”Older men declare war. But it is the youth who must fight and die.

And it is the youth who inherit the tribulations and sorrows

That are the aftermath of war”.Herbert Housear (1895-1964).

As the corybantic schmaltzy of any Catholic Communicant cannot stop  the sartorial  brio of the Pope from being festooned with the Zucchetto, so also no nation, state and society can cardinally tread the path of continuity, growth and progress if it does not fundamentally strategize for the future of its children. It is therefore the absolute grundnorm and also morally imperative for every society to imbibe and practice the principles of maxima debetur pueris revential” (The greatest respect is due to the children).

 

The Heraclitian dictum posits that society will always be in a state of flux and conflict. But the rancid intensity of bellicosity in most African Nations and the use of our children as child soldiers call for immediate cassation. Child soldiers are teens used by African warlords to prosecute their demonic ambition for power, fame and wealth. The essayist Joseph Conard (1857-1924) asserts that “All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upwards on the miseries or credulities of mankind”.

 

In preparing the child soldier for war he is first and foremost indoctrinated and infused with propaganda to psychotically hate the so-called enemy. He is then given a terrorist and sadistic mindset which heightens his sanguinary proclivities. He now becomes an expert in handling all ranges of riffles, missiles and rocket propelled grenades. This prototype and phenomenal monster is let lose on the streets and battle fields under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

 

With acerbic pungency he becomes oublietted in the cacophony of gun powder. The staccatos and flurry of bullets become his resonant poetry. The horrendous decimation of lives, property and raping of his mothers’ age becomes his social tradition. He becomes quintessentially reflective of the Harakiri instinct. His naïve and parochial mental binoculars cannot fathom that he is filing the blades of the guillotine that will be used to behead him. The warlord luxuriates in this grotesque childhood drama.

 

A warlord in most cases masquerades as a revolutionary fighting to liberate his people from oppression, poverty and death. They are usually endowed with the power of oratory. Their popular revolutionary speeches are taken from Karl Marx, Engels, Stalin, Mussolini, Fidel Castro etc. The one from the Chairman Mao Tse Tung runs thus, “A revolution is not the same as inviting people to dinner, or writing an essay, or painting a picture. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another” He further said “political power grows out of the barrel of the gun”.

There are warlords and there are indeed warlords. Some warlords are genuinely propelled to fight because of obvious political oppression, economic strangulation, tribal annihilation, social marginalization, religious discriminations and injustice etc.

 

But the use of teens as juvenile soldiers and cannon fodders in the political cannonade of warlords must be discontinued and condemned in no uncertain terms. This hideously teratoid crime against children is turning our world into an unconscionable collectivity without spirituality, beatific vision and divine afflatus. The warlords must opt for the path of dialogue or prosecute their senseless wars without breaching the principles of “sic utere tuo alienam non laedas (so use your property as not to damage the property of another).

 

When the war is over there is an armistice, the African child soldier finds it difficult to live a normal life because of the multifaceted effect of his previous soldier-life. The sociology and psychology of violent crime must have emasculated his mental vitality. He remains a function of grotesque variables with a predisposition to violent crimes.

 

The larger society is then prone to his butchery propensities. It is difficult to salvage him from Traumatic Stress Disorders (TSD) and the hyacinth temperaments, because the time spans of his idiosyncratic gestation from childhood through adolescence to old age was defective. He will rather grow from childhood to obsolescence.

 

We call on the United Nations, the African Union and other such –like bodies to protect the African child from the horrors of war and the ghoulishly bellicose antics of warlords. The idea of warlordism should be discarded. All warlords must be held accountable after the end of the war at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for crimes against humanity. All necessary international charter, Conventions and legislations protecting the right of the child must be whipped up against them.

 

The atrocities of the Lords’ Resistance Army in Uganda, perpetrators of the genocide in Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Abubakar Shekau of Boko Haram, leaders of the sadistic Revolutionary United Front (RUF) Army in amputating the hands and legs of innocent children in Sierra Leone, the Sudanese Government in the Lethal use of the Janjaweed guerillas to annihilate the black Africans in the Darfur Region and all the warlords in the seemingly endless war in the Ivory Coast and Congo must be brought to book. The action against the ex-Liberian warlord Charles Taylor must be commended.

 

Finally, Africa is the continent of the future and the prospect of growth and development is concretely embedded in our ability to channel our every effort towards the development of our children through sound education superimposed in the moral high ground. John Masefield asserts that, “He who gives a child a treat makes joy-bells ring in heaven’s street and he who gives a child a house builds palaces in Kingdom come” The essayist, Richard Dana said” Better to be driven out from among men than to be disliked by children”. Our African warlords must be prevailed upon to shun wars and imbibe the concept of dialogue and leave our children alone as the world marks Children’s Day. HAPPY CHILDREN’S DAY!

 

 

Bobson Gbinije

MADATE AGAINST POVERTY(MAP)

Warri

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