Skip to main content

WHERE ARE OUR GREAT MINDS?

In light of today’s 51st Independence Anniversary in Nigeria, I have been tweeting all week starting from Monday (26-09-11) those positive things that I want to celebrate about our country.

While many joined in to mention good things about Nigeria and hash tagged with #OCT1 , I couldn’t help but notice those who decided to gate crash the positive thinker’s party and flooded us with ‘depressing facts’ about our nation and her polity.
Among the many negative rants was one that jumped out at me, it read – "We always do ask ourselves, When will 9ja b Great again? But I ask Again, Again and Again, Has 9ja ever been great?"

This tweet bugged me a lot, maybe for the fact that unlike the person who posted the tweet, I grew up seeing a little of a great Nigeria before things started to really deteriorate mid 80’s. I grew up when we had Kingsway, Leventis, UTC and Masco Stores and a variety of amusement parks around town where our parents took us to shop and have fun as kids.

It was an era where we had Nigerians who measured the success of their businesses and achievements in comparison to international standards, and not just a mere battle for survival.  People who understood that “a satisfied customer is the best business strategy”. An era where people like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Pa Tai Solarin, Pa Anthony Anahoro, Fela Anikulapo to mention a few, were agitating ‘honestly’, trying to avoid our country from plummeting into the state it’s in now.

If you lived in those years, then you’ll understand why I ask “WHERE ARE OUR GREAT MINDS?” not just the profound statesmen, but also the normal day-to-day businessmen and women. Innovators who spotted gaps in our society and filled them up with quality service deliveries that profited them.

It seems no one is dreaming BIG anymore! All we seem to be doing is succumbing to the pressure around us by resorting to blame bad governance for everything.

This is where I want to drill my pen. Oops...keypad, as I feel that’s exactly where we lost it. We’re reduced in the ability to incubate great business ideas, because we’ve chosen to focus on the negatives of our society.

For your information, Nigeria has always been HARD! I remember a very popular song back then in the 80’s “Andrew no check out, Nigeria go survive”....yet in those same years, we had indigenous Airline companies flying international destinations. We had Nigerian Proprietors leading Quality Private Schools; Fast Food Restaurant was a new concept (Chicken George, Big Treat, Mr. Biggs) and many other innovative ideas that brought about development to us.

We need to move away from being sorry for ourselves and begin to think BIG of ourselves! If your dream requires only your own hands to actualize it, then it’s not big enough!

I believe if your dream requires me, and mine requires you too, then in no time we all would be a nation intertwined with a singular objective, which is to live our collective dreams and our nation will be better for it!

As we celebrate today, let us take out time to focus on this spirit of ONESS, which lives in GREAT MINDS; pursuing selfish interests is what has led us where we are now and I can guarantee you it will get us nowhere - Together we will stand, Divided we will Fall.

Happy Independence day! Long live The Federal Republic of Nigeria!! Good People, Great Nation!!!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

RELIGION AND NIGERIA.

Tourists to Nigeria’s popular cities -- Lagos, Abuja, and Port-Harcourt -- may query statistics that suggests Islam to be the peoples’ major faith. Arguably, there are twelve churches to every mosque in each local government area, in, say, Lagos. Majority of these churches are privately owned organisations, e.g. Winners Chapel: formerly world’s largest church capacity, with fifty thousand seats, until recently upstaged by the Apostolic Church of Nigeria’s one hundred thousand seats church auditorium, also in Lagos. Approximately 160 million people, individually affected by two or more of the following: Tribal racism; Post-trauma of a civil-war (Biafra); Societal under-development stemming from thirty-two-years of oppressive military rule; Poverty; and now Terrorism. Taking a social science approach, expected loss of human dignity and social cohesion in such society, especially having evolved through slavery and colonialism, prior, it’s understandable why the world’s larges...

UK Labour Party and Ethnic Minorities

Southall gripped the nation’s attention in 1979. Immigrants, mainly from the Indian subcontinent, huddled together to repel anti-immigration political party, National Front. It was one of the frequent race-riots of that era. Blue plaques with names of Gurdip Singh Chaggar and Blair Peach hang on the Town Hall’s brick wall to remind you. And footage of the street altercations, with the police either dispersing protestors or aiding the far-right group, depending on who you ask, survives on YouTube. But to assume that story a leitmotif for the area is to misunderstand what’s beginning to happen in this west London borough. Pakoras and jalebi still constantly sizzle in hot oil behind kiosks of street food vendors. And rows of shops displaying groceries, sarees, and more Asian wedding accessories under frontal  awnings   have grown longer in all directions. With HSBC bank, Poundland and Gregg’s appearing like aberrations here. Yet, change has occurred. Testament to that is...

Buhari's needless fights.

Buhari’s needless fights.   President Buhari’s peace-meeting with leaders from the Niger-Delta last week isn’t first of his reversals. A worrying trend.  It’s known Nigeria’s chaos is by design, predictable, and reform will be a fight. Some of us had thought a war-tested, retired-army officer, Muhammadu Buhari, before embarking on needed reforms would hunch over specifics laid on his magnolia Aso-Villa desk, with lawyer vice-president opposite him, and key advisers, identify quick wins, preempt reaction of vested-interests, and weigh-up possible unintended consequences against objective, as an army-general would before ordering a military offensive. Instead, it's been gaffes and climb downs, and the president diminished with each episode. PMS price modulation Take for instance pegging premium motor spirit at N86.50 at start of this year. A time Buhari had claimed to stop oil subsidies, was unconvinced about Naira devaluation, and US dollar restricti...