Promise Adiele

The Biblical parable of the prodigal son has always fascinated me. As a young boy, the moral of the story gradually percolated through the pores of my infantile mind. The final conclusion in my puerile outlook of the world was that the prodigal son is utterly irresponsible. How can a youth perpetuate such evil? However, as I got soaked by the dews of adulthood and intellectual verve, the mind began to acquire a different cognition of that Biblical parable.

The first time I read the parable was during my Bible classes as a Sunday school pupil many years ago. The story recounts how the son of a wealthy man, in a show of compunction, returns to beg for forgiveness after wasting his share of the father’s resources on ostentatious living. Following this story, our Sunday school teacher admonished us not to be prodigal sons (or daughters as the case may be) but rejoined that even if we were already immersed in the cesspool of prodigality, God in his infinite mercy is always ready to accept us back.

There is a correlation between the Biblical parable of the prodigal son and Christopher Okigbo’s prodigal persona in his poem Heavensgate. The opening lines of the poem portray a remorseful persona who returns to the benign goddess of the village, Mother Idoto, begging for forgiveness and to be accepted back into the kindred fold.

“Before you, mother Idoto, naked I stand, before your watery presence, a prodigal”. In my creative and literary commitments, I am always compelled to stretch my understanding and appreciation of Biblical events beyond their religious purlieu. Therefore, it is clearly legitimate to use the prodigal son motif as a platform to examine contemporary issues in our country.

Recently, President, Muhammadu Buhari, while speaking at the Commonwealth Business Forum in far away Westminster declared that “ a lot of Nigerian youths are lazy and uneducated, and don’t like to do any work because they believe their country is an oil-rich nation, thus always wanting free oil money”. By this declaration, the president was wittingly exonerating the government of the day for the obvious woes of the youths and at the same time, blaming the youths for their wretched fate. There have been reactions and more reactions to this presidential remark, more so because the president recently declared his intention to contest the 2019 presidential elections which will extend his tenure to eight years. Indeed, this presidential remark, to a well-meaning mind is open to various interpretations. While some people have maintained that the president was quoted out of context, others have excoriated the president for his lack of discretion in making pronouncements over matters of national interest in foreign land.

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I totally agree with Mr. President in the way he has classified Nigerian youths as lazy and uneducated. However, in order to achieve a balance, the president should add prodigal to the list of adjectives he has used to describe the youths of a country where he is the chief executive. While we have a category of Nigerian youths who are lazy and uneducated, there is another category that is prodigal but unfortunately the president forgot to mention it. Let us examine the three categories of Nigerian youths we have mentioned here, the lazy youths, the uneducated youths and finally, the prodigal youths.

First, Nigerian youths are lazy because they have been pulverized by successive administrations which did not take into account their future and wellbeing. They are indolent because the government of the day has not created an enabling environment for them to actualize their rich potential. Nigeria youths are lazy because there are no youth schemes created by the government to activate their dormant creative energy daily eviscerated by government policies which have led them to seek greener pastures elsewhere. Nigeria youths, as a result of their laziness, are desperately battling to survive and in their desperation have unfortunately embraced despicable acts which have attracted the long arm of the law where they are dehumanized and subsequently conquered. Nigerian youths are lazy because their parents are out of jobs and those who have jobs are poorly remunerated. The youths have to struggle to survive, sleep without electricity, go to bed without food, hawk items on the streets, and take solace in prostitution, robbery and internet poaching. Nigerian youths are lazy because they are daily brutalized by the police and other security agencies, in fact, some of them have lost their lives through accidental discharge and extra-judicial killings. Laziness is a natural corollary of the conditions enumerated above.

Secondly, Nigerian youths are uneducated because the educational system in the country is fraught with challenges and bottlenecks that make it very difficult for them to further their studies to university level. Nigerian youths are uneducated because their parents can’t afford the exorbitant schools fees charged by schools and universities in the country. Nigerian youths are uneducated because successive governments have not made education a priority, sanitizing the sector so that qualitative and affordable education is guaranteed. Nigerian youths are uneducated because education in their country is poorly funded, teachers and lecturers are poorly remunerated and during incessant strikes in the universities, many of them lose hope, get frustrated and get involved in all manner of social negativity.

The Nigerian youths which the president didn’t mention are the prodigal ones. For the sake of clarity, let us divide this category of youths into two, the historical prodigal youths and the contemporary prodigal youths. The historical prodigal youths emerged in this country after independence and enjoyed all the plum provisions of our economy. These youths, enjoyed free education, scholarships abroad and when they returned, they took up high positions in the military, the civil service and the government. However, they practically squandered the future of this country and plunged the economy into the abyss of hardship and inertia. The second class of prodigal youths are the contemporary ones, those who are still in the business of waste and atrophy. These Nigerian youths spend dollars and pounds sterling on anything they fancy,

While the first two categories of Nigerian youths are devastated by poverty and lack, their counterparts, the prodigal ones are crippled by surplus. These prodigal youths of the land have utterly wasted the resources of our country and despoiled our collective inheritance in the most appalling way. Therefore they should, like the Biblical prodigal son and Okigbo’s prodigal persona, confess their sins and ask for forgiveness.

Adiele writes from the Department of English
University of Lagos via [email protected]