- Erosion of cherished values must be halted if Nigeria is to survive foreign ‘assaults’
These are indeed changing times. At the material, spiritual and social levels, the society has decayed. This must have prompted the Federal Government’s outcry about the rise in homosexual cases in the land, especially among the youths. The government called for increased vigilance by parents and all stakeholders to arrest the trend.
We are also alarmed at the rate of erosion of social values in the country.
It is obvious that the African socio-cultural milieu does not tolerate such sexual perversion. Under the Goodluck Jonathan administration, the National Assembly passed a bill criminalising such a tendency. At the committee stage, public hearings were held and it was clear that Nigerians were near unanimous in supporting the legislation. Despite threats from the West, especially the United States of America where the trend has been formalised and officially supported on a warped ground of liberalism, President Jonathan signed the bill into law, with a view to showing the youth that the society frowned at such practices.
It is unfortunate that at a point when we should be building a nation virile on all fronts, the little we have in terms of good social values is fast being eroded by imported tendencies.
The West has lost it on this plane. However, because it is developed economically, politically and militarily, it has been able to bear the consequences. The traditional African society is one where sexual perversion in terms of homosexuality, lesbianism, bestiality, paedophilia, among others, are regarded as strange and unacceptable. Nigeria is already polluted by the deluge of unwholesome western music, inexplicable, unprovoked violence, the media and unacceptable religious doctrines. This pernicious sexual abasement is the icing on this bitter cake.
The Nigerian society is already torn by these grave developments. Yet, the country was built on a strong religious pedestal. Over the centuries, Christianity, Islam and the African traditional religion have peacefully coexisted. None tolerates sexual abasement which the wind of strange doctrine is now blowing in this direction. As the 7th National Assembly observed, the society has to resist the arm-twisting by the western countries apparently bent on foisting this evil corrosion of values on others.
If Nigeria must recover from its current position within the international socio-economic order, it must put its house in order, drawing together all the agencies of socialisation such as the schools, religious organisations, the traditional institutions and the media. Unfortunately, like other institutions of state, the National Orientation Agency (NOA) established to fight such battles on behalf of the state has remained comatose for years now. We call on the government, through the Federal Ministry of Information, to charge the NOA with performing this all-important task of re-orientating the youth.
The state of the nation has not helped matters. The economy has inflicted so much hardship on the youth that many of them would stop at nothing to leave the country. Many of such desperate youths end up as slaves in other lands. Those who stay throw anything into the “make it fast and big” syndrome. Any society that fails to impart its values on the young ones has lost the battle for genuine development. Nigerian children can no longer speak their languages, wear the dresses nor cherish things regarded as sacred in our history. The minds are being re-colonised in this age and time. We all have a duty to halt the trend.
The media has a duty to filter what is beamed to the impressionable minds of the young ones. The regulatory agencies should perform their functions in screening content for broadcast on the electronic media and punish those who decide to unleash strange values on the society. A developed society with no morals is the least desirable at this point in time.
