The case for thoroughly censoring television contents, especially commercials, has been given an unexpected fillip.
It is sad that it had to take the murder of an eleven-year-old boy by teenagers inspired by a juju television commercial, before discussions of this mass communication irresponsibility proceeded to the front burners.
If the authorities responsible for filtering television commercials and other contents had any doubts about banning stuff which can impact negatively on morality, the Kasoa murder case should obliterate this.
Our front page story today says it all; unambiguously about how 16-year-old Felix Nyarko was enthralled by a television commercial on money-making juju.
The juvenile, as it were, believed in the commercial, and convinced his friend to join him in responding to the advertisement. A mass communication medium has succeeded, albeit negatively, in pushing innocent young boys to the precipice their lives, destroyed not before they did so to another, anyway.
Without a shred of doubt, bad television contents are not making for proper upbringing of the country’s youth.
Sociologists have a new entry about the impact of a failed society on its youth.
Violent television contents continue to be screened; their effects on the youth, not a matter of consideration by regulators.
The time to restrict television stations in what they can screen, is now; unless we could not care a hoot about the negative fallouts of these on society.
It is also time to prompt the regulators to respond to the many queries being heaped upon them, for not living up to expectation, since the Kasoa murder made the headlines.
The slumbering regulators cannot escape blame, for the violent murder of the close to eleven-year-old Ishmael Mensah Abdallah, in an uncompleted building.
Although investigations are ongoing, it would not be farfetched to regard the two accused persons, Felix Nyarko and his colleague, as products of a disturbed society.
A society in which children have access to all manner of television contents, regardless of their ratings, will encounter the likes of the Kasoa incident.
That one of the suspects was earlier implicated in a rape case, paints a better picture of the moral degeneration of the kids.
Even before spending two decades on earth, the duo of Felix Nyarko and Nicholas Kini Kwame, could think out a plot to murder a human being, in a brutal fashion.
That they even planned a kidnap and ransom option, which did not make sense anyway, points at how exposure of juveniles to dangerous television contents, is counterproductive.
The rising incidence of kidnapping and ransoms in Nigeria, is something the kids could have picked from television.
In the global village in which we live, underrating the effects of a kidnap story as it unfolds in another country, on kids in Kasoa in the Central Region, can be costly.
We must engage in a national conversation about the future of television commercials. It is unacceptable to have jujumen advertising their money-making prowess on television screens so brazenly.