The youth are the future leaders, so we often hear. But the calibre of leaders the youth are going to be has never been questioned. Well, permit me ask: what sort of leaders will the youth be?? Good? Bad? Or Ugly? We often say the youth are the future leaders. But when we say this, we know the natural process is that, the children keep growing and one day will be well equipped to man the affairs of the nation barring all unforeseen exigencies. A child has a family. A child lives in an environment. As a child grows, the family and environment play a role in his/her development. A child may have his family or environment to thank or to curse. You can train your child, but the training of a responsible child is a very difficult task. The world is changing at a faster rate and parents were suppose to change the ways of training of their wards. I often hear our elders say; as for the youth of today, they are rotten. They as Sulibreaks once noted, have forgotten they took part in our training or are also responsible for the output. They will always say good things but practice none. They say certain things out of convenience. Train the child the way he should go and when he grows, he won't depart from it, so says the Bible. The type of training however, in my part of the world is no good one. Some as James Amoh Jr quizzed in his post yesterday, are preaching virtue and practising vice? Yeah, that's exactly what some elders are doing. Almost everyone is killing Ghana. The few good ones are sidelined and we don't see more of them. The bad is what we are witnesses to almost everyday. We who are quick to charge and sentence people in the public court of opinion if their "sins" are exposed, we who talk morals all the time, we who preach the fact that we are God fearing people have a country messy. How is that? Pretense? Hypocrisy? If you so want the youth to turn the fortunes of this our beloved country, then you make sure you train us well. You want us to believe it is rewarding to uphold morals on the one hand but on the other, you make us thirst for illegal wealth creation with your lifestyles. Examples on any day are better than precepts. I am a Christian and can tell you Christ gathered such a huge following because he lived his words. He did not come to die, he came to show the way which included dying on the cross. Elders in days of yore showed the way which included sacrifices of various forms. Our politicians and all who engage in the duping process of the people should not expect any better future for our dear nation. Whatever you're doing is being recorded and believed to be the way to go by your children . What annoys me is this phrase from the politicians "the youth do not want to take to agriculture". Really?? If it were easier, why do politics instead? Just become a rural boy or girl for a day and you will understand how difficult it is to farm without support. What the rural child sees is a dirty farmer with a bicycle and a neat politician with a flashy car. Who do you think he will aspire to become? "When mother-cow is chewing grass , its young ones watch its mouth", Chinua Achebe in his book Things Fall Apart. What do you expect when you input garbage in a system? You are not doing Ghana any good if you are not living right. Our elders today are teaching us to survive at the expense of our brethren. Yet, they turn round to accuse the youth of being immoral. Fathers and mothers of the land, you played a role in this mess.
I leave you with this saying from my people, GOATS BEGET NOT SHEEP.
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