Letter To The Editor: Youths And Social Vices

The reports of some pockets of violence in various polling units across the states of the federation during the just-concluded elections called for a serious concern. To see that most of the perpetrators are youths leave a bad taste in the mouth of all and sundry whose thinking are upright.

This restates the social vices, bad traits, unhealthy and negative behaviours that are against the morality of the society and frowned at by the public amongst our youths.

The United Nations defines a youth as a person between the age of 15 and 24. 

In many part of Sub-Saharan Africa, violence is associated with young men between the ages of 15 and 30 or precisely 35 years of age.

It is however sad today to find many young people turned to agents of ruin and destruction instead of being agents of peace and transformation. They freely engage in social vices ranging from drug abuse, alcoholism, smoking, indecent dressing, prostitution, cultism, examination malpractice, hooliganism, gambling, rape and many other unhealthy lifestyles.

Over time, peer pressure has become the major cause of youth involvement in social vices.

Poverty, mental illness, inherited traits, broken homes and complex interactions of psychological and biological forces that encourage individuals to rebel against social norms are also some of the reasons why youths engage in untoward act. 

These vices have contributed to increase in the number of rudderless youths, hence making them to be stagnant in the areas of unproductiveness for too long.   As a result, governments at all levels should see the need to accord extreme premium to youths. 

Parents are not left out in the fight against social vices and electoral violence. They must as a matter of responsibility inculcate cultural and religious values in their children.

According to Robert Kennedy, the 84th United States Attorney General, “the world demands, not a time of life but a state of mind; a temper of will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.” This must always ring bell in the head of youths to guarantee better future for themselves.

•AMINAT AHMED,

Osogbo