By Chinaza Ikeagwuonu

From my mind’s eye, I see a picture of our past heroes fighting for the freedom of this great Nation with the hope of achieving a safe home for the Nigerian, a place conducive for the molding of a true Nigerian child who would be an embodiment of near perfection both in virtue, conducts and every aspect of life.
It is a pity that these past heroes now lie covered in ancient earth helplessly looking at their shattered hopes and aspirations. They neither achieved the home, sweet home of a Nigerian nor the complete or wholistic Nigerian child, they had dreamt of.
The Nigerian that I have grown to know is indubitable, not the Nigeria that was hoped for.

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Let me close my eyes to the high rate of corruption in the society and pay attention to the level of insecurity in the country which has shattered the dreams and hopes of many teenagers in the country as a result of the prevailing but threatening insurgency.
The Nation is so insecure that the Chibok girls who were able to escape did so all thanks to self-help and luck. If not for international pressure, the matter of the missing Chibok girls would have most probably been buried. In the face of 2015 electoral exigencies, despite the fact that the matter at hand is a case of delicate dreams of young strong-willed teenage girls being buried deep in the thick of Sambisa Forest.
Also, the countless bombings the nation has witnessed is more than enough to make a child regret being a Nigerian as these bombings have left many orphaned, widowed, homeless and disabled. When I pledge to Nigeria, I wonder if everyone in all the nooks and crannies of this nation does the same for I cannot understand the reason why a nation will rise against itself and yet refuse to divide.
Also, there are the children and teenagers who have a mentor and I wonder who their mentors are. Is it the pot-bellied fathers who have chosen corruption as a ceremonial head? All this has marred the virtues and innocence which their mothers have tried so hard to inculcate in their young.
I vividly recall the story of a man who paid someone to arrange girls that will give pleasure to him and his friend. His agent brought secondary schools girls for them and among those girls; the man saw his daughter whom he has taught to be decent and responsible and virtuous. I now ask, what could be expected of this teenage girl whose role model is a father who is as shameless as stooping so low as to sleep with girls who are old enough to be his daughter.
What some people do not understand is that the teenage mind copies and emulates whatever it sees and hears as long as it comes from a source they trust and believe in. Amongst these sources, we have the parents, peers, siblings, social media, the internet as well as the immediate environment.
Although there are so many good things the above can offer, they are teenagers who are just so unlucky as to have one or two of the above source showing them the part to destruction alone and for this reason, they move about with wrong orientation about life and transfer this same orientation on their younger generation that look up to them for direction for a man only gives that which he has.
I write this from this stand point, not to castigate or lay bare some short comings of this Nation which have affected the overall development of the Nigerian child and how they have made the Nigerian nationality a curse and a burden to the Nigerian child. Rather I hope to achieve a majority group in the society that have the zeal to create the Nigeria that our Fathers hoped and the Nigerian child they had dreamt of, that is devoid of corruption and violence. Unfortunately, the Nigerian child has no choice to be part of the envisioned change. They are still teenagers at below 18 and cannot vote nor be voted for. Regrettably at 18 and above most of them have only succeeded in imbibing or replicating the shameful and disgraceful attributes of their inglorious parents and so the cycle continues. Our youths must learn to be change agents and must commence now to agitate for equal opportunities to become president and governors and not pray for the perpetuation in office of those who misrule us just because their parents come gratified with public funds by those who hate our advancement and revel in divide and rule.