Women
By Anthony Isibor
A group, Women Community in Africa, WCA, has called on parents and guardians to pay as much attention on the upbringing of their male children as they do with female children.
Khadijah Abdullahi Iya, Founder of The SI Group, made the call during the one- day interactive programme, organised by the WCA on the International Day of the Boy Child held on May 16, 2023.
She condemned the very structures of power dynamics and authority, which puts not just the girl, but also women in the lower pegs, and make it possible for people who are supposedly trained, but lack understanding and the depth of what that instrument can do for humanity to occupy powerful positions.
Speaking on an initiative aimed at re-engineering the boy-child to societal values, Abdullahi Iya noted that many male children and even many men do not understand the direct connection of the burden of the instrument of power; which is to give and not to take, to construct not to destroy, to compassionately lead with love and assertiveness and not to use it for self-aggrandizement, how the instrument of power and opportunity is NoT to wreak havoc and disunite a people!
She also expressed sadness that a girl child, who is carefully raised and nurtured with so much potential and joy to impact the world, can easily be messed up upon becoming a woman by one single boy-child, who became a man without the necessary life skills, mental maturity and all the ingredients his mind demand to preserve and upgrade the life, or simply just support the lady bequeathed to him by her parents as a trust.
According to her, an unguided male child can easily destroy years of training and etiquette because he failed to understand the sanctity of another human being, “especially a special human being; who is the crux of humanity, a girl-child has become normalized and sadly most of them cannot be bothered, and neither is society’’.
“Society itself is not spared. We have seen how our untrained male children have become menaces to society, they have become tools for the destruction of society, we have seen how society has been stagnated and underdeveloped because the untrained boy children became a menace upon it; we have wanton violence and bloodletting, insurgency, militancy and other forms of violent crimes all on the rise.
“Year in Year out, we were worried and still worried about the girl children; about how much they’ve been left behind as we became engrossed with the girl child, we paid little attention to the grooming of the boy child, we protected, advocated and went to great lengths to preserve and upgrade the quality of life and sanctity of what the girl child stands for, in its most purest form.
“We are not there yet, but it is time we begin to also pay attention to the boys…We are where we are today; politically, socially and even psychologically because there had been a breach of responsibility to carefully groom the boy-child we failed to own, we have not done enough for the boy-child. We have allowed our male children to derail into entitled, obnoxious and irresponsible children that always and mostly take, NOT GIVE!
She therefore called for the extension of the work that has been done extensively on the girl-child, in the boy child. Because as God created us as man and woman He made us a pair to complement one another and raise generations after generation to ensure the continuity of life.
“We must know that for our society to thrive we have to raise both genders properly…Properly too means raising them to understand and appreciate each other’s roles and how they can work as a team…
“The girl-child cannot do without the boy child…and vice versa. If the boy child lack the purity of soul to nurture a generation of excellence that can be passed on, a baton of effective leadership to be passed on for greater good then we all are in trouble,” she said.
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Tags: International Day of the Boy Child Khadijah Abdullahi Iya Women Community in Africa
