UNLESS and until the Nigerian society gets down to brass tacks and repairs its badly impaired moral value system, the criminal and embarrassing consequences of its lackadaisical approach to solving the grave challenge will not abate. A society does not trifle with its values and ethos, as it were, and expect to reap a decent and decorous system. It is not possible. That is why it is not really astonishing, albeit painful and depressing, to see a 50-year-old woman captured in a video brutalising her naked and ill mother. That was the horrible and strange spectacle to which the people of Umunudu, Abagana, in Njokika Local Government Area of Anambra State were treated when Ukamaka Udeugbo decided to administer corporal punishment on her mother! It was horrendous; it is unheard of in any culture to beat up one’s parents.
All religions enjoin honour, respect and affection for parents, and in one of the good books, that admonition or commandment is the only one that comes with a promise of longevity for the children that would comply. The question agitating the minds of many is that if Ukamaka Udeugbo could treat her own mother in that manner, what would she not do to another person’s mother? Her grouse was that the woman had defecated on herself, but the 75-year-old had been ill. Pray, would the old woman deliberately defecate on herself or decide to indulge in that if she could help it? Would the old woman now stop defecating on herself because of, or after, the brutal beating by the daughter? Ukamaka flogged her mother because she defecated on herself, but did she realise that she had in all probability defecated not just on herself but also on that woman as a baby? Every decent person is bound to be filled with revulsion and consternation by her thoughtless and callous action.
Indeed, not a few believe that Ukamaka is heartless or sick if a helpless action by her mother owing to ill health was her justification for flogging and kicking her. What kind of child mistreats his/her own parents, dishing out corporal punishments on them? Would that be to ensure that the parents learn necessary lessons or to stop them from persisting in their ‘wayward ways’? What exactly has Ukamaka achieved by beating up her parent other than well-deserved public outrage and opprobrium? Apparently, she must have been inflicting pain on the hapless woman for a long time before she was caught in the abominable act. Hers was a patently bizarre and awful treatment of a parent by a child, and it reflects very badly on the content of her morality.
It bears stressing that this kind of behaviour is a vivid reflection of the collapse of morality and decency in the country that we have been calling attention to for some time. It is an ominous indication of a gradual but somewhat inexorable destruction of the moral fibre of the society. This drift is perilous and it must be swiftly arrested in order to stymie further dire consequences.
It is really saddening that Nigerians are becoming increasingly indecent and inhuman in the way they relate to one another, even within families and blood relations. And this should be of concern to all as the society will end up being destroyed in the absence of decency and moral undertakings and relationships. It is important for family and other societal structures to return to the proper training of members on the ethical and moral behaviour needed to keep the society together. The age-old tradition of collective nature and notion of existence in Africa should not be sacrificed for inhuman and individualistic posturing that does not consider or cater to the interests of others. We can only expect that the lady in question would have learnt useful lessons from the negative reactions to her conduct. It is imperative that she embraces positive change and a commitment to behaving differently not just to her mother but to all others.
Meanwhile, the Anambra State Police Command is urged to keep the promise made through its spokesperson, DSP Tochukwu Ikenga, that the incident would be thoroughly investigated and that Ukamaka Udeugbo would undergo prosecution shortly. The suspect, if found guilty, should be punished to the full extent of the law. In a clime where there is hardly any facility like old people’s home to cater to the peculiar needs of the elderly, the society’s time-tested communal living that has served it so well must be saved from the veritable impairment which Ukamaka’s alleged ignoble conduct represents.
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