The Tribune

IN THIS column yesterday we confirmed Mr Richard Lightbourn’s statement in the House that students, caught up in the get-rich-quick euphoria of the drug era, were writing essays on how they wanted to become drug dealers like some of their family members and friends.

National Security Minister Dr Bernard Nottage, shocked by such blasphemy, denied that such a thing had ever taken place. He wanted Mr Lightbourn to provide proof of his statement or withdraw it. Mr Lightbourn made his remarks during Thursday’s House session, which was debating a Bill to take the College of the Bahamas to university level.

Mr Lightbourn had no reason to apologise, or retract anything because what he had said was true. These essays had been brought to our attention by a government teacher who told us that some of her male students when asked to write an essay on what they wanted to do on leaving school wrote that their ambition was to become drug pushers so that they could be millionaires. This, the teacher told us, had started after Prime Minister Sir Lynden Pindling had taken to the airwaves in his New Year’s message of 1986 to say it was possible for everyone to become a millionaire.

The report of the Commission of Inquiry into the transshipment of drugs through The Bahamas, which had been signed on December 14, 1984, had exposed persons from the cabinet level down. After a while, the easy money started to dry up.

On January 2, 1986, under the heading: “‘Become millionaires’ says PM”, The Tribune reported:

“Prime Minister Lynden Pindling, in a televised New Year’s Day message, encouraged Bahamians to take advantage of the ‘opportunities’ provided by the Cabinet to become a millionaire.

“Sir Lynden, whose Cabinet was badly shaken by a Commission of Inquiry into drug trafficking, also boasted that government revenues for 1985 increased by $50 million over 1984 and he had good reason to expect a similar increase for 1986.” In other words 1986 was to be a “year of opportunity.”

Of course, he did not encourage anyone to go into drug smuggling, rather he gave suggestions of various businesses that would be opening up or expanding, such as the hotel industry, construction, agriculture, and the like.

“I wish to say this, however,” Sir Lynden continued, “All that my streamlined Cabinet can do is provide the million dollar opportunity: only you can make you a millionaire. If you choose not to take advantage of the opportunities provided and get distracted by the noise in the market, it will be nobody’s fault but your own…”

A light bulb went off in the heads of some of the male students of that era, who wanted to be get-rich-quick millionaires, but didn’t want to waste their time with education — therefore, they expressed their dreams in the school essays. Even then they were not smart enough to know that drug-running was no longer in vogue and to do so would carry severe penalties.

During Thursday’s House debate Mr Lightbourn also mentioned that educational standards had to be raised from the current D- level and that the attitude of students had to change. Society is baffled by today’s youth, but it shouldn’t be. Sir Lynden told them the problem and confessed his guilt some time ago.

We shall let Sir Lynden repeat himself here for such persons as Dr Nottage who seems to have either a short memory or a short attention span.

On November 1, 1990, under the heading: “Pindling admits Bahamas needs to change attitude,” The Tribune reported:

“Prime Minister Pindling admitted to the PLP Convention last night that he had changed his mind on the Bahamian attitude.

“Sir Lynden said too many young men avoid work like the plague because parents often require too little work of them. We told them they were too good to be gardeners, too good to be sanitation men, too good to work their hands…

“As a great grandson of a slave I told many of my brothers many of those things myself. At the time, I was trying to elevate their goals, I wanted to spare them some pain and suffering,” said Sir Lynden.

“But I didn’t know then what I know now, that any work breeds character. Too many young men lack character today: too many, too often shirk responsibility because they have never been held accountable for their actions at home, in school or in society. Therein might lie the heart of the problem.”

Sir Lynden continued: “When we tell a young Bahamian male to be a man and he looks at us with his mouth opened he may be truly wondering what we mean. Why should he wonder? The answer is simply this: many do not know how to be men because no man ever took the time to teach them what manhood is all about.”

Manhood, said Sir Lynden, “is not about how many women a man can sweetheart, or how violent he can be with his brother or sister on Saturday night, or how boisterous or rude he can be around people he does not even know; or getting high every day to escape the challenges and pressures of modern life, or blasting his radio as loud as it can go simply to draw attention, or burning rubber with his car on Bay Street, or driving to the front of a line of cars waiting at a stop light because he lacks enough patience and respect for others to wait until it is his turn to go.

“No! These are not the characteristics of real men,” he said. “To the contrary, this represents the behaviour of fellows who have never been taught how to be men and don’t know what manhood is really all about.”

Saying that as a nation and a people Bahamians could not afford to look the other way because “for all those reasons the Bahamian family is in trouble, and when the family is in trouble our country is in trouble as well. In our race for prosperity we have forgotten a thing or two about being Bahamians. That’s why we have problems now and that’s why we need to deal with it openly and honestly.”

Of course the churchmen — Catholic, Anglican and Baptist — were quick to react to Sir Lynden’s millionaire remark.

“I really think that it’s an unrealistic goal and it might be misinterpreted. I would have thought that a more appropriate emphasis would be what people would contribute to our country, rather than setting materialistic goals,” said the late Archbishop Lawrence Burke of the Catholic Archdiocese. What these ministers had to say, even their comments on the drug trade, would be instructive today.

No, as Sir Lynden promised – but later regretted – today’s problems started when young Bahamians were told that if the PLP were elected they would no longer be “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. However, today they had better understand that they also will be jobless unless they leave school with a higher grade than D-.