WHAT HAVE FATHERS INVENTED?
Our students should be modelled after successful men, writes
The United States of America has had two presidents who shared limited experiences of grooming by FATHERS. Bill Clinton’s father drowned. His mother was pregnant with him.
Baby Clinton missed being cuddled by a father; and looks into each other’s eyes. The drunken man who married his widowed mother missed shooting Clinton totally dead by a narrowness engineered by Guardian Angels.
Barack Obama last saw his Kenyan father when older Obama visited Hawaii. He was a doctoral student of Economics at Harvard University. That training would get him murdered for opposing the government of President Daniel arap Moi borrowing a
Political parties could recruit students as campaign workers at local, state and federal levels with the National Orientation Agency and INEC as facilitating and funding agencies
World Bank loan. His son would never see him again. He graduated from Harvard Law School. The lad spent teenage years without clapping eyes and mouths with his father.
Perhaps the absence of their fathers helped them get to the presidency of America. Their fathers ‘INVENTED’ paternal absence and approval probably drove both men to long and struggle for the highest paternal approval: roars by American people in moments of their political adulation.
More concrete factors were INVENTIONS by visionary men and interventions by strong women in their lives. Obama had a mother who was determined to have her son walk on the Harvard. She would wake the little boy at Indonesia’s tropical predawn to pump lessons into his sleepy head to ensure that he would cross over barriers to top American colleges.
In later life a strong Black woman political activist led him over roadblocks into attitudes of defeat nurtured into poor African-Americans by White racism. Like Black boys in HAWAI who beat White middle class culture out of him on the rough tackles of games of Basketball, this streetwise woman mistress of Black slum culture beat out of him Harvard’s ways of thinking and social relations.
Clinton’s grandmother insisted on his school grades ensuring his inclusion among boys that simulated sessions of Congress. As a School ‘SENATOR’ he travelled to Washington DC and became DWWDFKHG WR 6HQDWRU )XOEULJKW·V 2FH His fatherly invention of a demand that Clinton read scores of daily newspapers, and select relevant items, gave Clinton wide knowledge of American and international DͿDLUV )RU D ODG IURP D EDFNZDUG 6WDWH WKDW knowledge later gave him easy passage into a prestigious college in Washington, DC.
The men who invented this leadership breeding scheme were Clinton’s surrogate fathers. The men who invented the Harvard Law Review and the prestige attached to being its editor, were surrogate fathers of Barack Obama
These American models are worth considering for possible adaptation. The ‘’NOT TOO YOUNG TO GOVERN’ law could examine the research-based policy development and presentation in ‘’MOCK OAU SUMMIT’ at Ahmadu Bello University; and ‘SIMULATION OF AN ASSEMBLY OF THE AFRICAN UNION’ by GIRL PRESIDENTS of PAN-AFRICA CLUB at ANGLICAN GIRLS GRAMMAR SCHOOL, in Abuja.
Attachment of students to Senators is a good candidate.
America’s founding leaders linked democratic politics to the level of information available to legislators and citizens. Accordingly, the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS was invented. In 2012 it had the largest collection of books, with 34,538,878. Houston Public Library which was ranked at number 100 among ‘’the Nation’s Largest Libraries’’, held 3,061,773 volumes.
In Nigeria the ‘’National Library has only 27 branches serving a largely illiterate population with ‘’poor reading habits’’; employing ‘’inadequate and QRQ SURJUHVVLYH·· VWDͿ ZRUNLQJ ZLWK ‘’dilapidated facilities’’, and poor funding. The data on the total number of volumes held in these branches is not available.
Political parties could recruit students as campaign workers at local, state and federal levels with the National Orientation Agency and INEC as facilitating and funding agencies.
)HDUV E\ FRORQLDO RFLDOV RI FRPPXQLW\ groups for enforcing moral codes; organising collective farming activities; initiating male and female age-groups into DGXOWKRRG KDYH EHHQ UHSODFHG E\ RFLDO LQGLͿHUHQFH DQG ODFN RI LPDJLQDWLRQ Political opportunists have adopted them into armed thugs for rigging elections; trading in illegal drugs; kidnapping persons to extort money as ransom, and killing villagers to drive them from land rich in minerals, including: diamond, gold, oil and fertile soils These are not inventions for developing civic virtues in youths.
Nigeria and Tanzania invented NATIONAL SERVICE Schemes for graduates of Tertiary education. The African Union should consider implementing the wider vision of participants from each Member State converging in EACH STATE, thereby constituting a ‘Trans-Africa Guest SERVING Unit’.
On 18th June, 2022, ‘GIRL PRESIDENTS’ of African Countries presented a SIMULATION of an ASSEMBLY of the African Union in celebration of Africa Day; post-humours honouring of two creative PAN-AFRICANISTS: Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem and Professor Abubakar Momoh. Ambassador JOE KESHI (rtd), a distinguished Nigerian diplomat, and father ÀJXUH SUDLVHG WKH *,5/ 35(6,'(176 DV DQ invention that is heart-lifting energy against Nigeria’s season of parasitic imports, violence and gloom.