A few years ago, the BBC released the results of a study they conducted through Busara Centre for Behavioural Economics. The study was conducted on 252 female university students between the ages of 18 and 24 years.

They found that approximately 20 per cent of the young women who participated in the research has or has had a ‘sponsor’. This is both good news and bad news to us.

Good news in that it is not all the female university students who have or have had a sponsor. There are still those 80 per cent who have refused to bow to this vice of looking for easy money to fund a lifestyle either they or their parents cannot afford.

The sad news is that there are 20 per cent of female university students who see nothing wrong with having a sponsor. This is not a small number by any means. To put it into perspective, that is one out of every five female university students and this number is growing.

This is something that should concern us as a nation. Just like evidenced with the rampant corruption in this country, we are slowly becoming a people who want to obtain things or have a particular lifestyle without paying for it through hard work and honesty.

The ‘sponsors’, in this case mainly married old guys, are busy looking for and paying for ‘cheap sex’ in the sense that they don’t want to invest in and work diligently at improving their relationships at home with their partners.

Those being ‘sponsored’ on the other hand don’t want to work hard and patiently wait to reap where they have sowed and instead are looking for ‘easy’ money and reaping where they have not sown. 

So, what can we do to stop this trend? Number one, married couples need to do everything possible to ensure that they remain faithful to their spouses.

They need to invest in marriages, meet each other’s needs and be there for each other so that they don’t end up looking outside for what they are missing at home.

Secondly, parents need to ensure that they inculcate the values of hard work, honesty and contentment in their children coupled with building in them a positive self-esteem so that when they grow up they will not succumb to such temptations.