“For I have chosen him (Abraham), so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord …” Genesis 18:19 NIV
¶Years ago, I knew a young man who impregnated a girl in the neighborhood. Actually, he used to be my barber. On the day the poor baby was born, this impregnator refused to go see his new child. He stayed back in his barbershop fuming and depressed.
Everyone urged him, “Abe, go see your baby and the mother!”
The dunce retorted in Pidgin, “De day wen I sleep with am no be baby I want. Na relax I carry am dey relax!” (Meaning: I didn’t mean to have a baby the day I slept with her. I only wanted to use her to relax.)
To which a Warri woman nearby (believe me, this really happened exactly- - it’s not comedy!) responded, “Shuoooow, na relax dem carry woman dey relax?” (Meaning: Holy cow, when did women become relaxants?)
Anytime my wife and I want to have a laugh we remember that marble-worthy quote: “Shuoooow, na relax dem carry woman dey relax?”
••• Last week, we started a conversation to sound an alarm to the disappearing art of fatherhood. We also looked at how your behavior (or misbehavior) could impact several generations of your blood line for good or for bad.
I find it curious that several decades after Prince Nico Mbarga gave us the timeless “Sweet Mother” no musician has achieved a similar feat for fathers.
Nevertheless, in God’s plan, every man is a potential nation. When He blessed Abraham, He told him that he would make him “a great nation.” When Rebecca inquired about her troubled pregnancy, God told her that “two nations,” not two babies, were in her womb. Esau and Jacob.
It doesn’t stop there. God said to Isaiah, “The least of you will become a thousand, the smallest a mighty nation. I am the LORD; in its time I will do this swiftly." (Isaiah 60:22)
••• Clans are built around the men who found them. In Igboland, it is not uncommon to have clans named Umu-this or Umu-that. ‘Umu’ means ‘children of -.’ Same thing in the Bible.
For the same reason, nations have founding fathers and not founding mothers. America has founding fathers. Singapore had a founding father that birthed their stunning transformation. That’s what fathers do. Pity nations without founding fathers - bastard nations.
There’s even a stunning biological correlation. In his lifetime, an average man produces 525 - 600 billion sperm cells! Given that the earth’s population is about 7 billion, one man, technically, is capable of multiplying and filling up 8 earth planets! If only men knew their place and power in God’s divine plan!
••• One of Satan’s deadliest strategies against humanity is the corruption of maleness and fatherhood. Homosexuality is one huge manifestation of this corruption. If you think the Bible would ever change its verdict on the subject, sorry. The Scriptures existed thousands of years before you were born. The Bible will change you when you quit trying to change the Bible.
Many years ago, we were sold the untruth that if you educate one woman, you educate a nation. It sounded nice. So, we accepted it. After the Second World War and formation of the United Nations, there was an explosion of girl child initiatives all over the world. Nothing wrong with that. But things began to fall apart. Not everything that sounds nice is accurate.
••• Today, we have very highly educated and accomplished daughters whom we sent to the best schools in Europe and North America. We have educated them but yet the nation isn’t educated as promised. They come back home too polished for the home boys to propose marriage to. They stay single almost forever while their parents worry over who in the world will marry them.
It turns out, my friends, that if you neglect the male child, you destroy the nation that the educated girl child supposedly would build. That, in few words, is Nigeria’s burden.
Of course, no one is quarreling with the fact that the girl child needs serious leverage against a mean, male dominated world. But we should have educated the girl child without neglecting the boy.
••• I did my post graduation national youth service (NYSC) in Borno State. I lectured at the University of Maiduguri. I’m inclined to believe that the boko haram terrorists of today include those roaming, garbage bin scavenging almajiri children I saw in Maiduguri in the 1980s. Now we can't sleep - even with all those educated women of the #BringBackOurGirls fame.
••• An accomplished woman in her early fifties had a get-together with 19 other girl friends - secondary school alumni. Each of them had been married but of the 20 in that room, only one was still living with her husband. Others have irreparably broken up. (That is 95% failure rate, people!) These women’s marital failure stories had the same plot - the husbands weren’t real fathers.
The single mum phenomenon is fairly new in Africa - and very disturbing. Sometimes, these days, when I meet 10 professional women in a room, 5 are single mums of two, three or four children.
As a result of the horror stories of modern marriage, many single girls, even in church, are scared to death about marriage! The current level of domestic violence in Africa is making our ancestors quake in their graves.
ALL of today’s problems in the world - loss of family values, domestic abuse, terrorism, poverty, wars, intertribal hatred, economic quagmire, weak leadership, sexual violence, etc., are traceable to fatherhood anemia. The world is suffocating under the thinning father figure.
••• It takes one father to build a nation that would experience peace, civilization and prosperity for centuries. It took Abraham to build a resilient Israel that has survived millennia of tumultuous history. It took Lee Kuan Yew to turn Singapore into a wonder. It took seven solid men to found the United States of America that became the greatest power in the world.
Several parts of the fragile Nigerian union want out. I do not blame them. The internal colonization and slavery have gotten to such stupid levels that self determination is inevitable.
••• However, choose your founding fathers with care! Not everyone is a founding father material. You cannot found a nation upon incoherent strategy, cult followership, incendiary talks and cursing! You can still achieve a new and vibrant nation with zero violence, zero blood! If it has been done before, it can be done again. But it takes a father ...
What kind of father are you?
In closing, please join me to #BringBackFathers! The world DESPERATELY needs fathers! Africa needs fathers!
Our troubled youth and children need fathers!
I love you all