school students on the Marina by the General Post Office and I wrote him a letter about it that Almighty God has called him to be a leader of the youths in Nigeria. But he ignored me. That was before Yahoo-Yahoo and GSM came out in the country.

Then in 1988 as a young national Program Consultant for the UNICEF Nigeria, I submitted a project for Nomadic Education for herders and their children, but it was ignored. Now, the chickens have come to roost. 

A stitch in time saves nine.

Prevention is better than cure.

There is no smoke without fire.

I know why since 2013, I have organized the Nigerian premiere.of "Girl Rising" to celebrate the United Nations' International Day of the Girl Child for the first time in Nigeria at the Silverbird Cinemas in the Solverbird Galleria on Victoria Island and also organized another one with the Nigerian premiere.of "HE NAMED MALALA" in 2015 at the same Silverbird Cinemas on Victoria Island, Lagos. Followed by the Nigerian premiere of "In the Name of Your Daughter" in 2019, for the promotion of girl education and public enlightenment on the dangers of the deprivation of.the education of the millions of underprivileged girls out of school in Nigeria. Because, we must secure the future of the mothers of our nation. But have you noticed that, no one else organized it in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018 when I did not organize it? 

Meaning?

None of the secondary schools, NGOs, Federal Ministry of Education and state governments cared about doing so. 

The biracial wife of a retired general in the Nigerian Army queried me that if every girl goes to school, where will they get the housemaids for their households? Because the underprivileged children of the poor are the regular supply of housemaids and houseboys used for the chores and errands in the households of the middle class and upper class Nigerians, including the public officials.

That is why they lured hundreds of the poor with N1, 000 per person to join the Pro Buhari supporters against the June 12 protests yesterday in Abuja, while they kept their privileged sons and daughters far away from the chaos caused by the political crisis in Nigeria since 1999 to date. 

The bandits, hoodlums and terrorists on rampage are the underprivileged children of the poor who never went to school decades ago.

The chickens have come home to roost.

The worst is yet to come if we fail  to do what is best and right for Nigeria.

- Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima