MORAL VALUES

Around 2008 or 2009, I accompanied my Uncle on a courtesy visit to the office of the late Professor Dora Akunyili, then Nigeria’s Minister of Information. My Uncle’s wife operated an NGO focused on the protection of unborn children, and we were seated in a conference room on the 11th floor of Radio House in Abuja’s Central Business District. During the meeting, Professor Akunyili, our host, lamented a troubling ideology emerging among young girls: the belief that premarital sex was advisable as a means to "prepare" for the pain of childbirth after marriage. With palpable frustration, she declared, “That idea is from the pit of hell!”

This memory resurfaced recently when I encountered a disquieting scene. Leaving home early one morning to cleared some of my products to waiting customers, I left around 6 a.m. only to see two teenage boys and girls lingering intimately outside. What unsettled me was not merely their behavior but the broader societal normalization of teenagers hosting partners overnight, whether under parental roofs or in their own spaces. How, I wondered, do they evade parental oversight? How did we arrive at a cultural moment where such practices go unchallenged?  

Months ago, I noted on Facebook that if you worked as a nurse or pharmacist, the most frequent ailments you treat among young people would be sexual infections. Many now resort to desperate, unproven remedies quietly buying out garlic and ginger from market stalls, as if these alone could undo their choices.  

Let me be clear: sex, in its rightful context, is a beautiful expression of love. Yet it carries immense power to nurture or to devastate. Youthful recklessness might tempt one to believe they can outsmart consequences, but spirituality, karma, and divine justice are not so easily evaded. The choices we make in moments of passion often echo far beyond our fleeting desires.

Until the moment when will shall dance in white Greater Grace.

Oyugbo Osagie Jonah