Today, I bring closure to this three day old conversation. I believe today, we will be challenged on the ways to rescue our precious children and youths from the attack on their lives and minds, which renders them susceptible to many social vices and render them impotent in making meaningful contribution for personal and public advancement.

It is important to note that it is pathetic that though, the primary and secondary caregivers are alive today, we seem very docile and unconcerned about the state of our precious children and youths. Our seemingly incurable nonchalance and frustration is best captured in the words of the Irish poet, W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming, where lamented the confusion and frustration that greeted post-first-world-war Europe: ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.’

For days like United Nations International Youth Day to make sense first to our precious children and youths and to the generality of the African people, I today proudly offer the creed of #TheSAFE4MEMovement as vividly covered in our Securing A Friendly and PROTECTIVE Environment™ for Children Instructional Manual released on the last World Children’s Day, November 20, 2018. The creed is centred on helping our precious young people and their caregivers and custodians to develop moral stamina through the inculcation of what we call the POSITVE VALUE SYSTEM. We see this POSITIVE VALUE SYSTEM as an effective propeller of meaningful and rewarding social engagements and tested antidote to surrendering themselves to abuse or engaging in destructive vices, which are today rampant among young people. What is this POSITVE VALUE SYSTEM? It is simply appealing to our basic sense of what is right or wrong, first according to common sense and second according to obvious moral code of human existence and interactions, with a commitment to always carefully consider all of the consequences of our actions and omission to self, immediate family, community and the world at large before embarking or omitting to embark on same.

The perpetration of the foregoing creed demands superior strategy, noting that the moral force of such superior strategy is the positive example of the caregivers and custodians of today’s precious children and young people.

Men and women of good conscience, who represent the best interest of the precious children and young people of Africa must note as a subject of sober reflection that a good cause with poor strategy will always fall flat before a bad cause with superior strategy. It is

I have often heard people say, ‘good things take time.’ The impression such assertion often creates is that it is only good things that take time. It is important to note that bad things also take time to take root. If good people do not understand the foregoing principle, it is important to note that bad people do and therefore takes time to build their castle of evil, in which they host our precious children and young people in their billions.

Permit me to submit most humbly that any agenda, aimed at securing Safe Spaces for Youth, which does not take the foregoing principles into adequate consideration may end in nothing but frustration.

I am glad we have been able to bring closure to this discussion and I hope it has helped us as caregivers and custodians to again be reminded about the real issues plaguing our precious children and youth today and how to help them turn the tide for the personal benefits and that of humanity.

Thank you for reading to and do have an INSPIRED day.

I am Taiwo ‘ODINAKACHUKWU’ AKINLAMI (The Preacher) and I Speak for the Precious African Child

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