IF ONLY FOR HIS SPERM...Happy Father's Day BY ENA OFUGARA

Okay mother's day had more weight...maybe it should. Maybe because mothers are usually more hands on with the children and also maybe the nine months or being in their belly and another 3-10 months feeding from their nipples is factored. However, PAPA NA PAPA.

Now I have seen so many people send BCs that basically rubbishes Father's Day because of what they perceive as an uncaring father. hmmm... I empathise if you did not have the firm and providing hand of a father in your life. There is no gainsaying the importance of that. In fact I usually am able to tell a girl who was raised by her mother without much input from the father.

The first thing you will notice with SOME of such girls/women is a disrespect for men. They make it seem like Fatherhood is as important as the appendix or pinky toe (the small toe is of no use and some women take it off abroad just to fit into smaller more pointed shoes.) These girls speak of such independence from their husbands that it is scary when they converse. Quite often in my usual conversations amongst people, once a girl starts to speak, I simply say "u no follow your papa stay same house" To which they reply "how you take know"?

Now also statistics have shown that kids that had no father-figure growing up are up to fifty percent times more likely to turn out bad as in go to jail etc. This is no longer in dispute.

Thus I am really against fathers who breed 'em but do not feed 'em (had to rhyme it)

Now having said that, WETIN SEF!!! so because he no train you naim make you no just send your papa? Haba!!!

Now do not look lightly at the role your absent father played in your life. He determined more things in you than you care to imagine. It could be your "ogo" at the back of your head, handsome face, your selfish but determined outlook etc. But even if you do not look like him, HE GAVE YOU YOUR DNA.

Now you think it was easy for him to toast your mother? Do you know the amount of lies he had to tell, clothes he had to buy/borrow/iron just to impress her? And when she finally agreed, DO YOU KNOW THE WORK INVOLVED IN MOVING HIS WAIST BACK AND FORTH, BACK AND FORTH several times, till he em em...you know.... till you came out swimming and egg-hunting? And even if it is one school fees, or one book or ...just his name that you bear, or even if you do not, HE WORKED HIS WAIST TO DEATH SO YOU COULD SWIM.

And so you love your mother and are grateful to her and you buy her a car just to spite your father. As my friend and brother Precious Izobo once told his dad when he was giving him money "papa, I no suppose dey give you money cos you no try for me. Na my mama I suppose dey give, then if she like she go give you inside" Yet he gave his father and did as much as he could even though as he said "papa you no try for me"

Two wrongs have never made a right. So he did not do his duty as a father, does that mean you too will shirk your duty as a son??? How are you then better than him? In fact it shows you are more like him than you realise.

I am afraid to raise this argument that maybe not providing for you was the biggest provision your father could have ever done for you. crazy logic right? But if Obama's Muslim father had been a good, monogamous providing father, if he had brought him back to Kenya would Obama be POTUS today... Most powerful man in the world? If Sade Adu's father had been good to the mother, would they have snuck back to London and that annoyance, passion and pain you hear in Sade's voice that reveals an electra love gone sour (yes. She came for his burial showing like most girls she loved her father and must have felt the biggest betrayal and yes hate for the man for how he treated her mother) would she be THE KING OF SORROW today? Yes it is warped logic but maybe just maybe it is truth.

And no matter what you think, drive a Mayback and build a mansion in Banana Island for your houseboys and drivers to stay, tar the road to your church/mosque, donate to All Saint Motherless Baby's Home in Anthony Lagos (had to plug that orphanage so someone reading this might buy them a bag of rice or something soon. Again, it is at Anthony right before or after Maryland depending on where you are coming from) if your father has holes in his wrapper from which you see his buttcheeks, (yansh) if he hungers and starves even with the junior wife over which he threw your mother out, if when he is ill, he cannot afford to go to the hospital.... your gold-plated boxers and diamond-studded singlet notwithstanding, YOU ARE POOR. Yes poor. Poor in forgiveness, poor in love, poor in honouring your father and your mother as God commanded in the ten Commandments; poor in not taking higher roads; poor, poor,  ABJECTLY POOR.

 IF FOR JUST THE SPERM,  If for not masturbating that night or using a condom IF FOR JUST PROVIDING YOU WITH SUCH A SPECIAL WOMAN AS YOUR MOTHER, if only for not beating your mother till she lost the pregnancy when she told him she was pregnant,  if for bearing the same title of "father" as GOd does....if for ....anything anythin anything, forgive your father and honour and provide for him....

Happy father's day y'all and to all males yet to father a child,  MAY OUR SOLDIERS MARCH, and may we have the good sense that MY CHILD WILL EAT FIRST THEN MY WIFE THEN ME even as the Lord provides for us as the heads of our household.

AMEN. Happy Father's day

(This article was partial to biological fathers. We consider every man or uncle or friend or stepfather or "uncle" (mama boyfriend) who helps to raise a child "a father". Jackson's kids are white and he is their father. I wrote this only for people to forgive fathers who did not provide for them. It in no way diminishes your role as a wonderful stepfather, adopted father etc etc etc.)