Happy new month everyone. I wish you a blessed month ahead. In today’s post, my friend Opeyemi Tegbe, the one who served us State of the nation: What we could have avoided is back with something nice. I’m sure you’d love it. Sit back and enjoy it.

“A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children…”
– Proverbs 13:22

According to Alexandra Stoddard, a philosopher, what we do today, right now, will have an accumulated effect on all our tomorrows. The good or bad we do will outlive us and have impacts on our generations unborn. The western world has left Africa behind in terms of development because their past heroes laid solid foundations that subsequent generations built upon. In Africa, our own ‘heroes’ built debts and hatred that we are battling with today.

The accumulated shortcomings of previous generations have gone a long way to affect the current generation beyond mind’s eye. So why must we continue to give our progenies sleepless nights praying to remove a curse? Why should we give future governments the burden of  fighting a demon we created? Was it possible for the previous generations to have spared us some of these headaches we have today? Yes, it was.

Honestly, I believe too much in the phrase – “get it right the first time,” it is better than labouring to quench the effect of what has been wrongly done. Africa is labouring under underdevelopment, economic hardship and generational curses because those who have gone ahead didn’t get it right and we are dealing with the problems they caused, plus the ones we are causing for future generations. Why don’t we just make moves to get our acts together and do things right?

Well, I know there is no battle too strong for God but I can make several suggestions on how to prevent it. The major reason why curses are being passed from one African generation to another is because of little or no consideration for posterity. Africans, most especially, think and live for “now.” Unless we live our lives with the consciousness that whatever we do now has impact on our tomorrows, new generations will continue to suffer for the mistakes of the previous ones. 

Also, we lack love and care for the man next door. Recently, I went to my hometown and I had a baffling experience. A woman, who works as a cleaner with a Federal hospital is being owed her salary for three months. I decided to investigate the cause because it’s a very rare case in a Federal hospital. I discovered that the hospital had sub-contracted the payment of salary to a contractor who refused to pay salaries as at when due, for reasons best known to him/her. The woman cannot even live from hand-to-mouth and she survives out of what I can term as “financial agony.” I suspect that sometimes in the corner of her room, the woman will take her time to rain curses on whoever is holding on to her hard-earned salary.  Can you imagine the number of cleaners raining curses on the same person, rightful curses at that?

The same thing applies to political administrators who perceive governance as a means to enrich themselves and their unborn generations. Current issues like accidents due to bad roads, mortality due to poor health facilities just to mention a few are as a result of accumulated flaws in governance. And the victims heave curses on those behind their woes. These curses will definitely play out someday, if not on the lives of the perpetrators, then in the lives of their future generations.

Looking into the above-mentioned generational issues, the current generation has a great task ahead. We cannot continue to pass burdens to the oncoming generations and as such, you and I have a role to play. No matter how far we have gone on the wrong road, we can still turn around. We really need to turn around. Apart from erasing the effect of the inherited problems, we also need to be guided in our ways and do things in the normal course. It’s high time we stopped thinking and acting like today is the last day of our lives – for the sake of the unborn generations. Let’s all strive to leave a good inheritance for those coming behind us.