I really do not know how to start this write up. I’m just going to follow the direction of my fingers. I’m sure we’ve all seen women with about five kids or more walking on the road. She probably has one on her back, and then drags the rest with her as they are all lined up according to their heights like students on an assembly ground. They probably just live in a room and parlour apartment if they’re comfortable enough to afford it. Most times, it’s just a one-room apartment with a general toilet and kitchen for all the tenants to share. They probably do not have a television set because it is considered luxury talk less of having a DVD player or GOtv. Her husband might be an “okada” man who works so hard to make his family eat at least twice a day-breakfast and dinner. She, the wife sells “uwgu” and the likes somewhere on the road side. At the end she gains about 1,000 naira or less but it’s not even enough so she has to spend out of her capital to feed her kids and buy malaria drugs for the youngest one who just went down with malaria. It’s tough for them; the kids have a year or less age difference between. They can’t afford to be sent to a private school and even a public school is too expensive as they would have to buy books and the likes which they do not have that kind of money for. The kids only watch television at neighbours houses or by the road side where people sell movies and they have to show it in public. Rice is luxury because they would never get their stomachs filled on time hence foo-foo is more advisable and cheaper too.
This is just one scenario, there are worse cases. I’ve heard of a family of twelve living in a one-room apartment. The female children eventually go into prostitution of some sort in order to “keep body and soul together”. In some cases, they end up being impregnated in the course of their “hustle”. The guys do whatever needs to be done to make ends meet. Some turn out well, some turn rogues, some turn liabilities. Is it their fault? I don’t know, I’m not here to push blames or something but there are some decisions we need to consciously take. The decisions we take as youths affect our future and when last I checked, our future involves our spouses and kids. We want them to be as comfortable as comfort itself, we don’t want them to lack any good thing; it doesn’t come without a determination of some sort. It comes with making conscious efforts to achieving whatever we want to achieve.
Pardon me if it seems I’m one-sided because I know it is not always as bad as the picture I painted earlier. Yes, we have people that have eight kids and they can afford to live in a six bedroom flat and even send their kids to the best schools in and out of the country. Of course, we have people like that but I’m not here to talk about them. I’m here to talk about us, we who feel the pain. I might have not grown up in a room apartment, that might not have been the case with you as well but then we have people like that around us, we can almost relate. Before you have sex with that girl without protection just because it’s better without it, ask yourself if you’re ready to start a family just in case the unexpected happens or better still if you’re ready to cater for the responsibility that comes with having a child. Do you have enough money in your account? Do you have a job that pays enough to cater for a family’s need?
Females, we are not perfect, we make mistakes. We give unnecessary attention to the wrong people sometimes. We consider a guy “serious” and offer him “everything” and then he turns out to be the guy we should have stayed away from or never even spoken to or replied in the first place but it’s too late. Yes these things happen but we can go about it more logically. We can be more careful if we don’t want children we didn’t plan for, children whose fathers would deny because he believes we’ve been doing it with everybody else so it couldn’t possibly be his. Even if he accepts it, if he doesn’t have enough resources to cater for a child and we do not come from wealthy families, how are we expected to take care of ourselves and an extra responsibility? We don’t want kids that’ll be wearing torn clothes, kids we can’t afford to take to the park, kids we can't "spoil". We don’t want to end up struggling and at the end of the day all the profit we get in a day is just enough to make dinner for two. We don’t want that.
Before you think about having a “football team” of children, make sure you have a lot and I mean a lot of money. There’s no point bringing children we won’t be able to take care of comfortably into the world. It’s not fun to suffer or make anyone else suffer because of you or your mistakes. We have enough issues in the country due to over-population. I understand that not everyone who has a lot of children to cater for didn’t have them because they wanted a “football team”. Some kept looking for male children and they could only go on and on until their dreams come true. By the time their dreams come true, they already have six girls which is a lot for someone who doesn’t have enough money. Illiteracy and all add to this no doubt but we can always make efforts to not be at the mercy of others before we can feed ourselves and our families because in the end, no one likes a liability. When people realize that taking their resources is all you do, they’d begin to avoid you and give excuses so the earlier we take conscious steps to actualizing our dreams, the better for us and our generations at large.
Facebook - Odusola Aanuoluwapo
Twitter - @odusolar
BBM - 2BC07AB1
This is just one scenario, there are worse cases. I’ve heard of a family of twelve living in a one-room apartment. The female children eventually go into prostitution of some sort in order to “keep body and soul together”. In some cases, they end up being impregnated in the course of their “hustle”. The guys do whatever needs to be done to make ends meet. Some turn out well, some turn rogues, some turn liabilities. Is it their fault? I don’t know, I’m not here to push blames or something but there are some decisions we need to consciously take. The decisions we take as youths affect our future and when last I checked, our future involves our spouses and kids. We want them to be as comfortable as comfort itself, we don’t want them to lack any good thing; it doesn’t come without a determination of some sort. It comes with making conscious efforts to achieving whatever we want to achieve.
Pardon me if it seems I’m one-sided because I know it is not always as bad as the picture I painted earlier. Yes, we have people that have eight kids and they can afford to live in a six bedroom flat and even send their kids to the best schools in and out of the country. Of course, we have people like that but I’m not here to talk about them. I’m here to talk about us, we who feel the pain. I might have not grown up in a room apartment, that might not have been the case with you as well but then we have people like that around us, we can almost relate. Before you have sex with that girl without protection just because it’s better without it, ask yourself if you’re ready to start a family just in case the unexpected happens or better still if you’re ready to cater for the responsibility that comes with having a child. Do you have enough money in your account? Do you have a job that pays enough to cater for a family’s need?
Females, we are not perfect, we make mistakes. We give unnecessary attention to the wrong people sometimes. We consider a guy “serious” and offer him “everything” and then he turns out to be the guy we should have stayed away from or never even spoken to or replied in the first place but it’s too late. Yes these things happen but we can go about it more logically. We can be more careful if we don’t want children we didn’t plan for, children whose fathers would deny because he believes we’ve been doing it with everybody else so it couldn’t possibly be his. Even if he accepts it, if he doesn’t have enough resources to cater for a child and we do not come from wealthy families, how are we expected to take care of ourselves and an extra responsibility? We don’t want kids that’ll be wearing torn clothes, kids we can’t afford to take to the park, kids we can't "spoil". We don’t want to end up struggling and at the end of the day all the profit we get in a day is just enough to make dinner for two. We don’t want that.
Before you think about having a “football team” of children, make sure you have a lot and I mean a lot of money. There’s no point bringing children we won’t be able to take care of comfortably into the world. It’s not fun to suffer or make anyone else suffer because of you or your mistakes. We have enough issues in the country due to over-population. I understand that not everyone who has a lot of children to cater for didn’t have them because they wanted a “football team”. Some kept looking for male children and they could only go on and on until their dreams come true. By the time their dreams come true, they already have six girls which is a lot for someone who doesn’t have enough money. Illiteracy and all add to this no doubt but we can always make efforts to not be at the mercy of others before we can feed ourselves and our families because in the end, no one likes a liability. When people realize that taking their resources is all you do, they’d begin to avoid you and give excuses so the earlier we take conscious steps to actualizing our dreams, the better for us and our generations at large.
Facebook - Odusola Aanuoluwapo
Twitter - @odusolar
BBM - 2BC07AB1
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