By Seedy Jobe
Abdoulie Bojang, a political commentator and former National Assembly aspirant, has issued a pointed warning about the welfare of Gambian children, saying the country risks losing an entire generation unless a sense of collective responsibility is restored.
In a statement shared with Kerr Fatou, Bojang argued that silence in the face of mounting social problems amounts to a quiet surrender.
He said the national conversation remains preoccupied with politics, elections, infrastructure, and the economy, while a more fundamental question goes largely unasked.
“There is a deeper question that rarely receives the urgency it deserves: what kind of generation are we raising, and what kind of nation will emerge from it?” He emphasized that a society’s future is determined long before adulthood, during the years when values, discipline, and responsibility take root.
Bojang pointed to a number of troubling patterns he said were emerging in communities nationwide, including underage children attending late-night events, unsupervised gatherings among adolescents, and the increasing presence of alcohol, ecstasy, and other narcotics among young people.
“The appearance of substances such as ecstasy and other narcotics within youth circles should be regarded not merely as a law enforcement issue but as a national development concern,” he said.
He noted that adolescence is typically a period in which curiosity outpaces judgment, making the guardrails provided by families, schools, and government all the more essential.
While acknowledging the strain placed on parents by economic hardship, migration, and shifting social norms, Dr. Bojang said such pressures do not absolve adults of responsibility.
“No institution can completely replace the role of engaged parenting,” he said. “A child who grows up with unlimited freedom but little guidance is not necessarily becoming independent; in many cases, that child is simply becoming vulnerable.”
He devoted particular attention to the digital environment, describing it as a challenge unlike any previous generation has confronted. Smartphones, he said, expose children to global influences engineered to capture their attention and shape their desires.
“A nation should be deeply concerned when its children know more about influencers than inventors, more about trends than trades, and more about online popularity than civic responsibility,” he said, warning that the result is a generation oriented toward instant gratification and validation rather than character and contribution.
Bojang drew a direct line between neglect of young people and broader social disorder. “The relationship between youth neglect and rising social disorder is neither accidental nor mysterious. Crime rarely appears without a preceding story. Every society eventually pays for the problems it chooses not to prevent.”
He cautioned that the gradual erosion of values becomes most dangerous once it is normalized. “Societies do not decline because people suddenly abandon their values. They decline because gradual departures from those values become accepted as ordinary.”
Framing the matter as a crisis of collective responsibility rather than one confined to young people alone, Dr. Bojang said children, communities, and values do not safeguard themselves.
“The Gambia is not facing a crisis of youth alone. It is facing a crisis of collective responsibility,” he said. “The protection and development of children cannot be treated as a secondary issue reserved for occasional conferences or ceremonial speeches. It should occupy a central place in national policy.”
He called on the National Assembly, government ministries, schools, local authorities, religious institutions, civil society, and parents to take action, arguing that child welfare is a matter of national concern rather than a private, family-level issue alone.
“Nations rise when they invest in the character, education and wellbeing of their young people. They struggle when they neglect them,” Dr. Bojang said. “The future is not waiting somewhere ahead of us. It is already present in the children walking our streets, sitting in our classrooms and scrolling through their phones today.”
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