AS Nigerians celebrate this year’s Fathers’ Day, some fathers, who spoke to Sunday Tribune in Osogbo, Osun State, on Saturday lamented socio-economic difficulties they face in fulfilling their responsibilities as fathers.

Sizable number of them blamed their predicaments on poverty and the prevailing harsh economy of the country, which they claimed had been worsened by irregular payment of salaries to workers.

Mr Bimbo Olowookere said, “as a father, to take care of my family has been very difficult due to lack of funds. Everything has changed in the country. Payment of school fees and house rent have not been easy. Feeding the family has been difficult for me.

He continued, “with the situation on the ground, the government is not ready to assist fathers, more so as some of us, who are civil servants, are not getting our salaries as at when due. As a father, your family expects you to take care of them. Nowadays, taking care of the family financially is not easy. The most important thing that affects us as a father is the irregular payment of salary”.

“Paying half salary to a father is not ideal because you have budgeted for a lot of things and at the end of the month, they give you half salary. That is major reason why things are difficult for us as fathers. As a father, we face so many responsibilities from our family and family of our father and mothers-in-law. Even, socially, we have responsibilities to take care of. I urge the government to come to our aid by paying our salaries and granting us soft loans of zero per cent interest,” Olowookere remarked.

An artisan, Mr Kazeem Adekunle, who is an artisan stated low patronage from customers has negatively affected his string of income, thus preventing him from playing his roles effectively as father in the house.

According to Adekunle, the bad economy has taken a toll on my work. We are not getting jobs from our customers again as we used to get. The complain almost everywhere is that lack of money. When your customers cannot feed well, how do you expect him to give you jobs to do? (Tribune)