There is a story I must tell, not because it is easy, but because someone out there needs to hear it today.
I was a boy in my village school in Iruekpen, when I first learned that the world does not always keep its promises. My father, a hardworking pensioner, was owed 48 months of unpaid pension arrears by the government he had served. Forty eight months of silence where there should have been provision.
When payment finally came, it was never enough, never steady, never certain. Some months it arrived. Many months it did not.
My education, and my younger brother’s, hung on the thread of that uncertain pension. There were days we were sent out of class because our fees were unpaid.
If you have been a victim, you will recall this particular kind of shame that settles into a child’s spirit when he is singled out in front of his friends for a debt he did not create. I remember it still.
But I also remember one of our teachers, Dabala Fancy, a humble pastor from Auchi in Edo State, who saw two boys worth fighting for and regularly made excuses on our behalf until our father could find a way. His kindness is a debt I can never fully repay, only pass forward.
Outside the classroom, survival demanded more of us. I became a labourer on other people’s farms. I laid bricks on construction sites. I pushed wheelbarrows and operated a grinding machine in the evenings, all so I could afford sandals, clothes, the small dignities other children took for granted.
My family farmed cassava, yam and a modest patch of pineapple. We were not rich in money, but we were rich in resolve.
My father fell ill the year I finished secondary school in 2002, and he never recovered. He died in 2006, still waiting on money the state owed him, arrears that to this day remain unpaid. Twenty one months of unpaid pension arrears.
I share this not for sympathy, but for a truth I have come to hold dear. You cannot choose where you are born, how you are born, or into what circumstances you arrive on this earth.
You cannot blame your parents for the wealth they did not have. What you inherit is real. Call it a generational curses if you wish. But I have learned to call it a generational pattern, and patterns, unlike curses, can be broken.
Breaking it does not happen by accident. It happens through deliberate choices; choices that refuse to bow to what was handed down, choices that bend the arc of a family’s story toward something better.
It happens slowly, painfully, and then one day you lift your head and realise how far you have come. In that moment, gratitude is the only honest response.
We have walked through fire, though we may not wear its scars visibly. Still, we give thanks for the journey behind us, and we hold firm faith for the journey ahead.
My prayer is simple. By the time we leave this earth, may our children look back and say that because of us, they stood on solid ground; ground they could build upon to become greater still.
Generational curses can end. Call them what you wish. I choose to call mine a pattern I broke.
God bless you.
