A Love Letter Gone Wrong -By Ekekere Samuel

The more I think about this, I’m perplexed. In all the years I have taught as a teacher, close to two decades, I have never seen a love letter until this one. I wrote my own and only love letter to one Miss Grace when I was seventeen and she was fourteen. I thought I had a thing for her so I dared to let her know. It was unlike me, the quiet teenage boy. I regretted that action when I realized the attraction wasn’t mutual. Well that was many years ago.

So recently, as I sat in my office, I got a report that a letter was trending in the school among the pupils. How about that? I asked. I sought to know the contents of the letter, to whom the letter was written to and from where the letter had arrived.

While I would eventually wish I didn’t read the content, I was even more pained by the fact that the letter was sent to a minor from a major. This girl is ten years and the man professing love is a forty year old man who wouldn’t face the assignment he was tasked to do by the school’s management. I’m pained because this man is a teacher and I expected him to understand the ethics of his profession, the vow of morality which is his profession’s creed.

How would a teacher profess love to a ten years old pupil and be comfortable about it? What demon was too strong and evil to have pushed the old man into such small minded action, to have stoop so low to profess love to a girl young enough to be his child. He allowed his lust take him too far.

This is a similar fate with our society debacled by the many ills she is faced. Our leaders who should set the pace and define the direction for us are engaged in a romance of abuse. They tell us they love us but in reality, they are offering to feed their lust for filthy lucre.

What did I do? I fired him. I hate to have done this but I have no regrets either. I just feel for the young mind that had being abused, and introduced into a life too early. The exposure is regrettable but the most I could was get the man out.

Getting that man out of the school system was easy. But can we so easily flush out the bad eggs from our political system. Are citizens not suffering from the negative impact of criminal elements who are held bent on forcing their negativity on them? Frankly, most citizens are not even aware that they are been hoodwinked by the same people they look up to and cheer.

The wounds are evident for all to see. Poor infrastructure, low quality education, an increasing crave fo citizens to get out of the country, brain drain, poverty; we don’t need to look too far to see that the masses are being pressed under a yoke that they are not fit to carry. We hope that they do have their eyes open to see.

It’s just sad that the system has silenced dissenting voices so that no one is willing to say things the way they are. No one wants to look at the system critically and tell the crazy power drunk men in power the truth about their actions. No one wants to be the voice of courage to enable citizens see what they are losing by celebrating their favs. It’s not okay.

So this love letter I read crippled my mind. And I know it did have the same effect on others; the reason the voices around the letter were in hush tones. Everyone who read it could not believe their eyes. They were too afraid to say what their eyes had seen. It’s just pitiful.

It’s hard to close our eyes to the realities of life. When things happen the way they do, we are forced to answer questions we can only ask ourselves. At this point, we’d accept the reality that these things happen every once in a while. We’d have to fold up our sleeves and get back to working our country. Hopefully, the results will turn out positive.

Ekekere Samuel is a teacher, writer and author of several books. He is the founder of Soaring Life Ministries, a ministry committed to helping people find purpose through life.