By Linus Aleke
The Director-General of the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC), Chief Otunba Olusegun Runsewe said that proper parenting will reduce crime in no small measures in Nigeria.
He said that society is paying a big price over parents’ neglect of their parental responsibility.
Runsewe said this while speaking exclusively to ThisNigeria in Abuja.
He said: “Parents are also a very key factor in some of these abnormalities, they cannot be left out. A teacher in the school can only teach your child for a few hours, the more hours the child has to be guided rests on the shoulders of the parents. But right now, most of our parents don’t even know where their children are.
They don’t even monitor them, if you monitor your child and I monitor mine, and the next person monitors his, there will be less crime in our society. But today, because nobody bothers about the neighbors’ child, we are paying a big price. So I totally agree with you that we need a turn around quickly, to begin to monitor our children”.
He added that “a parent didn’t know that his son was a homosexual until after 22 years of practicing. The father almost collapsed on national television, he is a prominent Nigerian. If he had been monitoring that child and guided him very well, he may not have had that kind of experience. But because the guidance was lacking, coupled with insufficient checks and balances on the child, that was why it happened”.
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On the decline of morality in Nigeria, the DG said that it is true that our cultural values are fading out but that was some time ago.
“I had been able to stand firm, I am sure you read my story with Bob risky. When I was doing some of these things, people thought I was chasing shadows. But we have to protect our cultural values, a people without culture are not fit to live,” he said.
He so posited that culture is key to everything we are doing, adding that “for a very long time now, we have been having a challenging attitude or attitudinal problem”.
