Touching, whimsical, idealistic and anxious, these are windows into the
mind of today’s Nigerian child, the mind of “the future” that remains opaque to
most adults – to judge by their conduct in the here and now.
Recalling my own instructive days when I would openly
eavesdrop on the discourse of adult circles around my father, a school
Headmaster, or of another and more famous educationist, an uncle, the Reverend
I.O.Ransome-Kuti – see AKE, the Years of Childhood – I often wonder what nature
of discourse today’s children elicit from their own parental circles. How to
milk the nation of a few millions in a project set up for that very purpose?
Where to stage the next extravaganza of a wedding – Dubai? Venice? Johannesburg?
Do they take children into confidence regarding where they hide millions stolen
from the Pension Funds accumulated by dint of unrelenting work over a lifetime
by millions of their own fellow beings?
Even more critical however, is their plight in a time of dire siege, with their own peers on the front line as direct targets, taking casualties, often in the most brutal fashion. Some of the participants in this Essay competition have certainly lost friends and siblings to daily carnage, perhaps barely escaped with their lives. Several bear physical or emotional scars from their encounter. Even those placed at remote distances from these traumatizing zones cannot escape knowledge of the fate of members of their age grades. How do these events affect their lives? Their perspectives on the future? What transformations take place in their minds?
How sad, and discouraging, that a victory – of sorts – was recently conceded to these forces of sheer evil when a governor closed down schools in his state on advice – at least temporarily – after yet another school dormitory was turned into a killing field! Each time such butchery takes place, my mind leaps to the faces that crowd my house on an agreed day, ever since a bunch of enthusiasts chose to inflict my birthday on me, beginning a few years ago. It is with regard to those faces – slightly older versions, admittedly – that, first a governor, soon followed by a former minister, blithely commented, “one life is not more important than another”. That ex-minister, who actually nurses aspirations to preside over the future of the nation, has proceeded to enshrine his ‘ideology’ in a self-serving book that purportedly documents his illustrious career.
Is this call to the deadening of moral outrage equally applicable to the ongoing decimation of our secondary, primary school populations? More relevantly however, I wonder what our youths think of such utterances. Well, while there are still survivors among them and, if only for the sake of record keeping, any exercise that induces them to set down their thoughts is to be welcomed. In essay, poetry, or pictorial form – such as ‘Vision of the Child’ (Lagos Black Heritage) competition – these imaginative and intellectual exercises provide a continuing challenge that stretches their minds. And it is a battle for the mind in formation that confronts the nation at this moment, hence the targeting of places of learning, and the brutal, sadistic assault on their inmates.
It may come to some as belated schooling, but some of us have absorbed the truism, all the way from infancy, that each life is to be valued in its own right. By the same token, we have also imbibed the moral imperative that the frustrations and grievances of any individual or group – from whatever cause – should never be taken out on other lives, and that such proceeding is damnably impious, cowardly and blasphemous when that ‘other’ is the innocent, the vulnerable, the yet unfulfilled. One anticipates, indeed concedes the right of dissent to the complacent, the sated, and visionless. The vision of youth however also has a fundamental entitlement to be expressed, and that can only be done by living material. It deserves better than to be filed away as a “Last Will and Testament” of those eager, bright and hopeful faces that now annually besiege the sanctuary of this aspiring octogenarian.
•Being Prof Wole Soyinka’s forward to Memoirs for Our Future, a book produced by WS79 organisers, Zmirage Multi Media Limited, in honour of children and presented in London recently
Even more critical however, is their plight in a time of dire siege, with their own peers on the front line as direct targets, taking casualties, often in the most brutal fashion. Some of the participants in this Essay competition have certainly lost friends and siblings to daily carnage, perhaps barely escaped with their lives. Several bear physical or emotional scars from their encounter. Even those placed at remote distances from these traumatizing zones cannot escape knowledge of the fate of members of their age grades. How do these events affect their lives? Their perspectives on the future? What transformations take place in their minds?
How sad, and discouraging, that a victory – of sorts – was recently conceded to these forces of sheer evil when a governor closed down schools in his state on advice – at least temporarily – after yet another school dormitory was turned into a killing field! Each time such butchery takes place, my mind leaps to the faces that crowd my house on an agreed day, ever since a bunch of enthusiasts chose to inflict my birthday on me, beginning a few years ago. It is with regard to those faces – slightly older versions, admittedly – that, first a governor, soon followed by a former minister, blithely commented, “one life is not more important than another”. That ex-minister, who actually nurses aspirations to preside over the future of the nation, has proceeded to enshrine his ‘ideology’ in a self-serving book that purportedly documents his illustrious career.
Is this call to the deadening of moral outrage equally applicable to the ongoing decimation of our secondary, primary school populations? More relevantly however, I wonder what our youths think of such utterances. Well, while there are still survivors among them and, if only for the sake of record keeping, any exercise that induces them to set down their thoughts is to be welcomed. In essay, poetry, or pictorial form – such as ‘Vision of the Child’ (Lagos Black Heritage) competition – these imaginative and intellectual exercises provide a continuing challenge that stretches their minds. And it is a battle for the mind in formation that confronts the nation at this moment, hence the targeting of places of learning, and the brutal, sadistic assault on their inmates.
It may come to some as belated schooling, but some of us have absorbed the truism, all the way from infancy, that each life is to be valued in its own right. By the same token, we have also imbibed the moral imperative that the frustrations and grievances of any individual or group – from whatever cause – should never be taken out on other lives, and that such proceeding is damnably impious, cowardly and blasphemous when that ‘other’ is the innocent, the vulnerable, the yet unfulfilled. One anticipates, indeed concedes the right of dissent to the complacent, the sated, and visionless. The vision of youth however also has a fundamental entitlement to be expressed, and that can only be done by living material. It deserves better than to be filed away as a “Last Will and Testament” of those eager, bright and hopeful faces that now annually besiege the sanctuary of this aspiring octogenarian.
•Being Prof Wole Soyinka’s forward to Memoirs for Our Future, a book produced by WS79 organisers, Zmirage Multi Media Limited, in honour of children and presented in London recently
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