My wife works for an international organization that is involved in the education development of the girl child at a global level. So very often, we get to discuss on what they are doing for the girls and how it’s so important to attend to the issues surrounding the girl child. I would be right to say that a lot has been done to give the girl child her place and a voice in the society. In Nigeria alone, there are several social groups, religious groups, and activists championing projects to help liberate the girl child from problems she is faced with. While all these initiatives around girl child development are ongoing, the boy child seems to have been forgotten. The subtle idea that the female gender is the weaker sex and that the male stands at an advantageous position in society has further given the female issues more attention and prominence. Culture and Society have taught boys not to show weakness and display emotions. They say only women cry and seek for help. So an average male grows to believe that the best way to deal with issues is to bottle them up and sort himself out. Should a boy cry, his peers will laugh and call him weak. So rather than being laughed at, he shuts up and shuts down. Due to this neglect and underestimation of the plight of the male gender, many of them are turning to social vices for solace and comfort. Drug abuse, sex, pornography, crime seem to be where they run to for consolation. The truth is that the boy is just as vulnerable as the girl child. Unfortunately, society, civil and religious groups seem to have turned a blind eye to these truths. Something drastic must be done before we lose the next generation of men. No matter what our religious, political or ethnic preferences are, a child is a child whether male or female. We must empower the boy child also. Remember, these boys live in the same society with the girls, if we do not pay keen interest to their wellbeing we might just be endangering the future of the girl child. These boys will end up marrying the girls; work in the same office with them; be boss or subordinates of some of them, SELAH! As part of my quota in the development of the male gender, I am organizing a 2-Day Boot Camp for Boy, ages 13 to 19 years. It is called BOYZ LEAD.x
