IT can be argued that young people are involved in all the crimes that once were common to a generation twice their age. Young, specifically teens and early twenties. From bank fraud to bank robbery, armed robbery, murder, and extortion, the latter was explained to me, where the intimacy of young relationships in certain rental facilities occur and are videoed for later extortive blackmail. Many gun-related crimes are also committed by youths (some refer to them as ‘Dunce Thugs’), but their impact is deadly, regardless, and people have died as a result.

There is a fall of believable principles embracing their world, but if engaged, they seem to know the things that you would believe rest only with us adults, or should I say, with some adults. That many of them can barely read or write is not a handicap to their determination or the ability to listen and learn; don’t regulate them by any specific gender or ethnicity, or you may fall prey to self-deception. They may not know all the right terms and language, but they understand that most of the “money-man-dem earn deh cheese legit, and like all de big man dem, now in bad-money scandal. Suh, something ent right,” to put it in colloquial terms.

How do we reverse this? Based on who is reading this, do you think that you can convince a generation? We were all young and suspicious once. We stared at who we termed the ‘salawala’ man, until “De man fulfil E works.”
In his book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins exhorts natural selection, and natural selection, according to ‘Darwinism’, is the process that allows the evolved stronger organism to rise and act differently with greater learned strengths than its predecessors to survive. However, in the context of society, though subject to the very laws of social and behavioural evolution, interceptions can develop with a sensible process that must translate itself as believable before further decline, and this requires unorthodox interceptions.

As I interpret it, the concept of evolution exists within the creation formation process, thereby providing room for adjustment and rehabilitation. Thus, our social world is similar. We can detach ourselves from our troubled communities, and blame it on some guilty administrators with justification. But, are we honest in so doing, or are we condoning and consoling ourselves with the inheritance of ‘the selfish gene’?

True, life has become difficult. We hardly have spare time to contemplate our private contentions and threats to sustain our normal sanity. But it is necessary to create a stage to explore and engage a dialogue that will not be done by any of the institutions we expect to do this. As I was told recently, “that is not in my line of duties.” The truth is that rehabilitation of social ills will offend numerous people who recognise the weight of the task, who will ignore affecting it as long as possible, and instead prefer to pray rather than act, to remain out of the critical zone of serious inadequate officials, but prayer without works is nothing. So, the selfish gene prevails through fear, self-preservation and the absence of know-how.

In closing, The Selfish Gene is multi-active. It will enquire of you, “Why do you want to sacrifice yourself for people who should know better? You’re not here on earth to save the world. Remember you have a family, a job,” all in the effort to turn your back and walk away as fast as you can. It’s safer for them, but what if it raps at your door, and someone within answers and opens it? It could be someone you would have sworn for, but ignored because you prayed and did not observe through works.