21/11/2023
I was told a story years ago about a child in the USA. This child was riding on his bicycle along a lonely road one afternoon when he ran into an accident victim.
The child was not sure if this victim was still alive. He quickly grabbed his phone and put a call to 911.
Alarmed and shaken, he said; "There has been a very fatal accident here."
He stood right there when the ambulance arrived escorted by a group of medical practitioners with a few policemen. The child pointed at a spot in front of him.
There had been an accident indeed! A little bird lay dead on the tarred road. It could have been hit or killed by any other circumstance. The team thanked the boy and called him a hero.
A stretcher was wheeled out while the young lad stood watching. The dead creature was laid calmly on the stretcher after a doctor had checked its pulse and certified it dead.
The boy rode away after the ambulance had gone with the accident victim.
When asked why they had put up such a drama before the child, the officers said that if they had not done so, the boy was never going to believe in the system again. The implication was that he might never grab the phone and dial 911 again if he ever witnessed a real accident.
We take for granted so many things here in this country. There are certain things we do passively and pass the wrong message to our children. Many years before the moon was explored by astronauts, a movie depicting men in the moon was shown to young American kids. These kids grew up believing that navigating the moon was a walkover. And they went to the moon!
We showed movies of ritualistic characters and how they suddenly made lots of money because they left the village to the cities. We made our kids believe what they saw. Today, what do we have before us?
We scream and whine about our electoral process. We whine about importation and how it negatively affects our economy, but we have not once produced a movie to show our children that people could become millionaires by being farmers. We have not shown them movies of how people can make money and create jobs by building factories. There's no Nollywood movie that throws light on how a good candidate should emerge from the grassroots through town hall meetings in an election, etc.
We don't prepare our children for these things. We just live!
By the way, what do you think the Nigerian police would have done if the scenario painted above had happened here in Nigeria?
Do have a glorious weekend ahead
