When the internet made its debut, very few people understood how it worked. For that reason, most individuals had little control over the types of content they saw and even put out. It was safe to ascribe a fair extent of human behavioural blame to the internet. The story is different today: there is full awareness and much more control over content ownership and consumption. 

As a result of its intoxicating nature, there is a group of people who need to tread extra lightly in this head-spinning world – children.

The internet is not the only thing that has changed about the world, but it is one thing that has changed the world. Value and belief systems have evolved. These trends have, in turn, birthed a new parenting style for many. Situations that previously posed as a big deal barely hold water today; unregulated internet access and sleepovers with ‘cool’ friends are but a fraction of this new age’s childhood benefits.

But what is sauce for the goose is not always sauce for the gander. These luxuries are presenting parents and children with the shorter end of the stick. 

The recent unfortunate sex tape involving children aged 10 to 13 has left me, and many others, disturbed. The mishap has begged the question of what these children have been exposed to. 

The scenario is all too familiar; parents are busy with work, and often too tired to engage with their children. Nobody has the time to explain why the earth is round. All that takes is a Google search with thousands of results happy to answer that. The child’s joy knows no bounds. There is no need to seek answers from parents who would give half-interesting acknowledgements when the internet will respond and even give extra suggestions. 

The question is: what else flirts with the child’s mind? 

It is no secret that children are curious cats. When their questions are unanswered, they will find answers elsewhere. While the internet provides a questionable source of knowledge, one begins to wonder just how much knowledge a child should be exposed to from there. There is often a lack of judgement and danger awareness that only comes with age and experience. Is a life-damaging exploit going to be the wake-up call for parents that they desperately need?

How can these children be protected? Having open conversations about the internet, stranger dangers and their online activities is a good start. When they understand that their naivety makes them prey to predators, they stand a better chance of being protected. Also, registering a Gmail account with the correct age and having it linked to the Google family link lets you protect them from adult content replete on the internet. 

Satellite TVs also offer parental locks to enable parents and guardians to control the kind of content their children access. 

It is easy to argue a child’s moral decadence does not only come from the internet. However, a huge portion of the blame falls on parents. Associations with friends, the environment, and other social factors are also elemental in this quicksand of questionable moral standards. But these friends also come from families. 

While parents cannot control who or what the child interacts with 24/7, they can influence it to some extent. A family is the smallest unit of society. It is from there that values get formed and shaped before interaction with the outside world. A school or a church can only do so much – the primary responsibility of raising and protecting a child needs to come from the home. 

Explaining how to think and act in a healthy way about what they see can raise an open-minded and balanced child. One parent cannot change the world, but collectively, every parent can.

Claire Mom is a Nigerian journalist notable for her advocacy for women’s and children’s rights.

Email:[email protected]

Twitter: speakclairely_

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Good leadership calls for flexibility and the ability to recognise which situations call for which style of command to achieve the best results. After all, getting things done is what leadership is all about. It is unfortunate and disheartening to see the current political gladiators becoming autocratic and intolerant to dissenting views.

Our beloved country —Nigeria, today, faces many challenges, crises and forces of division — such as poverty, violence, dishonesty, rampant corruption, nepotism, killings, kidnappings and human rights abuses — among many others — that undermine peace, security, development and social harmony among our people.

To confront these challenges, their root causes must be addressed by promoting and defending a shared spirit of human solidarity that takes many forms — the simplest of which is sober reflection. We need to make that transition from just human beings to humans. Therefore, for a free people to govern themselves, they must be free to express themselves — openly, publicly, and repeatedly; in speech, writing, negotiations, discussions and demonstrations where necessary. 

The principle of free speech should be protected by a democracy’s constitution, preventing the legislative or executive branches of government from imposing censorship of democratic expressions. Freedom of speech and expression, especially about political and important public issues, is the lifeline of any democracy. 

Democratic governments do not control the content of people’s expression of their perception of government, opinion on social issues and discontent. Thus democracies are usually filled with many voices expressing different or even contrary ideas and opinions. On the contrary, what seems to be rearing its head in our body politic seems to be deliberate autocratic action to scuttle free speech and punish those who dare to voice their discontent on our troubled state of affairs; suggesting a worrisome descent into autocracy.

For example, the Imam spoke, he was suspended, a Bishop preached the homily and earned insults for both himself and other clerics. The greatest problem of the current political gladiators is the intolerance to criticism, yet the protagonists tore the GEJ era into shreds with their negative criticism that could be argued to be devoid of sincerity. 

I wonder why this regime cannot sit down and tell itself the truth. It has failed to deliver on 99.99% of her electioneering promises. In less than 8 years, it has made Nigeria retrogress several decades into stagnation. I wonder if this country will ever recover, or more significantly, survive the impact of the policies of this ever self-justifying and pretentiously puritanical regime.

Rather than try to do something positive for posterity, the government, and wider leadership have continued going after courageous voices telling it what we all know on the streets, and which are seemingly not caught by their discriminatory radar. Yesterday they attacked the Abuja Imam. Today, they are taking Bishop Kukah to their destiny-destroying laundry, while Nigeria burns. Lord, mercifully deliver us from this contraption designed to make us live in perpetual regrets. Cry beloved country Nigeria; cry mother Africa.

Bishop Kukah reminds one of the indomitable spirit of the Archbishop of Cape Town, Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa and Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the late Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and veteran of South Africa’s struggle against white minority rule. They do not only share the same body size but the same audacity to speak truth to power no matter how devilish they are.

A dependable source told me that the only reason why they didn’t go after Bishop David Oyedepo is the fear of the backlash. Presidential spokesman Femi Adesina had previously lampooned (Daddy G.O) PST E A ADEBOYE, according to Adesina, “uncouth language which has become the stock-in-trade of some preachers in Nigeria today is no longer acceptable.”

CRY BELOVED COUNTRY NIGERIA, CRY MOTHER AFRICA.

Richard Odusanya is a Social Reform Crusader and the convener of AFRICA COVENANT RESCUE INITIATIVE ACRI.

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Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. That is how most, especially politicians, the Church, influencers, NGOs and CSOs have been manipulating Nigerians to come to see a big lie as the truth. They control Nigerians with the words: “We have no other country but Nigeria!”

The truth is that countries come and countries go. The world map of countries we see today is not the same map our ancestors would have seen, say, 300 years ago. And, today’s world map will not be the same one that those who will exist 300 years from now will see. COUNTRIES COME, AND COUNTRIES GO. That is a historical fact.

What we see is that indigenous peoples of the South and Middle Belt are doing their all to rush out of Nigeria looking for education, jobs and “opportunities” abroad, while at the same time immigrant Fulani are rushing into Nigeria. We must ask the question, then whose country is Nigeria (Notice, we are not asking to whom do the ancestral lands belong)? Since every country is a political construction, we should know who created the political union called Nigeria, and for whose benefit was it created?

Nigeria is called a Federation (another lie) whereas in fact, a Federation is a union of Constitutions yet Nigeria has just ONE Constitution, and that is itself a Forgery called the 1999 Constitution. What that means is that IN REALITY there is actually no Union, and thus no real country called “Nigeria” – it is all a great make-believe situation. Those who are no longer going to tolerate the lies are insisting that their people will take charge of their ancestral lands, and with their inalienable right to Self-Determination either form a viable country on their own, or form a new country with compatible neighbouring Ethnic Nations. That is, they are seeking to correct the mistake (or mischief!) of the 1914 Amalgamation. The ONE obstacle in the pathway to Self-Determination is the INDIGENOUS POLITICIANS. 

The role of indigenous politicians in maintaining the hated Nigeria that their people are fleeing abroad from, and where their people are being killed on a regular basis needs to be made ABUNDANTLY CLEAR. 

The illegitimate 1999 Constitution empowers armed Fulani to torture, maim, and slaughter unarmed and defenceless indigenous peoples. It is actually indigenous politicians who open the door to the homicidal madness of Fulani invaders by upholding and defending that known Forgery – the 1999 Constitution. If indigenous politicians did not make themselves available for this dirty work, the Fulani invaders and the Fulani Caliphate would have no powers of entry, so their conquest agenda revealed by Ahmadu Bello’s Declaration, would be impossible.

Furthermore, it is indigenous politicians who renew the life of that sham 1999 Constitution in their people’s ancestral land. That happens via elections when the declared winner swears an Oath of Office to uphold, defend, and govern by that Forgery. It is the task of indigenous politicians to push their people to Elections 2023 to renew the life of the disaster-bringing and death-bringing 1999 Constitution upon their people, for which they will get paid huge salaries and life-long pensions. The treasonous behaviour of indigenous politicians is compounded by the fact that they hide the truth that the 1999 Constitution has been Repudiated via the Constitutional Force Majeure declared by the non-violent people’s NINAS Movement making Nigeria a Disputed Project since 16th December 2020, obviously hoping to wind down the clock, to help make Elections 2023 inevitable. Or, to assist the Fulani-led Central Government to declare Martial Law as advised by Attorney General Malami (a Fulani) in a leaked memo (later denied), using the unchecked widespread insecurity as a manufactured reason.

This is a case of indigenous peoples versus their politicians. Indigenous politicians are using a Forgery to capture their people inside a false Union called Nigeria. A Union that is NOT the one negotiated before Independence. That original Union was terminated in 1966 by the military coups. The current Union of Nigeria is the Caliphate’s country that welcomes Fulani from all over Africa to make it their home, while at the same time driving indigenous peoples to flee abroad by making it a hopeless and unsafe place for the true Owners of the land.

Before 1914 there was no country called Nigeria. Since the future for them is the Caliphate Agenda of conquest and Fulanization, indigenous peoples can decide that they will no longer accept unitary Nigeria. Their own politicians are the Caliphate’s agents and collaborators in their ancestral lands, so it is their politicians they must address and stop. Elections 2023 is the battleground. The life of the 1999 Constitution must therefore not be renewed by having those elections. Instead, there should be a time-bound Transitional Government where there would be Self-Determination Regional Referendums for indigenous Ethnic Nations to decide whether they want to re-commit their ancestral lands to the Union of Nigeria, or whether they want fresh, new beginnings forming new Unions with compatible neighbouring Ethnic Nations.

For indigenous peoples to flee abroad when they have their own richly endowed ancestral lands is not an effective solution to the problem of treacherous politicians who uphold a hostile 1999 Constitution. Indigenous peoples have been believing the lie that: “We have no other country but Nigeria!” Unitary Nigeria is NOT their country, and rather than abandon their ancestral lands (making it easier for Fulani to grab them), indigenous peoples at home and abroad have the power to create proper new countries for themselves by stopping their politicians and the sham 1999 Constitution that follows those traitors.

Ndidi Uwechue is a British citizen with Igbo heritage from the Lower Niger Bloc. She is a retired Metropolitan (London) Police Officer, she is a signatory to the Constitutional Force Majeure, and she writes from Abuja.

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