These Signs Shall Precede Them…

A dear friend of mine, @TonyAtambi inspired this post. You should follow him on twitter. His tweets make sense some times. 😀 Kidding! He’s a really cool fellow. Follow him and I guarantee you no regrets.
Anyways, we were chatting that day and he asked if I joined the madness on twitter. My response was “Haha. Naah. Stella Oduah abi? Abegi! Naija tire me biko”
We talked over the matter for a while and I decided to post this. I’m patriotic. I love my country (I think) 🙂 I fight against stereotypes, I call out people when they do wrong, I praise them when they do right, and I try in my little way to make Naija a better place. Yes, I pray for my country too 🙂
So why did I say Naija tire me? Because it’s the truth. So many things going wrong, several people complaining, but only a handful of people are actually doing something to try and make things better. And that’s why I said Naija tire me. People make up the country, not just the government.
Now there’s a “special” group of people I do not respect and I will be calling them out today. And no, it is not uncle Jona, or Dame Patience or the most recent aunty Stella. It’s another bunch. And sadly they make up the majority in the country.
I do not respect people who sit and do nothing but criticize every action taken by government. They won’t come out for protests, they won’t do anything productive with their time, but they will criticize government from sunrise to sunset. Quick question. How does sitting in the comfort of your bedroom, berating Jona and his team make Nigeria a better place? My answer: It doesn’t. So get up and do something! Read a book, help a stranger, start a trade. But do not sit about doing nothing other than criticizing the government. That does not help in any way. Frankly, if you are not doing anything meaningful to make Naija better, your mouth should not be running.
I do not respect the ones that criticize leadership when they are exact replicas of such. And here’s where I’ll really run my mouth. I studied Political Science and several times, I heard a number of my classmates say stuff like “Ahh, I go chop my own. Make I enter there first na. Na to follow chop.” Maybe they were kidding, maybe they weren’t. Either ways. There’s a lot of people that criticize today and tomorrow, they become a part of the system and join the “natural” course of events, no difference. And here’s why. Because some of them have no intention of performing differently. Regardless of how much they complain, criticize and rant, they know in the quietness of their hearts that they would not do any different once they find themselves in positions of authority.
And the others fail because they think too highly of themselves and do not in any way guard their conscience. A woman I respect so much always says “If you will go into government, count the cost before you do. Determine not to negotiate the cost of your conscience.” Sadly, a lot of people do not do that. They just sit down and run their mouths about how aunty Stella is a thief and uncle Jona is a weakling and how fuel subsidy is just a scam but when the chips are down, the desire to “secure” their future overrules the desire to make tangible maximum positive impact and so the slightest opportunity they get, they’re quick to grab their share of the national cake. Now to the heart of my post.

And these signs shall precede the hypocrites that criticize the leadership but aren’t different:
• They shall engage in exam malpractice at every point in time. Admissions into higher institutions were probably based on forged results.
• They’ll graduate with straight As but know nothing basic about their course of study
• They shall get jobs based on whom they know and not based on merit
• They shall go to work at 8:30am and sign in 7:55am, leave work 2:00pm and sign out 4:00pm
• They shall skip work a day before and a day after public holidays.
• They shall inflate the cost of purchases made, the amount of money spent on trips and ask for refunds twice as much as they spent.
• They shall convert office materials to personal belongings. Staplers, box tissue, air fresheners, pens, rulers, cartons of A4 paper will follow them home from the office.
• They shall argue without facts and figures to back them up.
• They shall have strong opinions on issues they know nothing about.
• They shall convert discussions on corruption in government to ethnocentric arguments.
If any of these signs precedes you, check yourself. You need to work on yourself if you ever hope for Nigeria to become a better place. Truth is, it’s hard to do right in a system that is all wrong, but you don’t have to do things simply because everyone else is doing it.
Someone tweeted “Our value system is a rot! We are our own problem… Not Aso Rock”. And Tony’s reply to that was “Nah. We and Aso Rock are meeting each other half way” (See why I said you should follow him? 😉 ) My point? It’s not just about the leadership. It’s also about you as a person. After all, who makes up leadership? Isn’t it human beings like you and I? Weren’t they selected from the society? Or did they fall from the skies?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying when the government does wrong we should not call them out. By all means, please do. No system is effective without checks and balances so we must appraise them at all times and call them out on their errors. This however is my point. Other than solely berating the system, do something to make it better. And when I say do something, I mean actually do something, running your mouth does not count as doing something. Be the change you want to see. Be honest to yourself and people around you. Run an objective evaluation of yourself and effect changes where necessary. I don’t need to list all the things you can do to become a better person. I’m sure you can figure that out yourself 🙂
Did I strike a nerve? Well I’m not sorry. I don’t post in my Lifemathics category to impress. 😀 Here’s to you becoming a better person.
Yours always,
Yougeecash.