Parental discipline taken to extremes

I know many fathers despair of motivating their teenage sons to be serious about life, find a job, and get started on earning their own living.

One father, in Nigeria, decided that enough was enough.

A father took his 20-year old son to an Islamic court in northern Nigeria for idleness, asking that he be sent to prison for refusing to engage in productive activities, state news agency NAN said Friday.

"He is not listening to words and he is bringing shame to my family. I am tired of his nefarious deeds. Please put this boy in prison so that I can be free," Sama'ila Tahir, a market trader in the northeastern town of Bauchi, was quoted as saying.

Tahir told the court that his son had refused to go to school and accused him of belonging to a criminal gang.

The court sentenced the son to six months in prison and 30 strokes of the cane -- which were immediately administered on the premises -- for being disobedient to his parents, NAN said.

I'm glad my father wasn't driven to this extreme - but, then, I left home just after turning 17, to enter military service. I suspect the Nigerian son is now wishing he'd done the same!



Peter