The environment can mean air;
water; land, where one lives or
one’s place of work.
When one lives in an
undisturbed environment, one feels
happy and healthy. An outside force can
influence our environment for better
or worse. The coming of the white man
influenced our environment a lot. The
white man’s coming had both positive
and negative impact on us. The white
man’s teachings and indoctrinations
changed the way we were.
Positive influence can make an envi-
ronment more conducive to learning.
It can create a culture of peace and
progress. Negative influences poison an
environment and destabilize things.
An environment can be disorganized.
Many children of today are victims of
negative influence in school. The dan-
gerous ideas and bizarre philosophies
of some of their teachers contribute
towards polluting their minds. We had
thought that the purpose of education
was to make a better man, but now we
have realized that negative influences
poison the mind. Nobody sees the
university anymore as a sanctuary for
social responsibility.
The so-called educated man behaves
like the stone-age man because the in-
stitution that should help shape him has
now become an institution of violence
induced by negative philosophy, lack of
morality and civility.
Things can only be better if the
authorities try to find out the causes of
problems and fix them. It is the people
that poison the system by influencing it
in a negative manner.Those who went
to school in the forties, fifties and even
sixties had better learning environment,
fear of God and a great number of them
became achievers and great men in
Nigeria.
Societies, communities and institu-
tions should beware of the negative
influences of some of their members.
Some can carry with them their unre-
solved problems to the society while
seeking leadership of the communi-
ty. They can come in with distorted
personality and irrational way of doing
things at the expense of the whole.
They can use the society as a dumping
ground for their hostility thereby using
it to fight their enemies.Look at Lagos; a
beautiful city but its DNA is polluted by
toxic statements from the leaders which
make the citizens look like strangers
and dislocate them and even affects
their investments. An individual can
convince the society that his enemy
is their enemy. Those in the society
who are not spiritual or who swallow
everything without examining it will
buy the idea from such a person. As this
individual succeeds in playing on the
psyche of the people, the people begin
to disintegrate or fall apart as his gospel
of hatred spreads like wild fire round
the community.
Those who adhere to the gospel
of truth will reject falsehood for the
betterment of their society. They try
to know really who they are. They will
study persons because knowing who
they are helps them to grow and spread
the Gospel of love instead of a social
Gospel opposed to what is spiritual and
eternal.
VERY REV. MSGR. LIVINUS UKAH.
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