The Bishop, Diocese of Kaduna Anglican Communion, Rt. Reverend Timothy Yahaya has said Nigeria’s leadership lacked fatherly role models whom the people could look up to for a decent and crisis-free society.
Bishop Yahaya who stated this while fielding questions from journalists on this year’s Father’s Day, lamented that some of the nation’s leaders who are supposed to be mentors to the younger generation were even into drug abuse.
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“The leadership of our country, whether at the Federal, State or local government levels are supposed to be fathers. What are the examples they are setting for the children?
“You even find out that some of our leaders today are into drugs, when leaders are into drugs what do you expect children to do.
“Fathers are the role models of the society, can we say we have fathers who are role models in our nation.
“When the people who are supposed to be patrimony are stealing in millions and billions of naira, the next thing they need to do is to steal in zillions because we have not heard them stealing in zillions. Will you actually call them fathers?
“You look at countries like South Africa, you look at their names in the world, in Southern Africa, Nelson Mandela was an epitome of father in our generation and next generation. Where are the Nelson Mandelas of the world? Where are those sacrificial fathers who are ready to sacrifice everything for their families to be great?
“So the indices of father is one explanation we find to problems in our nation because father must ensure that children are brought up properly and the resources of the nation are brought for the betterment of the society.
“So today the greatest question to ask on this father day is where are the fathers of Nigeria as a nation, where are the fathers of this generation. Today the fathers are absent because they are busy chasing mundane things.
“Inability of fathers to provide for their homes is a failure of generations because when your father teach you very well that as a father you should provide for the home, then what you learnt from your father you bequeath it on your children, and they know that their responsibilities is to provide for their families.
“For us in Christianity, any father that does not provide for his family is worse than an unbeliever. So fathers that are not providing for their homes need to ask themselves, whether they are fathers or they only occupy the title. It is one thing to have a title of a father, it is another thing to be a practical father,” he stressed.
