The Nigerian Child in 2027 -By Prince Charles Dickson Ph.D

“It is 9 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”

That famous line, made popular by the retired NTA anchorman Frank Olize, used to sound like a gentle public service reminder. Today, in Nigeria, it sounds like a national emergency siren wearing bathroom slippers.

Some years ago, I wrote an admonition on the Nigerian child. I returned to it recently and found myself struggling, not with grammar, not with memory, but with definition. What exactly is the Nigerian child today? The answer is no longer straightforward. Like the Nigerian Dream, that child has been stretched, edited, downloaded, privatized, outsourced, imported, exported, and in some cases, completely misplaced. A lot is being eroded in this country. Maybe what remains is the Nigerian spirit, that stubborn myth of survival that makes a child eat garri with confidence and still argue Champions League tactics with the authority of a UEFA coach.

So, this week, let us deviate from the usual political theatre. Let us leave APC, PDP, ADC, NDC decampments, defections, cross-carpeting and other forms of adult gymnastics. Let us ask a simpler, more dangerous question: where are our children?

Some will answer quickly. “They are in the sitting room.” “They are in the bedroom.” “They are in the children’s room.” “They are with grandma.” “They are with their big aunty.” “They are on holiday.”

Of course, even holidays in Nigeria have class distinctions. The children of the masses go on holiday. The children of the powerful go on vacation. One group visits the village and returns with mosquito bites, mango stains and moral instruction. The other group returns from Dubai asking why Nigerian light behaves like a spiritual attack.

But let us not deceive ourselves. Many of our children are physically under our noses, yet culturally, morally, intellectually and emotionally, they have travelled farther than our passports can follow.

The Nigerian child of today may barely speak his mother tongue unless he lives in a suburb where English has wisely surrendered to pidgin. He knows “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” but cannot greet elders properly in the language of his ancestors. He can identify Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, but Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti are beginning to look like names of streets where Uber drivers get confused.

We once had children who could recite the national anthem and pledge with trembling seriousness. Today, some children mock the pledge with the tired wisdom of adults: “I pledge to Nigeria my country is not by force.” And can we blame them completely? They watch the adults steal in English, pray in tongues, campaign in agbada, govern in confusion, and then ask them to be patriotic.

Once upon a time, punishment had poetry. “Kneel down. Close your eyes. Hands up.” “Pick a pin.” “Write ‘I will not make noise in class’ two hundred times.” We were disciplined with a certain theatrical wickedness that today would require a committee, a petition, and possibly a human rights seminar. There was the Onward exercise book with the multiplication table at the back. There was the sacred 2 times 2 that followed you like destiny. There was Understanding Mathematics, which could serve one family for six years and still remain cleaner than many politicians’ manifestoes.

We covered our textbooks with old newspapers and calendars. A child going to school with a newly covered book walked with the dignity of a commissioner. We waited for the day we would wear trousers or skirts to school because that meant seniority had arrived. Today, seniority arrives with a smartphone, an earpiece and a child asking his mother for Wi-Fi password before asking for morning food.

What happened to that Nigerian child?

The exercise books now carry Messi, Ronaldo, Chelsea, Arsenal, anime characters and imported superheroes. We call it globalization. But what exactly is global about a child who cannot write a proper narrative essay titled “How I Spent My Last Holiday”? What is global about a child who can dance every TikTok challenge but cannot name the states and capitals of his own country without consulting Google like a small oracle?

We are raising children who are fluent in screens but stammering in values. Google has replaced group study. Reality television has replaced reading. Explicit lyrics have replaced moonlight tales. We moved from Sesame Street to Ben 10, from Tales by Moonlight to YouTube shorts, from “who stole the meat from the cooking pot?” to “subscribe, like and share.” The children did not invade this age by themselves. We opened the gate, gave them data, and then started shouting when the jungle entered the sitting room.

There was a time when children learned art, agriculture and home economics. A child knew that yam did not fall from heaven and soup was not born inside a takeaway pack. Today, some children cannot peel pineapple, cannot cook the soup of their lineage, and think every meal outside noodles requires government intervention. The boys are not exempt. Ask some of them to change a bulb and they will look at the ceiling as if NEPA has handed them a theological crisis.

Meanwhile, private schools have multiplied like campaign promises. Tom, Dick and Harry Academy. International Royal Supreme Global Montessori College of Excellence, located behind one uncompleted building beside a mechanic workshop. Children are wearing blazers in April heat, speaking forced phonetics, and coming home with homework that confuses the parents, the child and sometimes the teacher.

But while some children are being trained to pronounce “water” like foreign diplomats, millions of others are outside school, watching Nigeria happen to them. In some states, teachers are perpetually on strike. In some villages, classrooms are roofless. In some communities, children walk into danger just to learn ABC. Yet we still gather once a year for prize-giving day, clap for children we barely know, take pictures for WhatsApp status, and convince ourselves that education is moving forward.

Then we wonder why the quality of debate in our National Assembly sometimes sounds like a badly rehearsed inter-house sports argument.

Where are our children?

They are watching us. That is the problem.

They watch us lie on the phone: “Tell him I am not around,” while sitting in the parlour chewing groundnut. They watch us beat other people’s children while protecting our own from correction. They watch us condemn corruption while living above our earnings. They watch us buy examination questions, manipulate admissions, settle police checkpoints, jump queues, forge receipts, inflate invoices, and then gather them for morning devotion to preach righteousness.

Nigeria is not short of sermons. Nigeria is short of examples.

We are so obsessed with the future that we are neglecting today. Every parent says, “My children are my future.” Beautiful. But the future is not raised by slogans. The future is raised by presence, discipline, affection, culture, curiosity, labour, boundaries and truth. A child cannot inherit a country that adults have already mortgaged to greed, ethnic suspicion, religious hypocrisy and political unseriousness.

Once upon a time, children read newspapers. They did not understand everything, but they encountered the nation. They saw headlines, names, crises, policies, coups, budgets, football scores and obituaries. Today, we say we are protecting them from bad news. Perhaps. But we have replaced newspapers with fantasy, gaming, gossip blogs and algorithmic noise. We are raising children who know the private lives of celebrities but not the public life of their country.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not campaigning for a return to the age of fear, where fathers were small military governments and mothers were permanent ministries of warning. Not everything old was golden. Some of it was rust painted yellow. But not everything new is progress either. Some things are just confusion with Bluetooth.

There was something we had. Community. Shame. Respect. Shared correction. The neighbour could discipline you and your parents would thank him before asking what happened. Today, the neighbour corrects your child and you arrive like a lawyer without a wig: “Who gave you the right?” So, the child learns early that accountability is negotiable.

And now to the story of Stella, Aliyu, and that vanished country of our childhood.

In my first year in secondary school, something happened that could fill a chapter in the museum of Nigerian innocence. One day, Papa Stella appeared in school. His presence alone disturbed the atmosphere. In those days, when a parent came to school unannounced, it was not for career day. It was either disaster, disgrace, or both wearing sandals.

There was a meeting: Stella, her father, our class teacher and the principal. Later, news filtered through that Aliyu’s father would also be in school the next day. Nobody missed school. Even malaria would have postponed itself. The suspense was thicker than boarding house beans.

The next morning, Aliyu’s mother arrived early. I rushed so fast I forgot my ten kobo pocket money. On the assembly ground stood nearly 1,500 students, teachers, school authorities, Papa Stella and Aliyu’s mother. We waited for revelation.

The principal climbed the podium, cleared his throat, and in that heavy baritone reserved for judgment day, announced: “Aliyu told Stella he loved her, and Stella went home crying.”

That was all.

Aliyu had not kidnapped anybody. He had not opened a betting account. He had not sent midnight messages. He had not invented one strange online relationship. He simply told Stella, “I love you.” For that dangerous romantic terrorism, he received six strokes of the cane and a one week suspension. His mother accepted the punishment. We received a sermon. The whole school trembled. Love, that day, went underground.

Do not ask when I finally gathered courage to tell my own Stella anything. In those days, emotions had curfews.

Today, by comparison, the world has changed. Children know too much too early, yet understand too little too deeply. Innocence is no longer stolen gradually; it is streamed. Curiosity no longer knocks; it downloads. Childhood is now being negotiated between parents, peers, platforms, schools, strangers, celebrities, and devices that sleep beside our children more faithfully than some guardians.

So again, I ask: where are your children?

Not their bodies. Their minds. Their tongues. Their values. Their dreams. Their friendships. Their fears. Their loyalties. Their screens. Their silences.

The Nigerian child in 2027 will not be saved by nostalgia alone. We cannot keep singing about the good old days while refusing to build good new ones. Patriotism must return to the home before it can return to the anthem. Education must return to formation before it becomes mere certification. Culture must return to daily life before it becomes a costume for Independence Day. Parenting must return to presence before it becomes school fees and birthday photos.

At 9 o’clock, the question remains.

Do you know where your children are?

And more frighteningly, do they know where Nigeria is—May Nigeria win!