By Dele Sobowale
“What does corrupting time not diminish? Our grandparents brought forth feebler heirs; we are further degenerate; and soon will beget progeny more wicked” – Homer, 65-8 BC, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ p 247.
It was my intention to write about something else this Sunday. But, reading global news reports, commentaries and analysis last week changed my mind totally. Mankind in general and Nigeria in particular is racing towards its own destruction.
Eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge by Adam and Eve might have set us towards self-annihilation more inexorably than we realise. Two man-made elements worldwide and one made in Nigeria are destroying our youths faster than they are being developed for the challenges of the future. Right now, it is indisputable that drugs, the internet and cultism have become the faces of evil ruining our youths – irrespective of class.
From the absolute poorest to the children of the most wealthy, our kids today have become hostages to forces which we could not have dreamt of in our young days, not to talk of Homer. The engine-room of all the other evils is that fountain of inexhaustible knowledge – the internet.
The internet has made it possible to connect all the actors in any atrocity, so surely, so fast and so secretively that law enforcement agents as well as parents are totally defeated in the attempt to check their kids. Never in the history of mankind have parents lost so much control over their own off-spring as now. Bearing in mind that bad behaviour or habit is easier to acquire than good conduct, it is easy to see why our nation is in trouble. Unfortunately, as we enter 2022, Nigeria’s political leadership, from Buhari to ward councillors, has placed governance on suspension until 2023. All they care about is next year’s election.
More unfortunately, for the rest of us, the Devil neither goes on break nor sleeps. By the time the next President emerges, Nigeria would have gone farther down the road to self-destruction. Here are the truths which we can no longer ignore;
MKPURU-MMIRI ENTERED LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT
Methamphetamine or ‘crystal meth’ has been around since the 1960s. My first job in Boston, US was with Lederle Laboratories in 1968. As a salesman promoting our prescription drugs to doctors and pharmacies, I was provided with samples of our drugs to be given free to doctors to try with their patients. Among the samples given to us was a branded amphetamine. Invariably, the salesmen and women would keep for their own use some of the samples – including the amphetamine capsules.
Throughout the undergraduate years – 1964 to 1968 – I had religiously avoided drugs offered at parties everywhere in my travels in America. Growing up in Lagos Island had given me a sound lesson on the undesirable consequences of drug addiction. I was not ready to risk my American Government Scholarship on account of drugs. But, in 1968, I already graduated and had a job which provided me with a bagful of amphetamine; to consume as much as I wanted free of charge. God saved me.
Two months into the job, we were attending a monthly sales meeting when one of the older salesmen suddenly got up and started undressing right in the training room. Within minutes, he was completely naked. Security men were called to restrain him; an ambulance was called; and he ended in psycho-ward in Boston Hospital. It was finally determined that he had been stuffing himself with amphetamine – to which he had become totally addicted. That was a lesson never to be forgotten; the sudden crash of a person who was outwardly “normal” until his drama started.
I have been aware of the increasing lurch of Nigeria towards a drug-driven society since me return in 1974. Some of our richest people were drug traffickers to the US in the beginning. By the time General Babangida, who else, enacted the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Decree 48, 1989, Nigeria had already crossed the threshold of a transit country (one through which drugs are trafficked to others) to a major consumer of various drugs (See the book IBRAHIM B BABANGIDA: 1985-1992, LETTING A THOUSAND FLOWERS BLOOM). Only God knows how much worse Nigeria would have been today if IBB had not passed that decree. Despite it, we are in hell now – irrespective of region, ethnicity, religion, gender, income, social status, age or political affiliation. If you are not an addict yourself, you are probably very close to somebody who is lost to drugs.
The journey from 1989 till now has been a gradual decline into hell for Nigeria. Drugs, which in the beginning were consumed by criminals and a few deviant characters, have now gone mainstream. Among those under 45, virtually everybody is in it. Any parent with children over 21 who are not now abusers of any of the new designer drugs themselves must be living with a saint. In the 1960s parents worried about their kids moving with bad company – meaning boys drinking beer, stout and occasionally ogogoro, 404, Sapele Water etc. Today any father whose sons still indulge in those stimulants must go for thanksgiving in his church or mosque. He can still be saved. Amphetamine is the new face of the Devil. And, our children are entrapped. We must mount the effort to save them; otherwise there is no future for Nigeria.
THE GSM CONNECTION
“Please just send me to a mental institution.” Mom describes daughter’s struggle with social media. CNN December 9, 2021.
Mother and daughter must live in a highly developed nation. Because, here in Nigeria, our kids who are going crazy on account of social media are not aware that they are actually losing their senses. More kids than we know are just a step away from the mental hospital; and their parents are actually helping to get them there by providing the money – the fuel of mental explosion – with which the kids are destroying themselves. Yet, the dangers were foretold by a sage over 20 years ago by a global industrialist.
“Every piece of new technology …will in the end be used quite differently from the way in which its proponents first imagined” – Sir Michael Perry, Chairman Unilever, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ, p243.
I was desperately in search of an entry under Technology for the Book of QUOTATIONS, because of the overwhelming influence it has had in transforming the Earth and everything in it, for good or ill, when luck brought the gem quoted above my way. It was lifted from an address delivered by the former leader of Unilever. He gave several examples. But, if I can recall correctly, one of them was the invention of the shot gun–which was developed to improve on the success rate of hunters searching for food for their families. Gradually, it was adopted by the military in all the advanced countries at the time. Today, hand guns, in the hands of criminals, kill more people everyday than all the armies of the world put together.
Let us now move fast forward to the GSM/internet/Facebook/Instagram and we will see how prescient Sir Perry was. Until about ten years ago, the internet, linked with other advances in computer technology, was almost purely beneficial. Today, the pendulum is moving towards more evil uses of the technologies. The recent revelations during a US Senate hearing regarding Facebook, and the evil tendencies of its owners, are only a tiny exposure. Social media might eventually destroy the world.
To be continued
VANGUARD
