THE NIGERIANS THEY DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT – BY AYO SOGUNRO @AYOSOGUNRO

“They” in this title refers to all the defense men, the pen-brandishing king’s men, the unrelenting, self-appointed applauders, the cozy and established, comfortable, myopic and collective children of corruption, the distant crowd of Presidential addicts, the any-government-in-power cinema crowd of Nigeria, who seem to be in competition among themselves to achieve the favours of President Goodluck Jonathan.

This army of sponsored and self-appointed sycophants is so diverse; many of them don’t even know why or how they should defend the President and neither do they understand, or “give a damn” about, the views or complaints of Nigerians.

The clear danger to public affairs commentary is that we have a lot of intelligent people initiating stupid clichés and too many unintelligent persons wasting public funds occupying offices established to lend relevance to these thoughtless clichés.  Hold on. I don’t want to be misunderstood. I am not saying nobody should defend the Nigerian President. I’ve spent some time understanding that social maxim: “He who pays the piper calls the tune”. Public position comes with its own share of sycophancy and grovelling. But the defending, praise singing, “Special Advisers” and “Senior Special Assistants” crowd of the Jonathan regime must be guided by facts.

Let us gather our well rounded stones. I have spent all my life as a Nigerian. I have watched the leadership of this country since I was capable of understanding such things. I can write a whole book on the Occupy Nigeria movement, but you won’t get to read that until much later.  I am certain that some government people will not buy the book if it gets written. Well, your choice. What I can state, for now is, that President Jonathan and his praise singers grossly misunderstand Nigerians. They think Nigerians are unfair to them. They criticize Nigerians as “ignorant”. They accuse everyday Nigerians as mischievous. And when Nigerians dare to protest, they simply attribute it to the work of the opposition parties. How unfair!

Nigerians say he is a clueless President.  A paid employee in the service of the President says Nigerians are wrong.  Between Nigerians and the employee, who then is clueless?  Nobody is more committed to the Nigerian Project than Nigerians themselves. In spite of unforeseen challenges, in spite of decades of brutal military rule, in spite of a bloody civil war, in spite of continuous government corruption, Nigerians have done their best to remain one and fend for themselves both in private and public enterprise.  And this year alone, President Jonathan has done his utmost best to increase the burden of Nigerians with a fuel price increase and its attendant consequences. Ordinary Nigerians protested against this.  Let it be known now that those parading themselves as “special advisers” to the President, and who claim that the President still has the support of Nigerians, represent only themselves and their selfish salaried interests.

They say President Jonathan is a clever, methodical and intelligent man, and yet he is very adept at wrong footing majority of Nigerians, confusing the issues and distracting from the main agenda. They say he understands the complexity of Nigeria, but he uses it to his advantage— for example, by turning May 29 into an opportunity to raise unneeded dust over June 12. But that aside, Nigerians do not care about his acutely conscious sense of history nor his personal reflection as a representative of all common persons. Nigerians only care about the results of his government policy-making processes. Nigerians are not interested in sentimental expressions about the children of all blue collar workers who never wore shoes or got a chance to eat three-square meals, and whose mothers and aunties could never be part of policy-making processes.
And yet they say he understands Nigerians.

When Nigerians deride Jonathan about not wearing shoes as a child, they meant that as a metaphor for the irony of the President’s purported penurious past contrasted to his clearly comfortable present, and the urgent need to redress such social inequalities. But I have read a “Special Adviser” responding literally that Nigerians meant that people should never vote for a man who never wore shoes. How simplistic! Attention needs to be drawn to the fact that a party-sourced President who has given no indication of how to transform Nigeria, and yet who campaigned on a platform of transformation, will always definitely be defended by those who consider themselves the children of  the new regime, those who think that their descendants  will inherit Nigeria. Wrong.

The Ijaws, the fourth largest ethnic nationality in Nigeria, have as much right to have their son as President as do the Nupe, the Tiv, the Efiks, the Ibibio and so many others—and nobody expects Jonathan to dwell on this. He may never have uttered an ethnic statement and he is not expected to do so. Must Nigerians applaud him for this? He is expected to see himself as the President of all Nigerians, which is why he lives in Aso Rock and not Bayelsa. He is expected to be at home with every group which is why he should listen to writings such as this.

They say he is focused on the challenges of nation-building but what about reinstating the President of the Court of Appeal? They say he wants to transform Nigeria, but this is based on an agenda only he knows about. They say he wants to unite the country but yet he is creating avenues for popular protests, strikes and demonstrations. They say Nigerians want regular power supply and that he is working at it—but Nigerians don’t want to cross 4, 400 MW on paper, they want to see it everywhere with their eyes.

Nigerians want infrastructure not a President who knows they want it. Nigerians want the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway fixed not an empty threat to the contractors. Nigerians want the East-West road fixed quickly not a mysterious directive to a particular nameless minister. Nigerians want to see corrupt people in jail, not just ineffective directives to government agencies. Nigeria’s have no issue with foreign relations—they want charity to begin at home. They say he is transforming the agriculture sector, yet Nigerians still suffer expensive food items. The reason Nigerians do not go into a song and dance routine for President Jonathan is because they know that true rebranding of a nation is the actualisation of positive things—things that are already happening and not just a projection.

They say he is not ‘tribalistic’. True. But how many Ijaws voted for President Jonathan compared to the rest of the country? Very few, I can tell you. Jonathan was voted in by Nigerians. Well, there are of course, all kinds of persons, special advisers and the like, who go about telling people that they have the President’s ears and eyes. I have since learnt that some Nigerians consider it fashionable to wear the false garments created by public office.

They say the Presidency qua Presidency is staffed by key officials from all parts of the country, but are these officials efficient? They say the Secretary to the Government of the Federation is from Ebonyi State—but is he the best man for the job? They say the Chief of Staff and the Head of the President’s Secretariat are both from Edo, but do they realise they have a wasteful budget? They say the Protocol Liaison Officer and Principal Private Secretary are from Adamawa, the Chief Detail is from Borno, the Aide De Camp (ADC) is from Kogi, the Perm Sec, State House is from Benue, the State Chief of Protocol is from Kwara, the Special Adviser, Media and Publicity is from Ogun, the Chief Physician to the President is from Rivers—but Nigerians want to know the criteria for their selection! They say only the Chief Security Officer, the Special Assistant, Domestic and the Special Adviser, Research and Strategy are from Bayelsa but Nigerians don’t care about where they come from—Nigerians only care about what they have achieved!

They say when the President is in the office, he gets there early every day, and works till very late, and that he is exposed to all categories of Nigerians, but the same is true for even the market woman, especially the market woman.  They say he runs a modern and open Presidency and yet he sends soldiers to the streets of Lagos. If he is on Facebook, Twitter, email, SMS, BB, and reads like they say, then he would realise that he has lost the approval of his initial support base—the people they call “idle and idling, twittering, collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria”. This is not even a provincial President—he is a cabal president. The purported intelligentsia in his immediate community should advise him to step out of office.

They say President Jonathan is the first Nigerian leader to appoint a woman as his Chief Economic Adviser as well as the Nigerian leader who opened up the Nigerian Defence Academy to women, but is this the meaning of progress? They say he took affirmative action in political appointments to a higher level by reserving 35 per cent of all appointive positions in government for the women folk, but is this why the First Lady must take a post as Permanent Secretary?

All these facts they point out may be incontrovertible but they are very irrelevant. Nigerians are not interested in whether a man occupies a position or whether a woman occupies it. Nigerians are not stupid! If it is a goat that will do the job well, Nigerians are happy to support the goat as a Minister! It will certainly not do any worse than the current ones are doing. They say the President’s commitment to Nigeria is total, but what about his appointees? They say the President’s children school in Nigeria, but do the children of his Ministers? Let the President wear any attire he enjoys, it is not his dress code that will promote Nigeria.

They say the President doesn’t drink. Well, maybe he had better start drinking if that would make the administration more effective—what with all the choice drinks on every trip.  What’s the use of people who are not allowed to touch alcohol and yet have nothing to show for it? Alcohol is not served during official duties, but neither is it served at anyone’s workplace either. Should we applaud the President for not drinking on the job? Even a student knows not to take alcohol in the classroom. Now they praise the President for not drinking alcohol and try to distort the issues at hand.

The budget states that the Presidential household intends to spend millions on feeding. Well, I have not enjoyed the privilege of eating at the President’s table. But they say he eats fish pepper soup, Cassava Bread, slices of yam, rice, boiled plantain, fruits and vegetables.  If this is the case, then why does the budget require millions of naira for his table? They sat he fasts when he chooses, and fasts all month during Ramadan and Lent—this is all good, but we have our Bishops and Imams to do that for us.   Nigerians do not care about his culinary habits or physical fitness regime. Let him drink kain kain if it will make him stronger, let him drink water if that would boost him. Let him fast if it will strengthen his arm, let him eat roasted turkey, and every delicacy under the sun if it would fire him up.  Nigerians are not concerned whether the President is a glutton or not. Nigerians want a disciplined, hardworking president who has an effective plan for the country without burdening the people further.

Here is a man who started a New Year with indiscretion and insensitivity. The thing about the President’s men is that they just cannot accept that Nigerians are intelligent enough to know what is right and what is wrong.  This is the King George Complex. King George of England could not accept the fact that the simple colonial Americans were sophisticated enough to decide how they wanted to be governed. And just like the colonial Americans gave chase to King George and his army of redcoats, Nigerians will eventually throw away these yes-men and promote a nation with men of integrity at the helm.

Let me end by saying that Nigerians, especially the “idle and idling, twittering, collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging” Nigerians may be a simple people but simplicity is not naivety. If simplicity were to be naivety then the world would not be where it is today. It is simple people who gave shape to the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Kwame Nkrumah, simple people gave a mission to men who listened to the voice of the people—even when the special advisers around them were cajoling otherwise.

Ayo Sogunro
Follow @ayosogunro on twitter

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THIS SHIP IS SINKING, YES – SO WHAT DO WE DO? – FULL TEXT OF @CHUDE JIDEONWO’S SPEECH AT THE FUTURE AWARDS 2012

Being an address given by Chude Jideonwo, executive director of The Future Project at The Future Awards 2012, Port Harcourt, Rivers

It occurred to me for the first time as I sat in the car’s front seat and felt my father’s cold corpse in the back seat in May 2007. The nurses at the Ikorodu General Hospital had just said no to his body. He had died from heart failure an hour or two before. They needed a police report.

I could hardly believe the utter coldness of it. But I had yet to see – or hear – the worst. Because I am born and bred in Nigeria, I knew that, at 11pm, the body of my dear father might rot if I sat there pondering the inanity of the request or stood up to argue its inhumanity, so I led the convoy to the nearest police station.
There, with the most pointed lack of compassion I had ever witnessed up onto that point, the police proceeded to haggle with themselves over how much they would extract from a 24-year-old who had just lost his father – a father whose dead body was only a few meters away.

As they dropped my father’s body in that unkempt, abominable mortuary (one in which I had to tip the caretaker daily on my way to work so that the corpse would not be left to decompose), I could only think of what an abominable country I was so unfortunate to come from, and to live in.

I recalled that scene as I came across pictures of rotten corpses stacked on each other in a room – victims of June’s Dana Crash;  “rotting carcasses of human beings stacked on each other, fluids mingling.” That is when it hit me. We are living like animals in this country. I remember my father – and how he, and I, were treated so terribly because our country does not care for any one.

These Dana Crash dead bodies weren’t victims of a serial killer locked in a room for months or of a brutal civil war with shut-down health-care services – these were citizens of a country, who had just been visited by their president a day before, nonetheless treated in death with relentless disrespect. They had been killed by their country – and it couldn’t even pack their bodies well.

It could have been you, or me. It’s not just that it could have been me. That’s not the worst part. This is the worst part: I could have been the one in that flight waiting for 20 minutes after a fatal crash; sitting there in mind-numbing agony, knowing the plane would soon explode and kill me because I live in a country where emergency services would arrive only about an hour after, and people will die who could have been saved.
That’s the part that gets me. And as I watched officials scramble to protect their irrelevant jobs so that they could make enough money to buy First Class tickets on airlines that might crash and kill their children tomorrow, I realized how hopeless we had become as Nigerians.

So I ask myself; why are we still in Nigeria – a country that does not deserve many of us – even when we have a choice? Why are we not like the generation that left town? Why are we living in a country that cannot protect us, has not supported us, will not satisfy us?

The logical thing to do is to leave fastest way we can; once the opportunity that turns up. But we stay and we come back, because e go better, because it is well, because God dey; because somehow somehow we think we can survive it; maybe even improve it .

But let’s tell ourselves the truth – many of you in this hall have already given up on Nigeria. Many of us are convinced that this ship is sinking, this country cannot change. We do not trust our politicians, but that is even cliché. We do not trust the activists. Everyone is seen as searching for a piece of that national cake. That’s what we have become as a country: an unending race for a part of that cake.

It is difficult to have faith in this kind of country; difficult to tell yourself with a straight face that you are proud of being a Nigerian. Proud of what? A country where accusations fly over bribery and both the accuser and the accused are walking free, where dead men are found in Emir’s palaces, pastors chant songs of war, men go into churches in Jos and gun down hundreds. Thousands die on the highways without acknowledgement, power deadlines are postponed without consequences, a country where its president, accused of lacking transparency, could say to his people ‘I don’t give a damn?’

It is difficult to have faith even when you look at the young people – scrambling for crumbs of the table, buffeted by the need to avoid the poverty of their fathers, changing principle on whim just like those before them; perpetuating scams in the name of advocacy, running businesses long on hype and short on substance. It is difficult to have faith in that kind of country. It is herculean to believe in it. It is almost impossible to be proud of it.

We doubt ourselves all the time, believe in the worst of the other, convinced that they are the enemy, that success is driven by fraud, passion driven by the percuniary; it’s every man for himself. It is understandable – this is a country where we have placed hopes in so many time and again, and they have disappointed us. We thought we had people with their hearts in the right place, only to find their eyes were always on their pockets.

No, Nigeria, is not a great country. It wasn’t great yesterday it isn’t great today. It can be great, it should be great, it could have been great, and if we sit down and get serious, it will be great.

After the Dana Crash, I gave up hope in this country; I lost my faith, I struggled with my love. But two day later, I was back working for the country, and that is the real story.

It is okay to fall out of love, it is okay to hate that love every once in a while, it is okay to condemn, to criticise, to react, to fight, to protest, to demand; but you must return to loving it, you must return to being pained.

It is the reason despite Governor Amaechi spending two hours debating fiercely with us that our generation is only interested in continuing the “chopping”, he decided that it is crucial to get the brightest of that generation here to inspire the young people in Rivers State and across Nigeria – moving it from an idea in 2006 that couldn’t even pay for the hall in which it held to a movement in 2012 that has taken over this Port Harcourt.
It’s because beneath a tough talking governor lies a tender spot for his country and its future – and I see it daily across this country even from the lips of those who curse it. Even in those who appear to be ripping the country to shreds, every once in a while you see that wistfulness for what might have been.

But, this is the good news, it is not too late. I do not come as a prophet of cliché, I come here as a student of history because other countries have done it. This shipping is sinking, but it hasn’t yet sunk. As long as we are in Nigeria, as long as Nigerians live in Nigeria and work in Nigeria, and fight for Nigeria, and refuse to give up on Nigeria, there is hope.

We cannot ever lose that pain that we should feel for a country that continues to fail us. No matter how disappointed we are in our country, we cannot abandon it. We cannot use Nigeria as an excuse to fail Nigeria.

Pehaps we should handle Nigeria the way a mother handles a drug-addicted child – with tough love sometimes, with deliberate gentility at other times; demanding at one time, encouraging at the other.

Listen guys, we are all we’ve got, and this should be the Turning Point Generation.

I don’t come here to excite you; I come here so we can encourage one another. I come here to remind us that, after all said and done, you and I are still here. And ‘cause we are still here, we have no choice but to keep working.

Let’s keep the faith. If we stumble, let’s rise. When we fall, let’s rebound. Let’s refuse to let Nigeria go, let’s insist that it must work. Let’s keep working until it changes; let’s keep changing until we tear down these walls.

Because we can. Because we have no choice. Because we love this land.

God bless Nigeria.

*Parts of this speech have been reproduced from a previous article by the author on www.ynaija.com

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TERRORISM IN NIGERIA: CAN MONEY BUY PEACE? BY @JIDE_LEIGH

A society that hands gold medals and huge chunk of the highly coveted national cake to obvious law breakers for whatsoever reason, then say to the hard working and law abiding who has decided not to steal, throw bombs or kill, to remain law abiding, is obviously just spelling it out that crime pays, regardless of how much government budget or claim to spend on security.

I’m candidly quite fascinated with the way controversial but highly brilliant Mallam Nasir El-Rufai puts it when he said “the strategy of handing out wads of cash to people that have not earned the money through meaningful work; with a pre-existing sense of entitlement, may ostensibly amount to rewarding insurgency. Which is referred to as “moral hazard” in economic terms.

The federal government according to The Financial Times has spent $1 billion on the amnesty program of the Niger delta ex-militants since inception. It has also offered to hold talks with the notorious northern Boko-Haram sect which would probably result into the FG cutting them a deal and eventually a share of the juicy national cake. Yeah it’s no longer news, yet it itches the ear that the federal Government spends an average of N1 billion Naira of our seemingly scarce resources daily on security, and I’m thinking… the security of what? Lives and properties?! I could hear a baritone voice reply, whose life exactly? Certainly not mine or the lives of the sixteen worshipers who were killed in church in Okene few days back.

In nations we tirelessly try to emulate, there are systems put in place to ensure that the citizenry are well catered for and also given a sense of belonging. It’s the kind of program that uses public funds to provide a degree of economic security for the public. This program caters for various classes of people; the aged, disabled, survivors and the unemployed. Facts have it that Nigeria is a nation with 33.4% of its population between 10- 24, and 47% are between 20–40 years of age.

The population of youths in Nigeria is 43% according to Population Reference Bureau. If you check closely that’s almost three times what world giants like China can boast of (15.4%). It is heartbreaking to know that over 68million of them are unemployed. Any government having that much raw man power is considered lucky and should be maximizing it to the fullest by creating employment (directly and indirectly) and boosting away her GDP.

However, due to bad leadership and excessive looting of public funds or misappropriation as they often refer to it, the achievement of this feat has become as impossible as a voyage to the Bermuda triangle.

The government should emulate other nations and setup a scheme that would see to the welfare of the Nigerian youth, which would also be in charge of paying them a certain amount of money at an agreed interval. It is a common practice in countries like Australia which pays youth allowance within the range of A$91.60 to A$167.35 per week.  In Finland a basic amount of 25 Euros is paid daily, in Greece 454 Euros per month, France 1111 Euros monthly. The standard payment in Ireland is €188 per week.  In New Zealand, $167.83 is paid to single person between 20–24 years without children, $288.47 for single parents and $335.66 for married couples. This is to mention but a few amidst countries like the United States of America and England

Over the last 10years, the crime and vices that have held the country to ransom, creating fear, terror and pandemonium can be attributed firstly to the fact that Nigerians are broke and idle, a terrible combination that is void of hope. Secondly, the fact that there is no value whatsoever placed on the Nigerian life by government.

Talk of our roads, plying them make you wonder if our roads are a means of population control. The standard of living is so abysmally bad that I question the huge disbursement of public funds on guns, vests, and ammunition to secure lives that would be eventually lost to one ghastly motor accident due to bad roads or avertible plane crash as a result of negligence in high places.

Judging from the N920 billion of the 2012 budget and the N66 billion recurrent expenditure from the amnesty programme to be spent on ex-militants, it becomes obvious that government is now interested in the security of its citizens. What they fail to realize is that peace is not won only with guns and handcuffs and giving money. Just give the youth a means of livelihood by creating jobs and terrorism would be out of it.

As it seems, it won’t be long before other youths tow the line of violence. Believe me, Nigerians are not so dumb to figure that out, and the least the country needs now is the emergence of another version of the Boko whatever.

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Jide Niyi-leigh

Jide_leigh@yahoo.com

@Jideleigh on Twitter.

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WITH PATIENCE COMES GOOD LUCK BY @LANRE_OLAGUNJU

”Patience is power. Patience is not an absence of action; rather it is “timing” it waits on the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way”- Fulton J. Sheen
 
Time always seems long to the child who is waiting for Christmas, for next summer and also for becoming a grown up. If your health has ever been challenged and you’ve had a course or two to be laid on a sick bed due to ill health and pains, you will know that at such point, time seems to slow down and patience becomes un-negotiable. It becomes a must. But when you are having fun and everything seems to be bright and beautiful we say things like time is not our friend.

Our world is strictly governed by the principle of space-time and anyone who loves to plan, achieve and succeed understands that waste of time is a severe abomination to the spirit.

As a person I love to set goals but I sometimes get trapped in the natural phenomenon that even with time there are different seasons. I sometimes wear myself out with the intense desire to see things happen at the speed of light.

It’s the responsibility of a farmer to plant, water, and carry out other activities yet, to get his desired harvest he will need time, he will need to wait and exercise patience to discover the fate of his crops. A farmland is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness.

Lately, some brilliant Nigerian lawyers became Senior Advocates and it dawned on me that no matter how brilliant a lawyer is, and the numbers of difficult cases he has won to his credit, a lawyer will certainly have to practice for ten years to ever become a senior advocate of Nigeria.


After laboriously putting plans, dedication and hard work together, patience aids peace of mind and the enablement to sleep soundly knowing fully well that God is awake.

Those who have this understanding know the deep secret of peace.

It’s easier to write and point out to others why they should be patient but of the truth it’s difficult to suffer it. The fact that we are in the era of microwave and instant messengers, we always want to think that everything can always happen at the speed of light. We forget that even wounds heal in degrees.

Listening to the most influential blogger in Nigeria at The Future Award master class few days back, I was able to figure out that life pay back those who are passionate and patient. Linda Ikeji explained how she kept on at blogging when it wasn’t anything close to profitable. She kept at it for four good years and now she’s a success story.

In the thought provoking words of Lemony Snicket “There are times to stay put, and what you want will come to you, and there are times to go out into the world and find such a thing for yourself.” Patience is power and not the absence of action. To think otherwise is foolhardy. Patience is a virile virtue; it does not mean lying down under affliction, but standing up under it and marching on.

I hear a lot of young people who are practically doing nothing say ’’God’s time is the best’’. That doesn’t apply to anyone who’s doing nothing. The reward of timing comes to those who are working, waiting and watching their plans grow to fruition. It’s about not giving up when effort is not yielding the desired effort. It’s about not throwing in the towel. Patience is the art of hoping and unless patience is built on hope, it stagnates.

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EXCLUSIVE: THE CONCLUDING PART OF JAPHETH OMOJUWA'S INTERVIEW

In this concluding part, Omojuwa dissects and proffers solutions to issues around unemployment, Boko-Haram, his anger with people likening him to Reuben Abati, and which topic he won't discuss on twitter amongst others.  In case you missed the first part here is the link http://larigold.blogspot.com/2012/08/exclusive-interview-i-do-not-speak.html

Lanre Olagunju:  you talked about the involvement of young people especially via the use of social media…what other result oriented things can young people do so as to redeem the country.

Omojuwa: first of all we have to understand that you cannot bring about change in other people or change anything until you bring about change in yourself. So these young people that are saying that they want to change the system and all that what are they doing with their own lives and what are they doing with their time?  It’s not enough to be passionate about change in Nigeria. If you are not competent you’ll get there and mess things up. Any idiot can be passionate, a thief can be passionate. Passion is a driver that pushes you to do that which you want to do. And if you’re not able to do it, passion will drive you to mess it up. So it’s not all about passion. Being passionate is good, but it’s about competence. Young people have to build competence and ability because the time will come when they’d also be in charge when they’d also run the country. Without competence it’s going to result in the same tragic story. So the first thing is that they should build competence then secondly they must align and create synergy by coming together which is not there at the moment. These days many young people are doing the same thing and it’s beginning to look like a competition. Young people need to come together and think as a people and not individuals. They must also insulate themselves from the grab-grab Nigerian mentality that says when you get there you sort out yourself first. We need to start thinking for the whole and not just ourselves. Then we must have the understanding of where to place money and wealth. We must begin to understand how to think in terms of prosperity, how to think in terms of the fact that the world has created a lot of wealthy men that are dead and forgotten but the world hasn’t created great men that are forgotten. So we must aspire toward greatness and not just riches in terms of silver and gold. Greatness comes by being a change agent in the real sense of the word. In my opinion we don’t have great Nigerians in the class of Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama despite his failures in America and Abraham Lincoln. We need nationalist that think for the nation and not what they can grab out of the system. Young people should begin to think like that.

Lanre Olagunju: if you were in the shoes of GEJ, strategically what would you have done to phase out corruption?

Omojuwa: In terms of corruption in Nigeria… you can’t phase out corruption anywhere in the world but you can fight it to the barest minimum and when it comes to fighting corruption in Nigeria or in Africa, what you do is make statements. How do you make statements? It’s not difficult to fight corrupt government officials; it’s very very easy because these guys are not that smart with the way they steal. By the time he got in to office on May 29 2011, shortly by July of that year, he’d have had like three or four corrupt cases and you know there’re transferred corrupt cases from one regime to another. And he was an acting president before he became president via what he called “the real mandate” and they would have been seeing such practices. By the time they get the Economic and Financial Crime Commission to arrest like five of them, within 10 days, charge serious and tight allegations against them, prosecute them, then send five of them to jail, shortly a lot of people will sit up. But if you allow corruption to just run with no form of punishment, you’ll just have it grow. It’s a process. Start the fight. It doesn’t mean you end it immediately, at least start the fight. This president has been there for two years and he has essentially been breeding corruption rather than fight it. So what would I have done? At least I would have started the fight. I actually wouldn’t have won it in day one or even after two or four years in office but I’d have at least started the fight

Lanre Olagunju: talking about the EFCC, how independent are these agencies?

Omojuwa: they are not independent and that’s the saddest part of it. The EFCC chairman is appointed by the president then the senate have their own role to play but the bottom line is that the EFCC chairman more or less answers to the president. If the president says Mr Lanre Olagunju wants to contest in 2015 I need you guys to build some corruption cases against him from now. And the EFCC has got to do it. I mean we saw what Obasanjo did with the EFCC, these are things we need to look at. …separate the office of the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission from the presidency, the office of the Inspector General of police also should be separated from the presidency. The INEC chairman… how can I appoint somebody who is going to be a referee in my own   match? (Omojuwa screams and gets irritated) those are obvious anomalies that we need to correct. These are some of the things that we have to change if we are going to move forward or else we are not going to have a society that runs on the bases of law and order.

Lanre Olagunju: former minister for youth and development Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi said a couple of months ago that over 67million young Nigerians are unemployed. What do you think can be done to solve such problem and what is the impact of such on the Nigerian economy?

Omojuwa: I’ve said that already. What can be done to solve that is to put a system in place that allows people to fulfill their dreams because when you say 67million Nigerians are unemployed there are other unemployed people who are unemployed who don’t fall into the category of young Nigerians so it’s about all Nigerians. We have about 112million poor people do you understand me? I mean you feel me? This is a disaster anywhere in the world 112million poor people gathered in a place is a social disaster so it’s not about 67 million unemployed young Nigerians alone, it’s about the general society and it’s the same solution. You don’t gather a few thousands of people out of that figure you mentioned and you say you are giving them jobs or that you are giving them grants. You have to think holistically and thinking holistically, you have to think of the masses .You do not call 1000 people the masses when you have several millions of unemployed people. It’s about allowing the economy to run by providing the basic necessities. People spend eight hours in traffic that’s more or less murder because by the time you calculate all the time spent multiplied by all the different people and you put it together you realize that that’s a lifetime. So these are things that we have to begin to check out. Allow the economy to run. Create a free market economy and do away with cronyism and monopolistic tendencies in terms of granting access to only political jobbers and friends of those in politics.

Lanre Olagunju: there seems to be a cozy relationship between you and Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, do you talk highly about him because you know him personally or because you belief in his achievements?

Omojuwa: I don’t talk highly about him. I’ve met quite a number of people who were in government and what I do is to ask them about their achievements while in office and also request for documents that affirms that these were the things they did. Then on eagle par, I’m not the one passing the judgment. An average person most especially in Abuja agrees that he was an outstanding public officer. A member of this government let me mention his name Reno Omokiri also told me … and Reno is not in any way a friend to Mallam el-Rufai. He said and I have it in written records that when it has to do with public service in Nigeria nobody has been able to get to the bar of Nasir-el Rufai. That was what Reno said and I have them on record in an email. He actually said that he has set a bar that has not been reached. So if people like that and Kanu Agabi are able to say things like that and majority of people I see in Abuja are saying since he left, things have gone bad. And I as a person, I’m trying to encourage young people into government, I see it as a responsibility to have young people relate with people like that because obviously it was not every Nigerian that was in government that failed. Aunty Oby Ezekwesili didn’t fail, so I don’t have a problem with being close to people like that, learning and finding out how they were able to go through a system that essentially looks like we have to be corrupt to be there? So when you say cozy relationship, everyone defines cozy in their own way but I have a very good relationship with him and with a whole lot of people that were in public service. But he’s a kind of person that uses social media a lot and social media is a place where whatever you say everybody sees it. So it looks like his case is much more different. When you see former public officers that I exchange DMs with every day you would think that…it’s basically out of what he has done in the past. Let’s also know that as we speak he’s being investigated and till date nothing has come out of it. And you know how much it is to criticize the government. If there are things he doesn’t want them to know he would have probably settled with them and he would have kept quiet. For me that’s something that has to be recognized, otherwise we would keep allowing the bad people in government to keep having their way without giving the good ones the opportunity to speak out.

Lanre Olagunju:What topic won’t you discuss on twitter?

Omojuwa: none…. Laughs

Lanre Olagunju: from your brilliant analysis via your blogs, column, tweets and the rest, many of your followers have expressed that you might just be another Reuben Abati in the making considering that so far you haven’t done anything differently from him before he became the presidential spoke person.

Omojuwa: (Japh becomes infuriated) …I don’t know why people keep comparing me and Reuben Abati. I haven’t even done anything close to what Reuben Abati has done. You feel me?! I mean I just finished serving last year; last month (June) makes it a year after my service year. I don’t understand why people keep bringing this Abati thing into it…I don’t have any column on any major newspaper.  I’m majorly focused on the internet and social media and of course I get to do some other things offline but I don’t like….because each time they bring the Abati thing up the next thing they say is you too will be like Abati and those are all crap for me.  Personally I’m not interested in such…are they saying that because majority of Nigerian politicians have failed so if they get into office they will fail. Let’s treat people and judge people based on themselves and not based on what others have done with their own lives. I’m who I am. I want to be judged based on who I am and not what I will do in the future you can only judge me based on the facts of today; you can’t say because some Abati has done something wrong then you use that to judge me. To do that is to set yourself up to be a fool!

Lanre Olagunju: what in your opinion do you think is responsible for the present insecurity issue in Nigeria?

Omojuwa: The insecurity issue is as a result of our failed system. Failed systems produce certain things and one of them is insecurity. Go around the world, many countries that has unemployment rate of 3 or less than 3percent don’t spend money on insecurity. Countries that spend a huge chunk of their budget on insecurity are countries that have huge unemployment issues. So unemployment is directly proportional to insecurity. In a country where you don’t have employment, there’s going to be insecurity because if people are not gainfully employed then they will be un-gainfully employed. They have to do things to spend their time. The human mind is dynamic. If it’s not producing something positively it will produce negatively. When the system cannot channel the positive vibrant energy of the young people into production then they are bound to have other means of expressing their energy and that’s why we have terrorism, kidnapping and then touting in places like Lagos. And that’s why you find Nigeria where Nigeria is today.

Lanre Olagunju: it’s quite unfortunate that things are the way they are today. But as it is, what solution do your proffer to the insecurity issues in Nigeria today?

When it comes to solving the kind of insecurity situation that we find ourselves at the moment, you don’t take anything away from the table. People are dying every day and I’m shocked that people are saying they shouldn’t do this or do that. You don’t take anything off the table. You take it through an holistic approach. Only when some options have failed is when you now take it off the table. As at today you don’t take anything off the table. If dialogue will make them stop the killing, will you rather not want them stop the killing?

Lanre Olagunju: looking at your point of view, don’t you think it’s delicate to dialogue with terrorist. What if after dialogue, tomorrow another group emerges with crazy demands.

Omojuwa: There is no perfect solution to a social problem. Every solution to a social problem has its own disadvantages. If for instance, they are able to dialogue and are able to get these people reformed. It’s not just about giving amnesty like what was done to MEND. After giving amnesty what did you do to the general society? There has to be a process in place so as to ensure that other young men who were not militants are gainfully employed or else the amnesty idea becomes a waste. It simply means that you reform the present militants and then you abandon the unemployed ones to become future militants. So while reforming, the unemployed ones must be provided employment. For instance, now you are focused on amnesty then you abandon some other 69million people. You’re just wasting your time because it’s just a matter of time the unemployed 69million will also emerge as militants.  So while dialoging with Boko-Haram the government should squarely face unemployment as well. Unemployment in Yobe is seven out of ten. Borno state is a disaster so you are not just looking at Boko-Haram members directly but also the general members of the society across Nigeria and making sure that people are gainfully employed, making sure that opportunities for self-employment are there. When you do that a lot of things will fall in place. Solutions are not a one off thing it has to be holistic. You have to look into the big picture. If dialogue will make them stop the killing today let’s stop the killing.

Lanre Olagunju: What are your thoughts over the Lawan Farouk and Femi Otedola bribery scandal?

Omojuwa: it’s sad that you aren’t asking me about the fuel subsidy report but rather on the consequences of the report, which is sad. My opinion essentially is that those who don’t want this country to progress are again winning in their quest at keeping Nigeria and Nigerians poor. Rather than focus on some N2 trillion or so that has been stolen from our people, now we’ve been distracted by Farouk Lawan and Otedola. So at the end, Nigeria and Nigerians will be the biggest losers if we don’t begin to look at the bigger picture. I’m not saying Farouk Lawan and Otedola’s case is not an important thing but let’s allow the law take its course on both of them and let’s face the subsidy report.  If people say the messenger has been discredited therefore the message has been discredited so are they saying that the 2 trillion Naira plus wasn’t stolen? Of course it was stolen.  So let’s find a way to get the money back and it’s not about setting up committees to review another committee and then committee to aggregate the committees that were reviewed. That’s just foolishness! (omojuwa frowns and screams). If we are going to solve this problem let’s solve it and if we aren’t going to solve it let’s stop wasting time and money pretending that we are solving it.

Lanre Olagunju: the president said publicly that he has no hand in the whole drama. How much can Nigerians belief that statement.

Omojuwa: you see trust is born out of antecedents. If I use to tell you things in the past that turned out to be lies will you trust me if I say a new thing? That’s it. I have answered that question. Someone that has never kept his words before now, so how can people begin to believe his words today?

Lanre Olagunju: with this present administration, our debt accumulation is sky rocketing what did he do wrong?

Omojuwa:  As at the last count, one year N1.2trillion. What did he do wrong? Everything! Some N44 billion just disappeared from our account, no one has gone to jail and nothing has happened. Fuel subsidy scam is just hovering around the news nothing has been done, SEC scam nothing has been done, pension scam nothing has been done. Scam! Scam! Scam! What did he do wrong? Look, there are two types of governance, there are things you do and the things you don’t do. For the things he does, he does them wrongly and for the things he doesn’t do, he doesn’t do at all. You talk about the fight against corruption? Dead! He’s such a disaster. Everything is pretty clear, whatever they tell people on NTA the results are there for everyone to see. And what we have is a disaster.

Lanre Olagunju: Are you married

Omojuwa: isn’t that obvious. I’m not married……laughs

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: “I DO NOT SPEAK AGAINST GOVERNMENT” SAYS JAPHETH OMOJUWA

Lanre Olagunju: What defines Japheth Omojuwa?

Omojuwa: I’m about results, I’m about change , I’m about creating value and essentially I’m about making sure that when I finally exit this planet  I’ve the chance to look back at the things I’ve done and I’d be smiling at the things I got to do. Essentially it’s difficult to define anything because there are many ways and perspectives to define any phenomenon.  So in defining myself, it depends on where you find me but I’m essentially about creating value and solutions.

Lanre Olagunju: @omojuwa on Twitter is one handle on many TL known for speaking against government and tweet slapping the present administration with sharp and hard tweets. Same goes for your articles as well .What exactly do you aim to achieve?

Omojuwa: First of all let me clear something, I don’t speak against government, I speak against what is wrong with government because they are two different things. Government in itself is not a bad thing; government in itself is not a good thing. It’s what the government does that makes it good or bad government. So I don’t speak against government. I speak against bad government, I speak against corruption, I speak against insensitivity, I speak against lack of development, I speak against lack of commitment, I speak against lack of passion on the side of those that are supposed to make things work for us. I speak against lack of sincerity. And what do I intend to achieve? There are many sides to that. First of all, I want Young Nigerians like myself to know that we cannot just sit down and allow things to happen and just keep quiet. Without even getting on the street to do something by just saying I’m not going to take this you’ve at least started something. By just saying this will not stand you’ve at least started something because if you cannot speak what you don’t like how can you bring what you like to pass? For me it’s about making my own constituency know that if we don’t want it, we have to speak against it. Then on the other side, it’s to make the government know that the times have changed. The era of closed government and the era of secrecy are over. Now it’s about open government, now it’s about making sure that whatever goes on in there in their meetings can get out and when it gets out it can go viral so they’d better be careful, and from the people I’ve spoken with, I mean those in government, we haven’t done enough of what we’re expected to do and all that but change is not something that happens overnight. You’ve to start from somewhere, you keep pushing, you keep digging then one day you hit the gusher and the result actually gets to show. But there’s change happening right now, a lot of people might not see it but it’s happening. For me, essentially it’s about change, it’s about making people know that we can be part of change even from the use of our mobile phones.

Lanre Olagunju: Many people find it difficult to understand when you say Omojuwa is not an activist. What does that mean?

Omojuwa: Being an activist, first of all emm…somebody that goes to the hospital to treat people of their sicknesses is a doctor but the fact that I’m able to treat you…for instance say you have an injury that I’m able to give you a good treatment doesn’t mean I’m a doctor. To be a doctor you have to go through several processes. I haven’t gone through the process of being an activist. I’m just an ordinary Nigerian that speaks his mind on a lot of issues including politics and governance. I speak on other things. The first post I published today was on relationships, I speak on relationships, I speak on movies, football, and tennis name it. So are you going to call me whatever name they call all those people? So I’m not an activist. I’m just an ordinary Nigerian who speaks on several issues. I’m not an activist in every sense of the word.

Lanre Olagunju: As early as June 2011, one article of yours that went viral on the internet was “Jonathan has fooled you again” what were you thinking because the president hadn’t spent two months in office as at that time?

Omojuwa: It seems like I was seeing the future, right? Yeah because I was a fan sort of…I was a supporter of the president as at 2010. On the 18^th of September when he declared to run I was excited and my excitement was based on the fact that I felt that for someone who essentially wasn’t a member of the political class, though he was a beneficiary of the system but he’s not someone you’d see in the class of the conventional member of the political class in the likes of the who is who of Nigerian politics. So I felt this person would have the power, knowing where he was coming from and bring about change, but I started seeing from his primary process the loads of money they were spending. It was obvious that something wrong must have been done. Where did they see all of that money? What Jonathan administration spent on campaigning is one of the world records in campaign history if it was actually recorded. So I began to see a …an empty person. I personally got to find out that his campaign was built on sentiment and good luck and things like that. Trust me I’d have voted anyone, apart from somebody that says “vote for me I’m goodluck”. So as at when the government started, just two months into his administration in 2011, a boy from their camp was writing an article on his successes and he wrote fifty things he had done and that was shocking because everything he was writing was fiction because there was nothing truthful about it so I came up with ‘fooling the president’ which was my beginning of general acceptability not that that was my first time of writing. Then something happened again, and then I wrote “Jonathan has fooled you again”

Lanre Olagunju: At that point in time didn’t you feel that you were not giving him benefit of the doubt?

Omojuwa: benefit of the doubt is based on antecedent. When I discovered who this person is and I started paying attention to things I wasn’t paying attention to. I looked at his records in Bayelsa, I looked at the things he did as vice-president. I found out that he was absolutely a sham.  So when you say benefit of the doubt I actually did give him the benefit of the doubt and I discovered that he was a sham.

Lanre Olagunju: looking at the PDP and how far they have taken Nigeria so far. Do you have any hope in the PDP?

Omojuwa:  Hope! Hope is …they say when there’s life there is hope, right? Now when you’re hoping, hope has specifics. You might hope to get a job tomorrow and when you’re hoping to get a job tomorrow you are going to be looking at yourself, are you a graduate?do you have the competence? So in hoping to get a job you definitely have certain jobs in mind.  The fact that you’re hoping to get a job doesn’t mean that hope is broad and that you can get any type of job. You know as a person that there are certain jobs that you can get based on your competence, and things you’ve done in the past. In putting my hope on the PDP, I’m going from the same angle of what has the PDP done in the past 13 years? So I can only build my hope on their antecedents and their records and if you look at what the PDP has been able to do in the past 13 years. To build my hope on the PDP; is to build by hope on an empty ground, on failure, on corruption, on a group of nonentities who know nothing about creating service, about bringing about change for the people, is to put my hope on people who think the best way to govern is to distract, is to put my hope on people who see citizens of Nigeria as their subject and not their co-citizens who need the basic things of life. So 112 million poor people, we don’t have good roads, dilapidated infrastructure, people wailing and crying, penury, poverty destitution. What kind of hope do I want to put in this kind of people? There’s no hope for the PDP going forward

Lanre Olagunju: If you’re saying that you don’t have hope in PDP because they have no result. Come 2015 if Nigerians succeed at voting the PDP out of government. Will that yield any positive result? 

Omojuwa: The danger of having another party succeed PDP is that Nigerians are going to measure the success of that party against that of PDP. Which means that the bar of expectation will be very very low which is a disaster for any country. You know, if as a governor of a state I never built a kilometer of road for eight years like Igbinedion. It means that any government that comes in and builds 10km is a success. So what I’m trying to tell you is that you’d expect that whoever succeeds the PDP will succeed. But the real question is will these people succeed in the real sense of the word. Or would they just do better than PDP and people will say “wow thank God!” so we’ve found ourselves in a place where  failure is the standard so even a little bit of success gets celebrated. But I’m absolutely sure that things can’t be worse than it is under the PDP government. They can’t!

Lanre Olagunju: Do you for-see a coalition of opposition party come 2015

Omojuwa: the fact that they come together and they form an alignment doesn’t guarantee victory at the polls but that’s the starter but if they don’t do that that means they are doomed and that means Nigerians are stuck again with the PDP for at least 8 years. And from what has happened in the past you can imagine what that means?

Lanre Olagunju: as an individual and a Nigerian what political party do you endorse?

Omojuwa: I’m not going to endorse any political party….laughs 

Lanre Olagunju: but why?

Omojuwa:   there are no elections …but certainly I won’t endorse the PDP because the only thing they know how to do is that they know how to fail. So any party apart from the PDP has a chance of getting my endorsement. Though many of the parties are at the point of forming coalitions…so let’s see what happens. But you can be sure that PDP is out of the picture for me and I don’t have apologies about that.

Lanre Olagunju: like you said Nigerians don’t have a standard for measuring success…

omojuwa cuts in… our standard is poor it’s easy to succeed as a leader in Nigeria. ..

Lanre Olagunju: so in your own view what’s the picture of a new Nigeria? 

Omojuwa: the picture of a new Nigeria is not a picture you have to get from nowhere. It’s a picture of modern global realities. It’s a picture of a people that are able to produce, but how can you produce when there’s no power? How can you produce if there are no good roads? How can you produce when there are monopolies? I cannot go into the cement business today I’ll get crushed because there’s a monopoly. There are certain businesses I cannot do today because in one way or the other the government has been able to put checks around places to kill your productivity. We must begin to see our country as a part of the global village where we understand that the things we do in this country have a bearing in the world and the things that happen around the world have a bearing on us. What stops an average Nigerian from producing things and exporting? It doesn’t happen to average Nigerians.It happens to people I will refer to as crony capitalists. We need to free up the economy system, we need to put a system in place that allows people to be productive, create entrepreneurs, a system that allows us to create not just business men that depend on politics to succeed but business men who don’t need to know anybody as long as they have their head, they have the passion and interest to do what they want to do. When we begin to have such a system like that in place everything not necessarily all …but a lot of things will work well. But a system where people leave school, do their NYSC …I’ve a lot of friends doing nothing, not because they are not able to work, not because they don’t want to work but just because the system breeds unemployment. Why won’t there be unemployment when the government is the highest employer of labour? That’s an anomaly. We need to put a system in place that allows the private sector to run. How can the private sector run when the banks have exorbitant interest rates?  Why won’t the banks have high interest rates when governments’ internal borrowing has crowded the banks themselves? You can’t aid the private sector like that. These are the basics that we must look at as a nation then the picture we desire by itself will eventually fall in place. It’s not something we necessarily have to go and paint and say this is the future that we want. It’s something we can actually build by consistently doing things right

Lanre Olagunju: You sound quite brilliant with your analysis about the economy and also governance. So how soon do we expect to see you in politics or isn’t that the summary of yourlabour?

Omojuwa: politics?! You don’t expect me in politics. I’m not cut out for politics… cuts in

Lanre Olagunju: is it a no-no thing?!

Omojuwa: politics in Nigeria is not a place where you say things the way they are, it’s a place where you say things the people want to hear. And I’m interested in things that people have to hear.  So until I know that the majority of Nigerians are ready to listen to the truth especially the so-called political class and ordinary people. Until I know that they’re ready to understand that there are many things and that there’re certain things that we shouldn’t’ allow to happen, then I can say Ok politics. But I as a person I believe in processes. The time isn’t right for me to be in politics and I haven’t done enough with my own personal life when I’m satisfied with my own personal success  I can begin to think about politics. May be!

Lanre Olagunju: looking at the involvement of young people in politics today, do you feel that the time is ripe for young people to venture into politics?

Omojuwa: Of course the time is ripe…

Lanre Olagunju: yeah young people are so passionate, but how much can we rely on that?

Omojuwa: yes the time is ripe for young people to be involved in politics and when I say politics, now I mean partisan politics, more or less I’m part of the system. I have a blog that caters for well over 200,000 different people and millions of hits in a half year. Essentially I’m more or less a part of the political system. So I’d rather say young people get involved in politics in terms of not staying on the sideline and complaining but in terms of being part of the system in terms of making government and those in government know that “look things have changed we can’t just take this” and if all of those things doen’t work, then things like civil unrest and civil disobedience are things that are meant to bring about change.

Lanre Olagunju: That reminds me. The occupy Nigeria protest that held the nation at a standstill in the early days of January, you were strongly involved…you were on air a couple of times making analysis and also a mover of the Abuja protest. As that act of civil unrest achieved its all?

Omojuwa: I really don’t know why people keep asking this question. Occupy Nigeria wasn’t about regime change, because most of those who said it failed were thinking we were going to have a Nigerian spring then you change the regime. That for me wasn’t the objective. The objective for me was to get the price back to N65. As an objective, that essentially wasn’t a success. But we were able to remove N43 from the price per litre. If you calculate the effect and the direct cost of saving N43 compared to if we’d allowed the prize to stay. Analyze the effect on the direct price of goods and services. I heard the inflation unit jumped by 200 units in January if we’d allowed it to stay we’d be talking about some 500unit jump by now. From abroad the kind of attention we’re able to get in terms of saying that Nigerians aren’t going to sit down anymore and accept all that is being thrown at them. That was the first time in the history of this Nation. I mean we put the nation to a standstill for about two weeks…so one way or the other if you are not able to appreciate your small success for what they are you will not be able to value the big success when they come. It’s a gradual process. I don’t believe in instantaneous change I believe in procedural change, change process that graduates by itself. And the thing is that Nigerians are more involved in politics today than ever before. I know because before now, we dint have political blogs that have crowd pulls, people coming to read and all that. But now we have a lot of political blogs springing up here and there. So it’s a sign that Nigerians are more interested in politics and until people are more interested in the politics of their nation they won’t be part of the political process and if they are not part of the political process we are bound to have a few people run the country…but things are changing and occupy Nigeria was a part of that process. It’s a beginning in itself of a better Nigeria.

Watch out for the concluding part of this interview....

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WHY SHALL I FEAR BY @ LANRE_OLAGUNJU

We’ve been told by motivational speakers that fear and anxiety are destroyers of destiny and we’ve been programmed to see fear as a huge detriment to success. I wonder if they can ever get enough of the bad press. Humans and animals alike have the ability to experience fear

Everyone has either been afraid of or is afraid of at least one thing. Any daring attempt to boast that one has never been afraid is nothing but a cowardly behaviour. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi “Fear has its use but cowardice has none”

It’s good and very natural to have a healthy size of fear over some things. A small amount of fear before presenting an important speech or an examination might serve a great purpose. Such a felling pushes you to study hard and make adequate preparation so as to avoid the shame that convoys failure.

Ironically, fear in this sense becomes a great tool. Even if you weren’t passionate about studying; the fear of being an empty head becomes a motivator. This type of fear is essential in sharpening the mind and also bringing out the best. I see it like this, if you are not afraid of anything, the truth is that you are not living! For it is only when you summon the courage to conquer your fears that you truly become yourself.

Same goes for the fear of poverty. Many have been able to achieve their financial goals and aspiration because of the knowledge and fear of what poverty is capable of doing.  I could remember the response of Chude Jideonwo, co-founder and Creative Director of RedSTRAT/The Future Project, when he was asked in an interview–why do you do the things you do? “Besides being a passionate person, a lot of things I do are driven quite seriously by the fear of poverty”, Chude explained. The world is truly a better place because young people like him were afraid, yet they didn’t turn away.

If only Nigerian leaders were afraid. Afraid that their thoughtfulness to looting and insensitivity to the people they govern will one day make Nigeria a failed state, remain permanently on the list of most corrupt nations and of course the sixth most dangerous country in Africa as the case presently is.

Fear helps to focus. Are you asking how? Ok come to think of it, in what circumstance do we catch ourselves extremely focused?  Like me, have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and feel that a housebreaker has found his way into the house, probably because you could ear some imaginary foot steps you can’t account for? Have you ever been chased by a dog before? Did you at that point call for coffee or try to remember the movie you saw last? Absolutely No! 

We avoid and deny fear, feeling we would be better off without it. We forget that it’s from the artificially induced fear from adventure that we gather the greatest emotional excitement. Simply because it makes us focus, agile and alert. If you check thoroughly, you will discover that there is only a slight difference between fear and excitement. Besides that one is a negative emotion and the other is a positive emotion, it basically boils down to how you see it. The sensation is the same. It’s just that you add a little “oh no!” for fear and oh boy!” for excitement.

Fear helps to check and put balance to things by helping to ask the important question. Such as, hope nothing is missing out? It also helps to concentrate on the most important things and ensure that they are achieved in the shortest time possible. How? Imagine I give you two minutes in the shopping mall to fill in a chopping cart with things of your choice. You know too well to ignore things you can always afford, you don’t even want to say hi and chat away your time with that old friend that just walked in to the mall, simply because you don’t want to waste such an ample opportunity. 

In the same vein I strongly feel that we should be afraid of missing out of life ‘cos we only have about 70 years to grab all we can. And come to think of it, life expectancy over here is estimated to be forty-eight years, and you must be reminded that that was before bombing started.

We should be afraid that we just might be focusing on the trifles and frivolities of life alone.

It’s worth noting that no one on the death bed regrets not having enough sex, wine, food, shoes or designer wears. What many regret at such point is; not having spent enough time with loved-ones, not having spent time in the most productive way possible, and not having made enough significant impact in the lives of others essentially when they had the opportunity.

On the other hand, some types of fear that are excessive can inflict severe pain and anguish, but majority of the daily fears we encounter are basically illusions and many of them shouldn’t be given more attention than television commercials and the jumbo size election year promises of fresh air and  transformation

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