21st Century Parenting: The roles of parential love and hatred towards curbing suicide, cultism and other social vices

As salam alaykum warahmatullah wabarakatuh All gratitude and praises due to the almighty creator who has preserved all our lives to witness this beautiful day of celebration. I am specifically delighted grateful for this opportunity to stand here before you all delivering the speech at this year's edition of sending forth graduates of this great citadel of learning and rewarding good performances by the students all session long. A parent according to Merriam Webster dictionary is 'a person who is a father or mother i.e a person who has a child'. As a verb, the act of parenting involves all the process of bringing forth, bringing up and caring for a child. It is common knowledge that the task, the work and the effort that being a parent deserves is enormous. As a matter of fact, It starts before the child is brought to life and continues till after the child or parent is no more. Hence it is a lifelong assignment.

The 21st century in which we live in currently, without argument, has its own peculiarities, both positive and negative. It is the 'tech age', the social media generation, the instagram, twitter and snapchat trending time. The generation in which things are alien to our culture and religion are now becoming recurrent; homosexuality under various guises, glorification of fraud, most prominent internet fraud, cultism, substance abuse and use of illicit drugs. All this peculiarities are now pushing the children in this age, subjecting them to opperession, peer pressure, unhealthy competition, jealousy and rush to become rich without legitimate work and sadly, suicide. Suicide for various reasons is now an everyday item on our news and society.

At this point, I would like to congratulate the graduands of today, both J.S.S 3 and S.S.S 3. As you embark on the next journry in your lives, do not waste the love your parents have showered on you by nurturing you up to this stage. Aminat International College, the first ever Islamic private school in Ogun state is giving out gifts to the society today in form of well-trained students like it has been doing for the past 20 years. I am one of such gifts here today in form of old student of this college. We are all grateful to the founders of this initiative and the pioneer funder; Alhaji S.A Yusuff Moore. May Allah grant him Aljannah fridaus.(Extracted from the speech delivered at 14th valedictory service of Aminat International College, Abeokuta by Dr. I.B Ghazali)