Accumulated erosion of values leads to desecration of society —Professor Adeniyi Olatubosun, Vice Chancellor, Kola Daisi University

There are cases of youths being involved in money rituals. How did we get here?

It’s about decadence in the system. In society now, most of our youths have either failed to imbibe to the culture of good behaviour or good conduct. Many of our youths want the shortcut to success. Many of them are not ready to work hard. All they want to do is make money at all costs. It’s regretful. It’s an issue that is worrisome.  All we need to do is keep on having public enlightenment programmes.

It is because of the economic situation in the country. Some parents find it difficult to provide for their children. Also, because of the advent of ICT and technology, many of our youths are ICT savvy. But instead of using it for the betterment of society, they are using it for evil ends and other vices.

We have lost value because, at the secondary and primary school levels, a lot of disciplines have been eroded.  Many schools are not instilling discipline in their students either because of the right to privacy, human rights and some other forms of treatment.

Parents also do not subscribe to teachers disciplining their children. So, it’s a form of accumulated erosion of our values leading to the desecration of society. But I believe that we need to do more. Our churches, the mosque and other faith-based institutions should be able to put out more forms of public awareness and sermons, campaigns, lectures and programmes to let our youths know that they cannot gain from criminal processes. Criminality is not lucrative; it’s not a profit-making venture and should be something that should be denounced. People should give sanctity to the life and dignity of persons; most of the stories we hear now are barbaric.

I think a lot needs to be done. Our society has been desecrated; we have lost the values as regards concepts of humanity and orderliness in the society; so much has been left undone.

Also, society has become conscious of monetary gains. Of recent, in a university, I learnt that some people who graduated with a first-class were given N2000 as a form of the prize and the audience was not happy about it. But you see some programmes whereby what they are doing is not intellectual, people cart away millions of Naira. So, I think the emphasis should be on educational programmes; programmes that bring up academic knowledge, depth of knowledge that’d promote excellence in various disciplines rather than things that are not adding value or so much importance to humanity.

Look at what operates in Japan. Japan started to have a breakthrough when they developed the concept that they needed to fund their educational sector and compel all their youths in the late 80s to go into academics and they also made money available for them to go outside Japan in the sense of sponsorship. So by the time they graduated from the various universities and technology, they were able to invent. I think this is where the government needs to do better in encouraging scholarship and students who have done well in various disciplines, giving them more tasks for them to do more discoveries for us.

We need to train our children to ensure that in the primary, secondary levels, they are able to get the training they need because that is the formative stage of a child’s life.