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"Juvenile Delinquency"
That was the first "big" English phrase I learnt as a secondary school student. I had a very zealous English teacher and she made it her duty to ensure that our diction and knowledge of the English language was almost flawless. Maybe that's why word's thrill me.
But I am not talking about my English. A simple google search revealed that the phrase refers to crimes committed by children before the age of 18. In some countries they are referred to as minors.
That means that crimes committed by people above the 18yr limit could be considered as done by adults, and that's what Youths are. Youths are young adults and being adults mean that they are responsible for their decisions, or at least that is how we want to see them. But it seems like all over the world, we still have some category of young adults, aka youths that still do not take responsibility for their actions. These ones are the perpetrators of evil acts of crime.
I am a Nigerian and I have lived in Nigeria all my life, so I would talk about the crimes done by youths in Nigeria. I would also give some very salient points as to why Nigerian Youths are very very susceptible to a life of crime.
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I was born and raised in the small town of Jos, in the Plateau State, in the north central part of Nigeria. When people hear that I grew up in Jos, apart from the cold weather, the next thing that they usually talk about is the insecurity. The Jos crises have proven to be one of the worse forms of genocide in Nigeria. But there is something quite interesting about all those unrests, The foot soldiers that ensured these unrests were young boys, many of them teenagers but the majority of them in their early twenties.
Young men who could be an asset to the economy are recruited and without any training, they are given guns and told to attack unsuspecting members of the society, burn houses and churches. I am not about to give you the details, but it was not a sight for the eyes.
Then on a fateful day, my family had just moved into our new house we completed the week before. We got back from church and found the door to our house which was securely locked before we left, completely ajar. When we got closer, one of the window protector, that metal that is usually on the window was on the ground beside the door. We got into the house and our TV was missing, my really expensive suit was gone, or dvd player was gone. Other valuable things were also in the wind.
It's a small locality we live in so it wasn't long before we figured that the young man who was contracted to build the house was behind the theft. We told the police, wrote a statement, but like everything in Nigeria, that was the end. What was lost was lost and couldn't come back.
So I decided to come to the west for higher education. New territory. New experiences. Little did I know that one of those experiences was criminality. Anyways, I bought my first smart phone then for N13, 800. I remember vividly, cos it was my first smart phone. And in those days, BBM was the thing in vogue, and somehow, boys had hacked the thing to work on Android.
Anyways, I went to the market to get foodstuff to prepare my meal and my phone didn't come back with me. I was sure that the phone was in my pocket. But how it disappeared is still a mystery to me. I found a way to mourn and move on. But I still bear the scar of that loss till today.
Then I heard that in a certain city, you could have you phone snatched from you in broad daylight and that would be the end. I wanted to be shocked and say it wasn't possible for people to be so brazen with such. Anyways, my Samsung tablet 4 met a new owner in that same city.
I am talking about the crimes that youths carry out as they affect me. But I know that there are a lot more people affected differently. For example, I know of someone who was raped by youths on her way back from a party. Her female friends couldn't help her. They had to save themselves.
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Ok! Enough of talking about crimes. Why do we see a lot of crimes by youths. The answer can be multidimensional, but only one answer hits home, literally.
Dysfunctional families
Most youths that are into criminal activities are either orphans or from families with single parents or separated parents. They were raised by parents who had no idea what it takes to raise a child. Most couples just decide to have the pleasure of sexual intercourse and a cute baby 9 months later without any thought as to what kind of values to instill into the child. The truth is that most people are already dysfunctional themselves because they came from families that their parents were clueless about child training and they pass the same to their own children
I know one thing for sure, If people can think it through before bringing a child into the world, the future might just have less criminals who are youths.
When I was a pupil in primary school, I heard that more than 80 percent of Nigerians are living below the poverty line, meaning that they could not afford 1 dollar a day. By the time I got to secondary school, it hadn't gotten any better.
Today, it is a lot worse than it was. More people are in intense economic hardship than ever before. This would definitely drive them to the basal human instincts of survival. And, one of those instinct was to kill your neighbor and eat him as dinner, or just collect all his property as soon as he is dead.
People would rob banks and individuals alike to be able to survive, consequences be damned, they may not survive to even face them.
If these 2 things are fixed, Crime would drop significantly.
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stay Jiggy
