DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR CHILDREN ARE?

'DO you know where your children are?' This is a phrase made popular by Frank Olize a TV presenter on Nigeria's state TV station NTA in the nineties. This phrase I can argue is as potent and relevant in our society today as it was in the nineties. Inspite of the advancements in communication ;I mean we have it all today - email, social media, phone calls and even teleconferencing, in spite of all the communication gadgets at our disposal, the question still stares us Papas in the face - do we know where our children are? Do we have any idea what they are up to this moment?
The unfortunate truth is that we have surrendered the role of checking up on our children to surrogates. Some of us work so hard to send our children to expensive boarding institutions and that is it. Money can't buy love it is said, what is more true is the fact that money can't buy good parenting either.
We are conspicuously not there when they need us most. We are always too busy chasing money to realize the importance of sparing some time for our beloved kids. Our women aren't any better either. For most women ;independence, career, and self fulfilment resonate more than monitoring 'just children' how unfortunate.
This missing link must be responsible for the social ills that is eating up the innocence of our young ones. A clear example is the cancer of secret cults in our schools. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum, because we have abdicated our roles as role models and protectors of family values, our kids have replaced us with the false sense of family and security that their peers in cult groups offer.
Related to that is of course, the rising cases of youth violence, criminality and rape. And when the bubble finally bursts and we get summoned to the police station for a crime our child has committed or sadly, to the morgue to retrieve our child's remains, we more often than not blame it on just about everyone but ourselves.
See how a simple task of knowing where our children are can determine whether they have there names written in the hall of fame or hall of shame? We should remember that in the end we all as Papas will be called upon to give an account of the role we played in either making or marring the lives of the kids entrusted to us. Every Papa worth his salt should like to emerge squeaky clean. Let's think about it.