They say, that woman is the salvation or the destruction of the family. That she carries its destiny in the folds of her mantle.

Same can also be said of a society, nation or state. The destiny of any society/culture or people can be seen when one looks at the soundness and health of the units [family] that makes it up. The family is the metaphor for every other part of a society. It is the nucleus of civilization.

To re-phrase the great sage Confucius, “to put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first produce the near-perfect woman; we must first have the best mothers before every other thing.

The inability of Nigeria, in fact one may even say the Black race to equal its brothers can be trace to the manner and ways that we have treated our womenfolk. We have shown consistently something akin to tolerance when we are dealing with our mothers, sisters and daughters. And look closely to every society that have done that and you will see a slow decline in almost every aspect of their life.

In some of these cultures, education of a female is seen most times as pure waste of resources. But how can you have liberated men if the mothers are ignorant? How can you have free men if the women are slaves? The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education; the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. It is when people are capable of reasoning constructively that you can have growth; be it materially, emotionally, spiritually, philosophically or even physically.

We are paying a huge price for the degradation of our females. The deterioration of the family unit today in our society is the consequence of years of neglect on our women. That we have a society today that has no principle, no moral guideline or restraint, conscience, no history, no identity to the whole is the result of our action. Having bungled raising our children, there is nothing else in our system that we can get right. And it is the women that raise the children!

Home is the place where boys and girls first learn how to limit their wishes, abide by rules, and consider the rights and needs of others. Life’s principles, the appreciation of beauty, strength of character are stuffs that can only be build from the foundation. The family is the only unit that from cradle to grave shapes the individual. Character building begins in our infancy, and continues until death. And you can never have a good knife if it is made of bad steel. If a mother is an ignorant, spirit-broken woman who have no understanding of whom she is and the immense power within her bosom, whatever that she suckles will reflect her slavishness, stupidity and crudity.

The senseless rampant violence, the total disregard of human life and sanctity, the total disregard and breakdown of the rules and laws all can attributed to our failure to educate our women. The stifling fear and suspiciousness that pervades the atmosphere here stems from the collapse of the home institution. Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks. Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.


We must turn our attention to correcting this fatal mistake in our live. We must find and create immediate corrective measures to redeem this. If we go about pretending that it doesn’t matter, we must also forego any possibility of future generations catching up with the rest of humanity. Each preceding generation plants a tree that gives the next its shade.

In some well developed societies, there are colleges dedicated solely to training and equipping the soon-to-be mothers with all they need to raise future generation with better promises. The sense of feminine pride, patriotism, identification with the very society and resiliency is inculcated into them; something they also pass along to their children.


Hope is not lost yet; for when men deprives women of the intellect, they have always resorted to the more powerful of the two: instinct. I sincerely wish that our women can see this as the only mission they have if our race must survive and thrive. Life on this planet is born of a woman. Its cycle, seasons; its creative and destructive elements are all guided by the feminine force. I believe that if the women can be offered even a small glimpse of their power, then we can truly begin to dream anew of the kind of society that we seek to build.


Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.