Obasanjo Recalls Chidhood Exprience

Former Nigeria President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, on Tuesday said the various means of training children through folktales and storytelling is one of the ways of entrenching discipline and good virtues on children.

Obasanjo, who gave the advice at a programme tagged ‘Story Time With Baba,’ held at his ancestral home in Ibogun in Ifo council area of Ogun state, advised parents and community leaders to revive the culture of storytelling among children to enable them imbibe good moral standards.

The programme was organised by the Centre For Human Security, an arm of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), as part of activities marking his 80th birthday anniversary which comes up on Sunday.

Obasanjo, who sat among the pupils of the Baptist Day School, Ibogun where he had his primary school education, told them folk stories.

He recalled that while growing up in the community, his parents and other community leaders usually gather young children, including him, under the moonlight to give them riddles and tell them fables.

“They normally require us to solve the riddles so as to make us think deeply and sharpen our wits while they told us stories to inculcate moral values into us.

“Most of the stories revolved round animals, particularly, tortoise, and will normally end with lessons to build character by pointing us to what to do and what not to do.

“We have grown up with those moral values and they served as foundations upon which we built our lives and conducted ourselves wherever we went,” he said.

The elder statesman, however, expressed concern that such practice had been jettisoned by parents and thereby denied the children a good platform to build character.

He said that he had therefore written 12 books containing several of such stories as part of effort to preserve the culture and prepare the children for the future.