“A father is neither an anchor to hold us back nor a sail to take us there but a guiding light whose love shows us the way.” – Unknown

A lot has happened this month that is worth addressing; our President finally granted interviews, twitter was banned in Nigeria, continued attacks in Plateau State, the Presidency pushing to reclaim grazing routes, mayhem in the South-East and so many other issues that have become our new normal as a nation.
In Nigeria, our wahala be like bicycle, easy to start but hard to stop, and e no dey finish…so today lets take a pause from addressing our national and state problems, and look at an issue that is affecting the basic unit of society – the family.
WHERE ARE THE FATHERS?

Let me share a poem a friend sent me a while back that captures the very essence of the responsibility of fathers…

One who loves till you close your eyes, is a Mother.
One who loves without an expression in the eyes, is a Father.

A Mother introduces you to the world.
A Father introduces the world to you.

A Mother gives you life
A Father gives you living

A Mother makes sure you are not starving.
A Father makes sure you know the value of starving

A Mother personifies Care
A Father personifies Responsibility

A Mother protects you from a fall
A Father teaches you to get up from a fall

A Mother teaches you walking.
A Father teaches you the walk of life
A Mother teaches from her own experiences.
A Father teaches you to learn from your own experiences.

A Mother reflects Ideology
A Father reflects Reality

A Mother’s love is known to you since birth.
A Father’s love is known when you become a Father.

While mothers/women are celebrated over many days in the course of a year, fathers have been spared just one day, we are not complaining because as fathers we are mostly content to be in the background.
Though uncelebrated, countless studies have linked a major origin of decadence in societies to an absence of fathers in a child’s life.
We live in an age where being a baby mama is almost like a career path for some women, where lack of self-control and no sense of responsibility causes men (and boys) to impregnate ladies and flee, where fathers are emasculated, rendered powerless, unable to provide firm leadership at home due to their inability to meet the financial needs of the home, where husbands violently take out their frustrations on their wives, where men abandon their families….
Fathers we need to rise up and give our daughters a sense of value, fathers we need to return home and give our sons a sense of purpose and responsibility and husbands we need to elevate our wives to the status of the queen that she really is.
We may not all have the opportunity of being in a seat of political power to change the course of things in our nation/state, but as everyman is a king in his home lets rise up to that responsibility.
A Father is not a title…it is a job description.
Forgive me for sounding like a male chauvinist, but this post is directed to we men…we are a major problem of society…and we should be society’s solution.
Let’s start changing our society by taking back our homes, establishing a sense of purpose, value and responsibility, and use that platform as a fore-runner to the change that we seek in our nation and our state.

Alfred Dapal Damiyal

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A World in Transition: Where are the fathers? – By Alfred Dapal Damiyal