Governing a people successfully is about providing adequate food, clothes, and shelter for all of them. Production of these necessities will not be difficult if we, who are in controlling positions, love the people, with love manifested in action, like we love our family – for, as a nation, we are indeed one family.
In a family, parents govern the children with pure guileless love. They put the children in school and guide them toward a brighter future.
But, in the mid-20th century, some world’s think tanks began to reason about the extent parents should be entitled to decide the future of their children. They began to ask, What are the risks or benefits of parental control, or let be, on children? What good measure of either should parents apply to children?
Thus, parental control began to be re-analyzed in theory. Alternate opinions began to emerge. Advocates of parental detachment contended that the method would nurture diversity in a child’s ability to compete and survive. By so teaching, the philosophers purposefully and unknowingly set forth a civilization where our children no longer live harmoniously with us.
Parental control began to fall into decline. Becoming more disconnected from our children, we began to be restricted to our self-interests. Likewise, our minors started acting out of stubbornness and self-interest. And so, our sons and daughters began to go into the world, meeting with strangers who showed them unwholesome ways of survival.
Our children started leading irresponsible lives soaked by mistakes; and, at all times, causing us pain and grief. Our youthful resources, through whom we could have effectively harnessed our vast material resources to become great people, have been allowed to waste, due to the strange idea of letting our young who need our support rather forage for themselves.
The appearance of a similar idea in governance in Nigeria started in the late 1970s and mid-1980s and resulted in the removal of government support from the people. This was done through policies of austerity, reductions in government spending (such as removal of subsidies; liberalization; enabling private investors’ interest to override that of the public; deregulation; and downsizing of the workforce) leaving the people to their various fates.
With the loss, in this way, of crucial guidance and support from the government, many of the people began to make severe mistakes and thence failed to succeed in life. They next transformed into various ruthless groups, such as robbers, cultists, kidnappers, militants, terrorists, and regional armies.
Managing such a new civilization, successfully, requires a practical public-oriented approach. Public good is too important to relinquish to entrepreneurs who cannot but work for their private interest, with no tendency to be burdened with public responsibility.
In this circumstance, the “family principle of governance” will restore affluence. It is founded on the axiom of absolutely loving the people under our control and instituting their free and compulsory education to high levels, towards proper employment, to produce the supremely important food, clothes, and shelter for national prosperity. We should do this as passionately as we would for our children, for, indeed, the youths are children of our one large national family.
