‘The hopes of the world rest on young people. Peace, economic dynamism, social justice, tolerance- all this and more, today and tomorrow, depends on tapping the power of youth,’ – UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

Today, August 12, 2018 is the United Nations International Youth Day and the theme for 2018 is Safe Spaces for Youth.’ United Nations summed up the justification for 2018 theme as follows: ‘there are currently 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the world. This is the largest youth population ever. But 1 in 10 of the world’s children live in conflict zones and 24 million of them are out of school. Political instability, labour market challenges and limited space for political and civic participation have led to increasing isolation of youth in societies.’

According to the United Nations, the day’ serves as an annual celebration of the role of young women and men as essential partners in change and an opportunity to raise awareness of challenges and problems facing the world’s youth.’

My interest today is the role of youths as ‘essential partners in change’ as same agrees with our #TheSAFE4MEMovement, which we launched on the World Children’s Day, November 20, 2017. The focus of the movement is call attention to all forms of abuse that our children and youths are exposed to and their roles in their personal safety and self-protection, through the inculcation of the right value system. The movement is an outreach both young people and their caregivers (primary and secondary).

It is in the light of #TheSAFE4MEMovement, which we consider to be the heart cry of today’s young people in Africa that I make comments on the theme of the 2018 theme of the United Nations International Youth Day.

While I am conscious that by the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), a child is anyone below 18 years of age and by the general definition of the United Nations, a youth is anyone between the age bracket of 15-24, please note that for the purpose of this piece, by children and youths, I refer to the age brackets 0-21.

Permit me to declare upfront that the number threat to Safe Spaces for Youth is not the conflicts, lack of education, shelter, health services, and engagement in all forms of seemingly uncountable vices they are exposed to day. I think the real threat Safe Spaces for Youth is the war that is waged on the minds of our youth. Safe Spaces must first exist as a value system in the minds of our caregivers and custodians of the minds of our youth, who must deliberately inculcate same in the minds of our youth. The goal must be to help our precious children and youth to appreciate and take full ownership of the immense benefits of Safe Spaces for Youth. It is upon the foregoing foundation that they could be enlightened on their roles in creating same and how to take full responsibility for same.

I think the war on the mind of our precious children and youths has existed time immemorial. Adolf Hiller declared, as we planned the pogrom, which is today known as the Second World War, which claimed 62 million people (2.5 % of the population of the world then), ‘I want to raise a generation of young people, imperious, relentless and cruel.’

It is important to note that no cause, positive or negative has a future without the deliberate and active initiation of children into same. Hitler recognised this truth and set in motion a mission to achieve same.

It is important to note that the vision like Hitler’s has always been constant. It is the mode of expression that has changed.  The attack on the impressionable and ‘absorbent’ minds of our precious children and young people today have only been enhanced by the undue democratization of information through the new media, in which social media is one of the most prominent features.

Permit me to round off this discussion today, as I do not intend to take you on this ride for too long lest you succumb to the temptation of losing interest.

I will continue this discussion tomorrow, believing that I will meet you refreshed and good to go in working with like minds to secure Safe Spaces for Youth.

Do have an INSPIRED week.

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

T: 2348033620843, 08056979605 W: http://www.taiwoakinlami.com B:http://www.taiwoakinlamiblog.com T: @taiwoakinlami

As we mark Father’s Day today, my heart and encouragement go out to many women and mothers, who to the best of their ability play the roles of fathers in the lives of their precious children, same roles haven been abandoned by the fathers.

The foregoing is a growing and disturbing phenomenon, which our nation and her private and public institutions can only abandon at their own peril. It is never the design of God that mothers should entirely play the roles of father and mother as one person.

Remember, Idi Ami Dada and the havoc he wrecked on his nation and people. According to Wikipedia, ‘abandoned by his father at a young age, Idi Amin grew up with his mother’s family in a rural farming town in north-western Uganda.’  Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union dictator, who ordered and oversaw the uncanny pogrom of his people was raised without the support of the father. It is high time we began to pay adequate attention to how we are raising our precious boy children to under stand the uniqueness of their roles first in the family and their immediate and general environment.

By virtue of where I sit as a Social Development Lawyer, whose area of professional influence and interest is primarily the family institution, I have lost count of how many women, whose matters I have handled directly, refer or counsel with, whose husbands have run away from home and abandoned the awesome responsibilities of fatherhood to the mothers.

There are other category of women, whose husbands die and the families of their late husbands sit on the estates of the husbands, depriving the widows and their precious children of the deserved access to their late breadwinners’ estate. Most of these women had laboured tirelessly with their late husbands to build their estates.

I also work with another group of women, who are divorced or separated from their husbands for sundry reasons, including but not exclusive to domestic violence and despite court orders and intervention of government agencies, mandating the fathers to take responsibilities for the upkeep of the precious children have refused or failed to live up to the mandate. Some of these fathers just seem to be above the law.

There is another category of women, who have never been married to the fathers of their precious children. Some of the fathers were married before they had something with these women and from whence these precious children came. Some of the fathers were singles, who had affairs with these women in the days of their youth and have never been there for the precious children.

There is yet another category of women, who are neither separated nor divorced from their husbands. They live under same roof with their husband and precious children, but the fathers are there as if they are not there. It has become the burden of such mothers to play the roles of father and mother to their precious children.

There is another category of women, who the precious children they father are not their biological children. These noble women have become voluntary foster parents or guardians to the children of their relatives abandoned by the fathers.

There are also women, who play the roles of fathers by virtue of the fact that they run orphanage and rehabilitation homes.

As many as these categories are, which I am sure I have not exhausted her,  my intervention and experience reveal to me that many of these men are third or second generation absentee fathers. This is very frightening for me.

Most of these women that I know have sacrificed their lives so that their precious children can live a meaningful present and future. One of these women once unburdened to me that, ‘I also try to help stabilise her emotionally, which costs a hundred percent of my attention. In the process, am unable to live.’  Many of these unsung amazons are acquainted with sorrow of abandonment and grief of loneliness. There are many of them, who live in abject poverty and yet strive to find the best of help for their precious children.

Some of these women are not only fending for their precious children, they are servicing the debt either jointly entered into or solely entered into by the fathers of their children.

In a Third World country like Nigeria, where there is no social support system and public social services, strongly undergirded by the principles and practice of Social Protection, most of these mothers are practically on their own, in providing economic and social succour for their precious children.

Now, if the foregoing have been available, it would have only eased only a minute part of the mothers’ unusual burden. It is important to note that while meeting the economic needs of these precious children are very critical, they are not as important as the social and emotional needs of these precious children, which these honourable women are left to carry.

A father is a source and sustainer. Source or origin is fundamental to the identity of an entity. Functions are lost in the wilderness of lack of identity. You cannot do what you are born to do, if you do not know, who you are born to be. Fathers point the precious child to his/her identity and helps him/her to discover and give full expression to his/her potentials. The mother reinforces and builds on the foundation laid by the father. The father as a sustainer is first there as a spiritually and emotionally stable person to prepare the precious child, by example for life and its countless and meandering intricacies. The sustainer, provides resources, which finance is the least, but positive value system is the chief. The sustainer helps the precious child to answer the questions of origin, morality, meaning and destiny, as identified by Ravi Zacharias as the four questions every person must answer to make sense of life.

It is therefore a herculean task for a woman to stand in the roles of a father, not to talk of playing both the roles of father and mother.

You know the most painful part of my experience? Some of these mothers, who played the roles of fathers live in some level of bitterness. At the height of their bitterness, they indoctrinate their precious children against their run-away fathers. They forget that such prepare the precious children for a tough family life in the future. The fact of the disappearance of the fathers is already very damaging to the precious child in the present and future, except there is divine intervention, not to talk of the extra burden brought by negative indoctrination. There are some of these precious children, who today are at loggerheads with their mothers because they want to know who their fathers are and the mothers do not deem it fit to oblige them.

I must not in any way condemn or judge these distinguished mothers, who are doing their best to be fathers to their precious children as a result of their fathers refusing or failing to do so. I am not in their shoes and if I claim I know, where it pinches I will not only be lying but also be insensitive. The absentee fathers are real culprits in this situation

All, I do today is to celebrate and encourage you that there are some individuals, who appreciate your daunting but noble efforts to give your precious children a hope and future. All I appeal to you to do is for you to understand that it is by the grace of God Almighty that you are alive and standing for the best of your precious children.

I appeal to you to keep going, knowing that God is behind the scenes, working everything to work together for your good and that of your precious children. I appeal to you today to cast all of your burdens, (including, when you become bitter due to seemingly unbearable pressure) into God’s hands and watch Him be your peace as He fathers those precious children through you and brings a father figure to support you at His own time.

I plan to either call or send a message to as many mothers that I know doing their best to play the roles of mothers today. I hope I will be able to achieve this task, for they are many that I know.

I celebrate you today dear mothers and wish you an INSPIRED Fathers’ Day.

I am The Preacher, I SPEAK for the PRECIOUS AFRICAN CHILD.

 

Culled from our Instructional Manuals: S.A.F.E™ for YOU

TIP 72

“Never let your desire for love override your sense of self and value.” Izey Victoria ODIASE

Welcome to our discussion today about your Personal Safety and Self-Protection my dear precious children.

I have been discussing with you the subject matter of sexual abuse and we have been looking at the root cause of same and everything related to that. I am interested in discussing the difference between sex and sexuality as I began to do yesterday.

SEXUALITY is far bigger than SEX. I make bold to say that SEX is a minute part of SEXUALITY. What is this SEX? SEX is properly defined as the legitimate, intimate, covenant-based and above all divinely-ordained exercise between a man and a woman, who are married.

I charge you to note that the perverted SEX to which you are exposed to today is far-apart different from the one defined above. SEX, as it is presented and strongly promoted to your young minds today speaks of an uncontrollable heat of sexual passion, which possesses children, young people and unmarried couples of opposite sex or same sex to engage in all forms of sexual relationships, from foreplay, oral sex to sexual intercourse.

Besides, you are being told that there are other sexual orientations or sexes other than the 2(male and female), which God ordained. At my last count, we are told that there are over 58(fifty-eight) genders and this is widely promoted by the social media platforms, where most you now spend most of their time and life unrestricted.

For example, Facebook has 3 columns for GENDER, namely, MALE, FEMALE and CUSTOM. Under CUSTOM, there are 58(fifty-eight) genders listed. You are also asked, ‘what pronoun do you prefer?’ The options are: MALE: him, FEMALE: her and NEUTRAL: them…

The social media platform provides opportunity for users to select more than one gender. Research has shown that there are over 20 million children on Facebook, the social media platform’s terms of service having require users to be at least 13 years old. Of the 20 million children, 7.5 million are below age 13, while 5 million are age 10 and below, who didn’t properly represent their real age. As at 2013 statistics reveal that there are 11 million Facebook users in Nigeria and the most popular age group are Nigerians under 25 years old.

SEXUALITY here refers to the ESSENCE of a person’s gender and his/her attitude to same. Gender simply means ‘the state of being male or female.’   SEXUALITY speaks to the physiological and psychological specifications of the male and female genders, their functions and differences. SEXUALITY addresses the relationship between the male and female genders and how they seamlessly partner according to the dictates of their distinct natural specifications in divine order to achieve God’s eternal purpose for the creation of man (male and female). SEXUALITY speaks of the GLORY and BEAUTY in the difference between the male and female genders and the DIGNITY of EQUALITY of both genders.

The THINK Factor

I have given you so much to swallow today…Wow! So so much…I want to charge you to please take time to think about it deeply and ask yourself, what exactly is the difference between SEX and SEXUALITY? Do I really understand it? How does it affect me? Take time to really reflect and share your thoughts in your S.A.F.E™ 4 YOU Personal Journal.

 

 

 

Culled from our Instructional Manuals: S.A.F.E™ for YOU

TIP 69

“If you have been a victim of sexual abuse, you can heal.’ Josh MCDOWELL

It is my pleasure to be with you today my dear and precious young ones.

We are still on the subject matter of what constitutes Child Sexual Abuse.

Sex, you will agree with me is a major issue among young people today. Everyone around you appears to be committed to luring you into sex one way or the other. That is why, it is important we to demystify sex as we discuss it here.

When the Law Does Not Do Justice: please note that we have discovered from working with a lot of young people like you since 1997 that sexual abuse is deeper than how the law sees and define it.

Pay Attention: It is important you pay very serious attention to this for the sake of your PERSONAL SAFETY and SELF-PROTECTION.

Let’s take Sexual Abuse Further

Sexual abuse includes any act or omission of yours or your caregivers, which compromises, your sexuality. What do we mean by this? Sexual Abuse includes exposing yourself to inappropriate materials, which in most cases include songs with lewd and sexually suggestive contents.

The Implication: The implication of this is that your exposure to indecent materials distorts your perception about your sexuality and almost automatically prepares you for making yourself available for sexual relationship either with your peers or adults.

For example: today many of you listen and dance to songs, which are made for adults; I mean songs, which contain lewd and sexually suggestive words and lyrics. Please note that such practice is an abuse of your sexuality.

Here is the Point: Your sense of healthy sexuality as a young person comprises of two major factors:

• Your understanding of the essence of your gender
• How to take adequate and informed steps to preserve, protect and celebrate the essence of your gender.

This noble quest comes under serious but subtle attack when you are sexually abused through exposure to inappropriate materials.  Please note that you are not the only guilty party in this matter. In most cases, you are initiated into this unholy realm by your caregivers, who also do not know the implications of their actions or omission.

I believe you get my point. It may not be popular today but it is the truth of the matter straight from a heart, who truly love you.

The THINK Factor

I want us to really reason together on this matter. What do you really think about exposure to indecent material through music, movies and other means? Do you really think it constitutes abuse or you think it does not and we are just taking things too far? Take time to really reflect and share your thoughts in your S.A.F.E™ 4 YOU Personal Journal and share with your parents and other trusted caregivers and friends.