Introduction
I personally feel good at this invitation for some reasons. First, it is at a period Girl Guides worldwide is celebrating 105th anniversary of its establishment. This makes it epochal and significant to reflect on the goodness of God on the Association; and to also thank God for the founders and the vision of 105 years which is still on course. I am not sure any of you here or globally was there 105 years ago when Girl Guides Association was founded by Lord Robert Baden Powell and his sister, Agnes Baden-Powell in 1910. This calls for some reflections even as we joyfully thank Almighty God as we reflect on the vision and mission of Girl Guides Association 105 years ago and still counting. I am also very enthusiastic on the invitation to this programme given the cherished ideals of Girl Guides which I have come to admire over the years.
I am aware that the body stands for excellent virtues and leadership skills in which individual female gender is nurtured and developed from Rainbows (age 4 to7) category when Girl-guiding journey starts. Thirdly, I feel good asking me to give a lecture on the theme, A Century and Beyond: Unlocking Potentials and Igniting Change. What a well-though out topic at a time when potentials abound with no corresponding zeal to unlock them. I will come to this later.
Before going to the actual thesis of my keynote address, it is incumbent to take a brief time to interrogate the importance of anniversary. Anniversary offers a moment for reflection, allowing people to take stocks of achievements, challenges encountered and overcome, and growth experienced over the years. Anniversary, being a moment of reflection and joy therefore, affords us to appreciate Almighty God for His grace and sustenance. The Girl Guides Association that has being in existence for 105 years deserves all accolades especially for the visioners, founders and those God have been using in the last 105 years to sustain it and its ideals. I therefore, say hearty anniversary and congratulations, to you all. This calls for celebrations even as the Association takes stocks with a view to moving forward. On this note, I again congratulate the entire structures of the Girl Guides Association for given the world a body that has been impactful for 105 years and still counting.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here because the Girl Guides Association is 105 and as it its tradition to organize camping every year. This year’s camping is premised to discuss and deliberate on the theme, A Century and Beyond: Unlocking Potentials and Igniting Change. At a forum like this especially for an international organization as yours, we need to bring attention to the challenges and plights of the vulnerable female gender in our society. It should not be a merry-making alone. It is therefore, exiting and gratifying for me to be part of this gathering; and also to see female gender in different categories and number in the name of Girl Guides Association of Nigeria. This I must say is profound.
In the keynote address that I am privileged to share with you this morning, I would interrogate the thesis of your theme, discuss some of the things that have eluded us as humans especially as Africans, how these have impacted our youths and your organistaion, what humanity suffers (with a particular reference to our female youths) in returns, what we should do; and cap it all with admonition on how to move forward.
A Century and Beyond
The term, Century is derived from the Latin word, Centum, which means one hundred. It is therefore, a no mean feat especially for your Association coming to celebrate over a hundred years of its establishment. The last one hundred and five years have no doubt being very impactful, epochal and huge. I want to assume that there are literature in which your laudable achievements and exploits of over a century of your establishment are well documented for education and posterity. These are needed not only to show to the world what you have been doing, but also to have proper records of your historicity.
In our coming together to celebrate over 105 years of establishment of Girl Guides Association, we are to reflect with a view to asking questions on the future and relevance of the organization. Going about this, we need to ask few questions:
• Are you satisfied with what we have been able to do?
• What do you need to have changed about our organization?
• How about the challenges of the 21st Century and their impacts on your organization?
These and many other questions would require answers that we may not be able to provide here. Nevertheless the questions should engender some reflections even as we look beyond a Century as the first part of my keynote address.
Now, a Century and beyond would require a change. I am talking of a change in all parameters using different perspectives for your organization to think through the century. Change as they say, is inevitable. We can therefore, ignite the needed change by unlocking potentials that are domiciled in us especially our female youths. One hundred and five years of existence are more than enough to continue to desire series of changes.
Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a world contending with the future of our female youths even as the global world unfolds with different changes we are either not part of, or the ones we are blinded to take. It is also very disturbing that our generation has failed in this regard by allowing technologies to usurp our roles and duties as parents/guardians and significant others. What do we in turn producing other than iPads generation? Come to think of a generation that is raised by emotionless gadgets, a generation of female youths that lacks social skills and empathy; and a generation that have anger issues. The older generation very early at the advent of technologies not only exposes our youths generally to high-tech world, it does so leaving behind those cherished values that make us truly Africans. Even Steve Jobs who created iPad was very careful not to allow his own children to play with computers without guidance.
The social media backlash has raised some fundamental questions on morality especially as they affect the girl-child. If we want to ignite and unlock the potentials, we just have to embark on Behaviuoral Renaissance given the cesspit of moral decadence in our society; and of which the female gender which your association represents has a strong stake. With each passing day, the negatively skewed graph of morality continues on a downward slip. Our society is now enveloped with huge and unprecedented behavioural malfeasances ranging from drug addiction, drug dependence, sex-for-money, sex-for-marks, fake-life adventurism, etc. And unfortunately, the primary gate-keeping which the family used to be well-known for is given way to technologies and social media. This has brought a gulf between then and now. And when we periscope into the future using the contemporary and expected trajectories of behaviour, the future looks bleak. Recently at the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board’s (JAMB) policy meeting with stakeholders, the Federal Ministry of Education in conjunction with JAMB planned to regulate admission entry year to Nigerian universities to 18. The argument was that many Nigerian undergraduates are not emotionally matured to be students in our higher institutions talking about hurried generation. That is, making them to be more advanced in years could remedy many observed behavioural malfeasances in the society and our higher institutions. As soundly plausible the proposed policy may seem, there are issues bothering on parenting and not chronological age. This makes me to differ with the Federal Ministry of Education and JAMB. What we need to do is to go back to those foundational tradition and culture that promote humanity in us. I will revert to this later in my keynote address as the issue bothers on responsive and social skills.
Parenting and Communal Responsibility and Girl-Child as Endangered Species
The incredible world is not the same as it used to be in the 60s to early 90s. And of course this is expected being a known fact that change is constant. It will be out of order if those cherished values are not lost to the ever-increasing vociferous life that is now tied to machine. Where are those family and cultural emotions in which the Yoruba showcase the ethos of Omoluabi in folklores and Alawiye series of J.F. Odunjo? How about the sound Igbo culture which the late revered novelist Chinua Achebe celebrated in many of his classical novels?
As I said, change is inevitable and we have to embrace it but it shouldn’t be done blindly. It is unfortunate that those cherished and celebrated values and cultures have fast given way to Westernisation and unchecked over-saturated media world. In his book, ‘Who Moved my Cheese’, Spencer Johnson revealed some profound truth about change. Spencer Johnson used the cheeses as a metaphor for what we want in life- a job, power status and relationships. While the maze is a metaphor for where one spends his/her time looking for what one wants, this should not becloud our sense of reasoning. Our youths (especially females) are losing theirs and many parents are either helping them to or are too unconcerned to notice what they do.
My contention is, even while we want our youths to be at par with what obtains globally, we have a duty to guide and nurture them to full and positive maturity we desire. And as the Girl Guides Association celebrates the 105th anniversary of its establishment; I urge the leadership to continue to reflect on the visions of the founders. Our girls are particularly the most endangered. And unfortunately, there seems not to be solutions in sight as everyone is too occupied. Do you know that even from the conceptions, lives are terminated if found to be a female foetus in some cultures? In South Korea for example, where gender tests are banned, about 30,000 pregnancies are terminated every year mainly due to female gender reasons. I ask, can law and education change the social attitudes towards girls? How about the activities of the Boko Haram and other militia groups in the Sahel Region? More girls are recruited as bombers mainly because of their alluring God-given beauties and also because of cultural and religious teachings that female children drop the family names; and thereby terminating their ancestral lineage. What a wicked world! In Nigeria, it is more than ten years now that 276 girls were kidnapped from their schools in Chibok, Borno State. Does our government care as it should? Till date more than 200 of them are still in captivity in a so-called sovereign country. Many of us should remember the story of that Pakistan Girl-child, Malala Yousafaz who survived the evil in his country for daring to speak the truth against the prohibition on the education of girls in her country. Malala Yousafaz did not only go ahead to win the Nobel Prize, she is today an alumnae of Oxford University and a global advocate of girl-child education globally.
The Girl Guides Association on 105th anniversary of its existence should raise proudly girls who will take the world by storm and dare to make a difference. On this, your Association needs to do more. And in truth to your mission, which says in part that …We invite all members to make their promise to ‘be true to themselves and develop their own beliefs should be a statement of action. Your vision on an equal world where all girls can thrive is also very excellent. And if truly you want to walk this by the year 2032 as envisaged by your Association to be a girl-led Movement where every girl feels confident to lead and empowered to create a better world together, then you have to dare to do things differently.
Madam President and very distinguished leaders of this great Association, this is a tall one in a world that is full of challenges and limiting to the girl-child. For you to use the well-established goodwill of this association to bring about the desired change, efforts need be made to get our girls to break many boundaries that are limiting them.
Breaking the Boundaries of Tomorrow
Like many human endeavours, women and by extension, our girls are faced with a number of limiting boundaries. Madam Chairman, distinguished ladies and our damsels, permit me to quickly run through some of the limiting boundaries I have observed and found could limit our girls.
• Boundary of Hopelessness
Our country is faced with a number of challenges that have continued to mitigate the humanity in us. While this is not too far from the global challenges, I am quick to admit that ours is a phony country with phony leaders. I feel it each time our leaders appear on national scenes pretending to be what they are not. Unfortunately our youths are fast moving into the train of leadership they at a time detest. Here, where our male youths seem to be having upper hands, their female counterparts cannot match their exposures. If anyone is in doubt of this assertion, such a one will need to do a mental calculation and come out with the statistics of girl-gender that are vociferous on national scenes. What I am contending is that there is a lot of hopelessness around us which if not addressed could affect our girls. Across the country the number of out-of-school children gets increasing with more than 50% of them girls. In the year 2020, over 11 million children and adolescents are said not to have attended schools. Again, our girls constitute more than 60% of this figure. This confirms the female literacy rate that was put at 18.9% between 2010 and 2021 in Nigeria. Presently, we have over 20 million out-of-school children in Nigeria. Of this startling figure, the girl child will be the endangered species as many of them are married off before age 14.
Many of our youthful girls are also having issues with their mental health. This is also not unconnected with series of emotional agonies that young ladies go through in the society. In the statistics released by the Centres for Disease Control, it is reported that one in three high school girls considered suicide in 2021. Teen’s depression has also been found to be doubled between 2010 and 2019. Although the currency of this statistics cannot be ascertained in this address, undeniable inference has shown that it is assuming an epidemic proportion. Let it be said and loudly too, that when it matters, the Girl Guides Association speaks out!
Ladies and gentlemen, is this nor scary? Let us interrogate this further by looking at another boundary.
• Boundary of Self-defeatism
In my years of scholarly work in Psychology, one of the constructs that I have found to limit man is self-defeating thoughts. It is a negative thought that is innately driven. Such thoughts are multidimensional and in different forms and could be seriously defeating. One fundamental thing about such thoughts is that they are a function of the interplay of an individual with her/his environment and significant others. As an Association which builds lives especially of young ladies, it may not interest you that there are many young ladies with legion of self-defeating thoughts around us. Unfortunately, they do not have both mental capacities to cope with the thoughts and/or perhaps who to talk to. While there are many social homes or rehabilitation homes/centres in other climes, we do not have a luxury of such with us. And the few ones are even costly prohibitive. What I am asserting in effect is that there are not many facilities for social supports. Ours is a society that has lost that opportunity of Africanness in which family and cultural bonds are the ties we used to cherish. The absences of this pose serious threats to the wellness of these girls. Your Association therefore, has a duty to look and interrogate this even as you continue to impact on humanity through our girls.
• Boundary of Poverty of Ideas
The world needs thinkers who will dare to make a difference. Unfortunately, there are more of people who are preoccupied with the presence than those who will think without the proverbial box and proffer solutions to the challenges of the world. One of the reasons for this is that our society stifles ideas when they don’t align with those in authorities. It is in this kind of a society that the female gender exists and makes to operate. How then can potentials that will ignite the future be unlocked? This I strongly submit that the Girl Guides Association should interrogate.
National President of the Nigerian Girl Guides Association, national commissioner and other esteemed members of the association, I also feel strong that we should interrogate the girl-child violence if we want to unlock potentials in them. Statistics according to World Health Organisation (WHO) have it that 19 million girls are faced with intimate partner violence before they are 20 years old. WHO also reports that 1 in every 3 (30%) women worldwide has been subjected to either physical and/or sexual intimate partner sexual violence in their lifetime. This needs to be taken more seriously as a public health and mental issue. Although this is not peculiar to the female gender as more men are now victims of partner violence as well (although fear of stigma is the reason why many of them do not report the incidents), the stake in my keynote address is for the young girls who are sexually, physically and emotionally abused in our society. Such violence comes at huge social and emotional fatal costs on them especial young emerging females. We have had cases of homicide and suicide committed by many females including emerging ones. Other consequences are in anxiety, depression, insecurity, poor social skills, pathological behaviour and a host of others.
Madam National Commissioner of Girl Guides Association and other distinguished members of the Association, the question is how the potentials of a girl can be unlocked and ignited if raised and nurtured in such a society when such abuses abound. Perhaps we should ask ourselves before we take the bar too far if we are doing anything about this and/or what are we doing about it? I know we come together in camping, conferences and workshops as the Association deems fit. The question is what do you take home and internalized from your various activities? What do you do to help an average girl that you bring together in your activities to unlock the hidden potentials in her for her to ignite her future? How about taking your advocacies to the government and the public? I recall many years ago as a young child, I had so much enthusiasm about Girl Guides Association and the brother-counterpart, Boys Scout. While there are flashes of the old glories here and there, the fanfare and the regalia procession; those beautiful longings for camps are seemingly waning. We need to find out why.
Let us at this point of my keynote address interrogate the Leadership Model of the world Association of Girl Guides. I studied your leadership model which has a system of mindsets as the main tool. Each mindset is more of a window through which your Association can look through different perspectives of leadership. Let us interrogate them in the context of your 105 anniversary theme.
• Who you are: You are the largest voluntary movement in the world with over twelve million girls and young women from 152 countries including Nigeria. And for about 105 years, you have been transforming the lives of girls and young women worldwide with the aim of making them to achieve their fullest potentials.
• What you do: You offer girls a safe space to practice courage, caring and curiousity. You also claim that your strengths lie in innovative non-formal education programmes, leadership development, advocacy work and community action by empowering girls and young women.
• Shared Leadership: You believe in shared leadership which is a process of everyday activities. This is because; sharing leadership promotes team’s achievements. I share in this sentiment mainly because you cannot do it alone. More so, leaders that want to go far would need to go with people of like minds.
• Leadership practice is a whole person process.
• Everyone can develop their leadership practice in everyday life.
• Anyone, whatever their age, position, or situation, can be more conscious about how they practice leadership.
• Girls can develop their leadership at all ages. It is part of the responsibility of the adults who support them to create spaces for them to practice.
• Our values and behaviour affect who we are as a leader more than the skills we learn.
The above are eloquent of what truly define your association. I take personal delights in some wisdom encapsulated above. This leads me to another thesis of your association, your activities for the girls.
In my quest to further interrogate the theme of your anniversary, I made efforts to research into some of your activities for the girls. I feel very good to get to know that you have a very good educational programme like Free Being me, Action on Body Confidence, Stop the violence, Menstrual Hygiene Management, Internet Stuff Smart Plastic Tides Turners (Wastes to wealth). The Association developmental cycles are also very good and a reflection of what the Nigerian Baptist Convention of which I am a stout member does. From here, we need then to some actionable points. These I do as follows:
Relational Skills as a Pivot to Ignite and Unlock Potentials
Madam National Commissioner, distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen, earlier in the course of this keynote address; I raised the issue of moral values that are fast waning in our society. I refer to those moral and cultural values that truly define us as Africans and as human beings. These are what the Western world calls social skills/interpersonal skills. They are soft skills which are vehicles through which we navigate relationally. These days, many homes are no longer teaching our youngsters these values. This significantly accounts for the reversal of moral fabrics in our society. Unfortunately, our blind quest for uncensored technologies is also snuffing humanity and those valued emotions from our youngsters. You and I should then wonder, what becomes of our world in the coming years?
As an association that prides itself in instilling values and skills in our girls as enunciated earlier in the course of this presentation, I dare to submit that right from the early years, you have a duty to address these concerns. I know there is little you can do given the fact that their formative years are not under your control, this notwithstanding, opportunities of your various camping training and workshops should be utilized to inculcate, shape and nurture them for our society and humanity. Soft skills like basic interpersonal skills, emotive behaviour (the earlier two are embedded in Emotional Intelligence), basic responding skills, basic eye contact skills, non verbal skills, critical thinking, complex problem and strategic thinking are some of the lost valuable skills I place before you at this gathering.
My prayers are with you even as you go on with this humanitarian vocation.
Conclusion
Esteemed members of this Association, ladies and gentlemen, you would recall that in the course of this keynote address, I made a reference to the book written by Spencer Johnson, “Who Moved my Cheese”. I want to draw my conclusion of this assignment by referencing a part of the book and the six basic lessons I will leave with your association. Experience has shown that without leaving the seashore, one will never discover new oceans. I want you to note that. You cannot be talking of unlocking potentials and igniting change as the theme of this year is, without venturing to discover new oceans. In the course of this keynote address, I came out with some challenges confronting the female gender (especially our females) generally and especially the girl-child. I urge you therefore, to leave your seashores. You have dwelt too long on them. Basically as Spencer Johnson, noted in his book, I urge you to know that change happens. Therefore, anticipate change. Of course, you cannot do otherwise if you want to be at par with the changing tides in the globe. While doing that, you have to monitor the change. One of these changes is the social media. How are you helping the following categories of age groups your association (the rainbows, brownies, guides, rangers, inspire and early threfoil guild) to navigate the murky waters of social media in the age when there are disturbing news as good as social media are meant to be and benefit humanity? It is unfortunate however; to know that the humanity in us is fast losing its grip by given way to various forms of madness that are being celebrated by our youth and adults. Here I refer to those between ages 12 to 18. They are the most vulnerable. You have a duty to help them to adapt to change if you are to ignite and unlock their potentials. In them are huge deposits of potentials for them to be the best in their academics, sporting activities, entertainment industry, and even politics and governance. This is the real expected change that we desire for them to enjoy the change, for their parents/guardians, for the society to benefit from the change, for your association to feel fulfilled; and above all, to give glory to Almighty God.
That is the change I charge you to have and inculcate if truly your association wants to walk the theme of your gathering this year. The guiding objective of your association is to “help girls and young women find their voice, and build skills and confidence; and inspire them to discover the best in them to make a positive difference in their community.”
Finally, permit me to paraphrase the thought of Tony O Elumelu given at the Keynote Address he presented at the Nigerian Bar Association General Conference in 2023 in Abuja. I am doing so because it is fitting to your theme. He said and I quote “Let us be inspired by the lessons of history, motivated by the sacrifices of our forefathers (in this context, founding fathers), guided by the wisdom of our elders, and energized by the aspirations of our youth (in this context, our female youngsters)”. Also not too far from this thought, I align my position with the position of Ms Sheila Rouseau, Deputy Regional Director, Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Office, United Nations Population Fund at the Inter Parliamentary Meeting for Parl Americans’ Aglophone Membership: Partnerships to Transform Gender Relations held at Kingston, Jamaica, January 24, 2018 when she enthused in her keynote address that “this is our time to change what is normal, and work together to redefine what is possible”.
Ladies and gentlemen and especially esteemed members of Girl Guides Association of Nigeria, if we must do that and make the difference, then we must be the change agents your association desires.
Thank you again for inviting me here. I wish you a successful anniversary and national camping.
Prof. Aremu, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Achievers University, Owo, delivered the keynote address at the 105 Anniversary International/National Camp of Nigerian Girl Guides Association on Wednesday, 14th August, 2024 at St Gregory’s College, Obalende, South West, Ikoyi, Lagos.