I love the spirit of the Nigerian: confident, enthusiastic, cheerful, committed, and supremely optimistic even in the face of daunting challenges. Our adaptability, resilience and bounce-back-ability are legendary. We remain ever cheerful and enthusiastically optimistic, no matter what we are going through, so much so that we have been recognized as the happiest people on the planet! May we never lose this spirit!!!
An American friend once drew my attention to the awesome potential we have as a people. He told me that he has had the pleasure of working with people of different races, ethnicities and nationalities across the various continents. He confessed that he found Nigerians among the best; very intelligent, highly adaptive, very smart, creative, innovative, dependable, self-motivated, possessing a very strong work ethic, high productivity rate, enthusiastic and energetic. He pointed to the fact that Nigerians in the United States are the professionally most upwardly mobile group, the most educated immigrant group and the single immigrant group with the largest number of medical doctors. He emphasized that Nigerians are contributing positively and making things to happen in the US and then wondered why we are not able to do the same, or even more, here in Nigeria.
There is no doubt that we have an unbelievably awesome potential, both in human and natural resources, but we are besieged and belittled by too many self-inflicted yawa. If only we will organise ourselves well and overcome all the yama-yama and wahala that beset us and keep us far below our potential, we will shine like two hundred million stars across the globe. But we allow baldheaded corruption, tribalism, religious bigotry, base sentimentalism, intolerance, clueless leadership, etc., to keep us down and way below our awesome and globally-acknowledged potential. Pity.
Like I said earlier, our potential is unbelievably huge, almost unfathomable. We can easily be, by far, the best place to be born and to live and to do business in Africa, and one of the top ten best places to be born and to live and to do business in the World. It is really all within easy reach. See, we are already the biggest market and economy in Africa. One of our states, Lagos State alone, is the third biggest economy, after South Africa, in Africa. We have one of the best, pound for pound, human capital in the World. Our natural resources, solid and liquid and gaseous, are unmatched anywhere in Africa and most parts of the World.
May we not be blinded to this great potential and the endless opportunities for growth and prosperity that lay therein. May we not waste this potential and opportunity for our incomparable greed and misguided oneupmanship. May we not destroy this glorious potential because of our petty desire to gain advantage over each other. May we see that, working together and promoting merit, we can do the impossible and attain true greatness.
I hope, nay, pray someone is listening; someone who can make a real difference; someone in a position of power; someone in a position of influence; or someone who has the ear of someone in power; someone who, though not in power and does not have widespread influence, but has the heart and commitment to make and be the difference Nigeria needs. Someone - man or women, boy or girl, young or old - someone who will recognize the awesome potential and know what to do to bring it about. Someone, anyone, willing to pay the price and act positively.
It is time to reward the Nigerian spirit with genuine sustainable development and a high standard of living. It is time to reward the cheerful faith and confident belief of ordinary Nigerians with real development and solutions to all these wuru-wuru that trouble us. It is time for government to work for everybody. It is time to make ordinary Nigerians truly proud of Nigeria. It is time to rise up to and live in our awesome potential.
It is time to secure and ensure and promote peace and order, justice and fairplay, probity and accountability, rule of law and constitutionality, due process and institutional safeguards, social services and social welfare, social justice and social development, merit and hardwork, dignity of labour and labour security, human rights and human capital development, etc., so that the ordinary Nigerian will have abundant reasons to continue to be cheerful and positive.
Now is the time to prioritize the wellbeing and the welfare of ordinary Nigerians. Now is the time to truly invest in comprehensive human capital development. Now is the time to realize that the human being is the most important factor of development, because without the human being all other forms of development are neither desirable nor sustainable. See, without Nigerians there will be no Nigeria. Therefore, individual Nigerians, regardless their tribe or religion or any other such considerations, are more important than any other resource. Hence, the total development of individual Nigerians should constitute the topmost priority of government, both in theory and in practice. No more, no less.
It is time to step up.
It is time to organize ourselves.
It is time to order ourselves.
It is time to rise to our potential.
We can do it.
It is all within us.
It is Agoso Bamaiyi, your friend for a greater Nigeria and the best things of life.
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