This speech was delivered at A one day interactive programme organised by Women Community in Africa.
on the International Day of the Boy child-16th May 2023.
By Khadijah Abdullahi Iya
Founder, The SI Group
Re-Engineering Boys to Value.
Year in Year out, we were worried and still worried about the girl children; about how much they’ve been left behind as we became engrossed with the girl child, we paid little attention to the grooming of the boy child, we protected, advocated and went to great lengths to preserve and upgrade the quality of life and sanctity of what the girl child stands for, in its most purest form.
We are not there yet but it is time we begin to also pay attention to the boys…We are where we are today; politically, socially and even psychologically because there had been a breach of responsibility to carefully groom the boy-child we failed to own, we have not done enough for the boy-child. We have allowed our boy-children to derail into entitled, obnoxious and irresponsible children that always and mostly take, NOT GIVE!
We have seen where a girl child who was carefully raised and nurtured with so much potential and joy to impact the world, has been messed up upon becoming woman by one single boy-child who became a man without the necessary life skills, mental maturity and all the ingredients his mind demand to preserve and upgrade the life, or simply just support the lady bequeathed to him by her parents as a trust.
How an unguided boychild can easily destroy years of training and etiquette because he failed to understand the sanctity of another human being, especially a special human being; who is the crux of humanity, a girl-child has become normalised and sadly most of them cannot be bothered, and neither is society.
Society itself is not spared. We have seen how our untrained boy children have become menaces to society, they have become tools for the destruction of society, we have seen how society has been stagnated and underdeveloped because the untrained boy children became a menace upon it; we have wanton violence and bloodletting, insurgency, militancy and other forms of violent crimes all on the rise.
Sometimes, it is not just the untrained boy child. The very structures of power dynamics and authority which puts not just the girl, but also women in the lower pegs, make it possible for people who are supposedly trained, but lack understanding and the depth of what that instrument can do for humanity to take the reigns of power. Today, we are left with a society where many boy children and even many men do not understand the direct connection of the burden of the instrument of power; which is to give and not to take, to construct not to destroy, to compassionately lead with love and assertiveness and not to use it for self aggrandisement, how the instrument of power and opportunity is NoT to wreak havoc and disunite a people!
What we haven’t done is to balance the work we have done extensively in the girl-child, in the boy child. Because as God created us as man and woman HE made us a pair to complement one another and raise generations after generation to ensure the continuity of life.
The girl-child cannot do without the boychild…and vice versa. If the boychild lack the purity of soul to nurture a generation of excellence that can be passed on, a baton of effective leadership to be passed on for greater good then we all are in trouble.
So as we present to you this beautiful initiative to re-engineer the boy-child to value we pray everyone in this room will carry the message to every nook and cranny of our communities and everyone here knowing that we do not have the luxury to fold our arms.
We must know that for our society to thrive we have to raise both genders properly…Properly too means raising them to understand and appreciate each others roles and how they can work as a team…
We thank everyone who deemed it fit to add their voices to this great project and especially those who did more, by corroborating and partnering with us.
The speakers and all those who have made this project a huge success keep spreading the word.
Thank you 😊
