By: Abdulrahman Yunusa
Our society is in serious mess socially, politically and economically. Once we forget the starting point of our current journey then we missed the entire dream we had before.
Only in the north you will find hopeless children(s) roaming on our streets, some are bearing Almajiri name while others claimed to be hawkers. Bearing such names is not what is faulty or what will baffles you, rather the condition they are going through as a child who suppose to be in front of their guardians receiving better treatments in all aspects of life but unfortunately they were picked up and relocated to somewhere else without giving them necessary requirements upon which any responsible person went through in his/her journey to success.
Therefore the above note is just an introductory part of the work which is purposely meant to offer a lucid and didactic image of the work holistically. Meanwhile the below segments discussion is the major work of this topic.
Socially we have forgotten our starting point, from where we were and where we are heading to? As we can see now and then our superlative cultures are decaying daily as a result of our unethical actions and practices more especially pertaining our norms and value. For instance before we had a strong culture of respecting elderly people even if we had no knowledge of their whereabouts though we stick to consider them as our fathers and elders. Also the tradition of helping younger ones in our society has now became a thing of the past, before our past heroes were blessed with habit of being helpful to younger ones especially orphans and vulnerable because they believed that an injury to one is an injury to all, but unfortunately today the culture is no longer with us. However, our forefathers had possessed a vast professionalism which includes serving as judges toward solving societal disputes, serving as problem solvers whenever society is bedevilling with one or the other atrocity they used to serve as the agent of figuring out the causes as well as measures to wipe it out and they were seen as social reformers respectively.
Moreover, there were no existence of perpetual conflict tendency which gave them room for having mutual trust and tolerance, also the rate of conflict was too low due to proper understanding of one another and the rationale behind this was the people shared almost common ideology In all aspect of life ranging from business, politics and others. In addition, whenever there was a chaos concerning matrimonial affairs our past heroes were extremely experts in dealing with that and this make marital cases to become very few in number thereby every household has the right and privilege to tackle his internal crises without bursting it to public. meanwhile the cases of divorce was tiny in shape to an extent one can tell you the total number of divorced women with no much scrutiny while today the case has negatively changed and took another haphazard shape.
Politically, a series of decades ago northern political atmosphere was fairly conducive. More so our society had been blessed with blissful heroes whom were blessed with outstanding political tactics and ideology which earn them an immeasurable regards in the eyes of the world. Prior to our era, our people were seen as peoples of worthy personalities to an extent that for someone to call himself a politicians must imitate the moves and style of great minds people like Tafawa Balewa, Sardauna and Malam Aminu kano etc. Among them there are others whom their political knowledge superseded anyone’s imagination as they can positively accommodate insiders and outsiders without showcasing barrier among them. Perhaps one may say why our contemporary politicians lack such capabilities and wisdom? Then please don’t hesitate to tell him the culture and blessings of our forefathers are no longer with us and we have failed to foot our foots on their footsteps due to our ego and vanity. The nature our current political culture has already change as we believe to elect or select people of respect and dignity to be our leaders but unfortunately today we choose money over competency and transparency. Likewise, in a nutshell we choose money over everything. Moreover, the past were purely people with incorruptible mind and their zeal and wishes to our society were extremely exceptional to a certain extent that they placed the people and the society at the centre of their hearts.
Economically, our past heroes were blessed with magnanimous and altruistic heart to an extent they can cater the problems of their relatives including neighbours and strangers. This habit made them great and earn them endless reputation which some of us are bragging with today. Nevertheless they planted a trees which the shed had being useful to all irrespective of tribal, religious or class racism their lives had become a blessing and merciful to the needy all of this is because of their prudence nature. But what flabbergasted me is that today the hand our riches people have become viciously closed to any even their biological kids are not positively benefiting from their wealth not to talk of relatives or anyone with second class identity, so this makes our society to become worst of its kind today.
Conclusively, let me finalise this write-up with Churchill’s quotation “if we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future” Therefore until we mind to ponder the prone(s) and cons we will be able to curtail the obstacles which are undermining the level of our societal development specifically northern Nigeria, until we take a serious look and focus to the lively mirror upon which the memories of our great forefathers were placed several years ago. And until we skipped from thinking willy nilly and start craving and exploring ways of dealing with our social predicaments then our society will take a definite and recognisable shape.
Abdulrahman Yunusa
Abdulrahman Yunusa is a graduate of political science from the prestigious Bauchi state University, Gadau an activist, poet and blogger.
He wrote in from Bauchi State.