Despite our perspectives, we dare not ask questions: We have decided to stay in pains – Plangnan Tongding

Growing up as a child was quite easy especially going back to the memories of childhood in our dear country. We grew up and were very much privileged to benefit from the proceeds of good parenting. We had the primary, secondary, and now tertiary education under our parents. Our parents used to tell us that during their time, they had It all and so they often get employed even after secondary education, indicating how good a system was. We were meant to belief that our immediate family always had us in mind and this kept us moving. Thinking about our primary school days; it was quite fun to remember. Remembering how we under the auspices of childhood could ask several questions, throwing these question one after the other to our parents and we were not often penalized but they gave us answers. This child-like curiosity never stopped in us as we graduated to the school setting asking our school teachers, nannies and other persons several questions. Our childhood days were quite liberating as we were more often liberated by thoughts of feeling loved by our parents. In fact what made our childhood days more liberating was not just the fact that we were kids, but the liberty we had to benefit from parenting. We were always asking questions and mostly getting answers. As growth and development kept on coming, we gradually realised that the freedom we were used to enjoying was no longer there, the concept of self and responsibility replaced parental safety, and instead of asking so many questions and expect answers from other parents, we end up asking ourselves these questions. Predictively, we would like to say that we have benefitted from functional parenting, benefitted from the proceeds of family collectivist styles, benefitted from well-designed family nucleus, not because we deserved all these, but because the system at some point, worked for its people. Today, what we have are dozens of issues facing us. Our ability to fine tune questions has been severed by the times we are in. Evidently, the collectivist style has given way for individualistic style, the functional system has given way for a dysfunctional system, and good parenting has become subliminal to be over shadowed by brief/surface parenting. Also, we are now the parents even as youths but we dare not ask questions because we are left with the thoughts of correcting or joining a tearing system; a system that hardly responds to our dear questions.
The shift of functional parenting of course does not change us into just human robots with brains without leaving its own adverse effects. We transit from being children not able to ask our parents questions about issues of life that awake our curiosity to adults who cannot challenge any wrongdoings being forced either on us or others because we sort of have been programmed to be so. We are like prisoners that have been freed and taken off chains or bondages but still awaiting instructions to leave the DUNGEON. This best describes how we are as human robots but with divinely designed brains.
Our roads are not reasonable enough but we dare not ask questions; our parents, women and children have been displaced by war and armed conflict but we dare not ask questions; our schools are not good enough to study talk more of to find these teachers we used to ask these questions from; our hospitals are not good enough to attend to serious medical challenges, yet we do not ask questions; Our children are busy roaming down the streets with no descent lives, and we do not dare to ask questions; there are many questions to ask, yet we are not asking questions.
Our leaders have bamboozled us enough yet we aren’t asking questions. What happened to this little child in us that used to ask questions and expects answers from his teachers?
Are we doomed to fail? How do we move to the next step if we haven’t found the answers to our current stage. With the absence of who to answer the questions. Most of The parents who use to answer these questions now just sit and look at how we muscle out way out
We have been made to become a part of a society where some policemen would wrongly arrest us for being innocent and we would gladly pay not only the bail bond (which of course is supposed to be free), but we will also bribe them with huge amounts of money while we remain on our knees. Some Road Safety Officials (as they are popularly known) while on vehicle inspection, would make us go through obnoxious stress just to hold us accountable for a wrongdoing that doesn’t even exist in their line of work (or any for that matter) just to get their own share of our income. The military officials or the Nigerian army (if you may) are our supposed custodians of sovereignty. Some will manhandle a citizen to favour an individual from across the border. We have lost count of the number of citizens who lost their lives in the hands of some of our careless security personnel for very insignificant reasons all in the name of instilling some so-called discipline, yet we dare not ask questions. All these unspeakable acts happen right in front of our eyes but the rest of our body can’t do anything to question these immoralities and as thus, we pass this dysfunctional way of thinking and living on to the next generation and other generations to come.
This dysfunctional way of thinking to which we have been subjected to has eaten so deeply into our society that people asking the right question are often accused of wrongdoings or perceived to be aliens, unmannered, uncultured or worse still, having a death wish in some cases. The children yesterday, who were raised not to question but accept everything that come their way, become parents tomorrow and pass onto the next generations the same dysfunctional system of thinking which in turn becomes a way of living and they also do the same. The world gets turned into an input device that is programmed to take in any sort of information regardless the immorality that comes with such information. And Yet, We Dare Not Ask Questions.

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Despite our perspectives, we dare not ask questions: We have decided to stay in pains – Plangnan Tongding

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