I’ve always insisted that both actions and inactions will always have consequences, no matter how long it may take them to materialize. There are times when the repercussions take so long, one could be forgiven for believing one had gotten away with it. But we never really do. I’m reminded of my early boarding school days in the UK when I would go home with school reports which I knew would do nothing to endear me to my parents. Till this day, I blush when I remember my headmaster, Mr McDonald’s remark to sum up one of my reports. To…
Author: Oladapo Akande
From day one, our Masters (what we had to call our teachers) drummed it into our heads that we, pupils of Public Schools, represent the top 1% of the nation. Don’t mind the Brits. You know them now. Their own is always different. For some odd reason that I don’t have time to go into here, what they refer to as Public schools are actually Private schools. Their own free schools are called State schools or Comprehensives. Anyway, these Masters would repeatedly tell us we are the future leaders of the nation therefore our character must reflect such. In everything…
Nigeria is indeed a nation of the absurd, where everything seems to be deliberately turned on its head. You seek personal safety so you move around blaring sirens to announce your presence to those who otherwise wouldn’t have known you were there. Steal a chicken in a desperate bid to avert starvation and within a week the culprit is publicly paraded, arraigned in court and summarily sentenced to a term absurdly disproportionate to the crime. Misappropriate billions as a public servant, which selfishly deprives millions of what is rightfully theirs, thereby destroying lives but then go ahead to “generously” enrich a…
Actions are the physical manifestation of our thoughts. The thought process involved denotes our mindset. This mindset can be a reliable gauge of our core values and how we see life. Perhaps the most noticeable difference between a Third World country and a First World country is their level of commitment to discipline; governments keeping faith with their professed policies; making punctuality a watchword and other visible evidence of discipline as an established culture. A discerning first time visitor to Nigeria may, between the airport and his lodgings, be able to tell if Nigerians are people he can do business…
If we are to look at all the indexes typically used to gauge the level of a society’s socio-economic development and how meaningful life is for its citizens, then it would be difficult to disagree with those who insist Nigeria is on its last legs. It is certainly not a coincidence that as the quality of government funded education in our country has continued to nosedive over the last number of decades, so have we witnessed a commensurate degradation in almost all sectors of the larger society too. It was the iconic father of modern day Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew…
The youths who account for the largest demographic group in Nigeria have for long felt aggrieved that they have been sidelined and have not been given the opportunity to showcase their leadership abilities in governance. With 43.7% of its population being 15 years old and younger, 50% being 19 years and below and 65% below the age of 30, there is little wonder why the larger part of the country’s population does not feel represented by a government led by a 79 year old President who falls into a group of just 2.7% of the population that is 65 years…
For how long will our country continue to put forward its worst XI instead of its 1st XI team? For how long will our leaders portray a country blessed with some of the most brilliant minds anywhere in the world as “no good doers” who know how to say all the right things but whose sincerity somehow always comes into question when it comes to execution? For how long will mediocrity be celebrated in our nation, confounding the rest of the world who see the genius of our people in their countries every day? For how long will Nigeria be…
System collapse? Which one? All. I once wrote an article where I related the story of a newspaper headline, shortly before a UK general election. The naughty caption read, “Will the last person to leave Britain please switch the light off”. Isn’t it so tempting to say the same here? Oh! I forgot, the grid has collapsed. Okay, the last person should switch the generator off. Oops! My bad. There’s no diesel. Well, I guess it makes it easy then, as there’s nothing to switch off. But wait a minute. How do we leave? There’s no Jet fuel either! What…
I remember the mid 1990s Pirelli advert where the world famous Italian tyre brand introduced it’s iconic slogan for the first time. The advert featured my school time hero and one of the greatest Olympians of all time, the incomparable Carl Lewis. Not only did he sport the perfect “flat top” hairstyle, which I dutifully copied but he specialized in the same athletic events as I did, namely the 100m and 200m sprints and the Long Jump. With his perfect and effortless looking running style, “King Carl” as many of us liked to call him because of his total dominance…
“The plans of the diligent lead to profit”. We’ve heard it over and over before, especially while growing up, that in order to succeed in just about any endeavor one decides to embark on, one must develop the habit of working hard. It’s therefore no surprise that we, in turn have adopted this counsel in guiding our own children too. Additional sound advice given is to plan adequately. However, faithful adherence to these two, without supporting it with good discipline will likely lead to frustration and failure in the long run. But let us be honest with each other; working…
I remember when I first returned to Nigeria after a 20 year sojourn in the UK, where I spent the better part of my formative years; and while talking to one of my parents or both, elderly people would casually refer to me as their child. I always felt a little perturbed by this. Why would people who I may have met donkey years ago and can’t for the life of me remember and those I had probably never met before, call me their child? I just couldn’t understand it and though I later learned that it was actually a…
Those who say Nigerians don’t have what it takes to compete with Western standards are the sort of people I like to keep away from. As much as I’m in the habit of pointing out where developed countries get some things right, where we don’t, and how it may well be expedient for us to take a cue from them, it’s not because I think we’re not capable. We are, and that’s what makes it the more tragic and frustrating that we find ourselves where we are. Lagos, the Centre of Excellence truly lived up to it’s sobriquet by masterfully…
Though we have certainly improved in leaps and bounds in the last decade or two, I don’t believe too many will argue with me that courteous, efficient customer service has never been a national strength, whether in the public or even private sector. I for one, will always argue that at the heart of good customer service or customer relations is good manners. When a child with good manners grows up, by instinct he’s far more likely to provide good customer service, as his interpersonal skills would have been well prepared for this over the years. That’s why those who…
There is a popular saying that a nation gets the government (leaders) it deserves. Whilst this may not always be the case it certainly appears to ring true here in our society. Hear that renowned philosopher, Seneca: “No man can live happily who regards himself alone, who turns everything to his own advantage. You must live for others if you wish to live for yourself “. So what does this mean exactly? It means self-centredness, so pervasive in these climes amounts to inadvertantly shooting oneself in the foot. As a society, attitudinal change is more urgent now than ever. Society…
Life is essentially about continuity. We continue to live through our children and they will continue to live through theirs. There are times when this is as a result of very intentional strategies or actions and at other times, it’s just a natural consequence of subconscious behaviour. This continuity can take the form of reproducing ourselves through our offspring, our employees, or others over whom we have influence. Most Nigerians have become experts at complaining and grumbling about all that’s wrong with our nation and I doubt I have an equal when it comes to this. I’m a “complainer extraordinaire”…
“You kill me, I kill you back” my wife would retort in quite a commendable effort at mimicking a Chinese accent. Those who are conversant with the old, atrociously mimed Chinese kung fu films, where the whole storyline from beginning to the end revolves around one thing and one thing only, revenge; will know exactly what I’m talking about. She never fails to crack me up when she does that. Abi? Tell me now. How do you intend to kill someone who beat you to it by killing you first? Hilarious. I was not only dumbfounded when some years ago,…
As the British General Election approached a couple of years ago, the current Prime Minister received some flack from the opposition party for having displayed racist tendencies in the past. They referred to a comment he made when he was still a journalist. In an Independent on Sunday publication of October 1999 he had regrettably quipped, “All the young people I know — i.e. those under 30 — are just as avaricious as we flinty Thatcherite yuppies of the 1980s… In fact, they have an almost Nigerian interest in money and gadgets of all kinds.” A remarkably distasteful comment by…
Equip to lead Doing evil is ultimately self destructive as your happiness and progress are inextricably linked to others. And by evil, I don’t necessarily mean someone who goes about chopping people’s heads off or casting spells on sundry enemies but I simply mean someone whose life is bereft of good. Just as scientists take the position that black is a lack of colour rather than a colour in itself and darkness results when there is lack of light, so can evil be said to be a lack of good. Nigerians generally yearn to be treated well and those who…
The recognized and respected Centre for Creative Leadership in the US, which provides services for more than 2,000 organizations, over 20,000 individuals and 80 of the Fortune 100 companies, conducted a research which found that there are 3 main reasons why both organizations and individuals fail. They are, (1) inability to be a team player, (2) difficulty in handling change and (3) having poor interpersonal skills. It needs to be understood that leadership is essentially a relationship and an emotional bond between the one leading and the one being led. Truth is that people are more convinced by emotional arguments…
Visionary leaders will always put their “customers” first. In the case of government, these are the citizens. But first, the visionary leader must set about training the mind of government workers such as civil servants – whether this be in the health care sector or in the educational sector – to understand that their customer is not their Director, Permanent Secretary or the Minister in charge but the students and their parents in the case of the educational sector and the patients in the health sector. And according to David Osborne and Ted Gaebler’s in their book, Reinventing Government, one…
According to Marcus Buckingham, Leaders are fascinated by the future. You are a leader if, and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply dissatisfied with the status quo. As a leader, you are never satisfied with the present, because in your head you can see a better future, and the friction between what is and what could be burns you, stirs you up, propels you forward. This is leadership. According to Jack Welch, the one and only ingredient that separates extraordinary organizations from ordinary ones is their leadership edge. Warren Bennis once said it is…
One day I started wondering how I became the person I am. Why do certain things matter so much to me? Why do I take fairness and justice as sacrosanct? Why do I seem to lack that “winning at all cost” instinct that puts everything and everybody else aside to aggressively pursue self interest, even when it means my unscrupulous actions will adversely affect others? Is there something wrong with me? Wait. Don’t answer that, just yet. When I cast my mind back to how my late parents brought me up, coupled with my experiences at boarding school in the…
It’s important we celebrate our small wins in life as they contribute tremendously to our happiness and do our self esteem a whole lot of good. There are few things which conduce more to our sense of well being. Most of us have some so called “friends” who always find a way to minimize our wins and make them look insignificant. You know, those people who have a penchant for making us feel foolish for making our achievements look like a big deal. My advice to you? Stay clear of such friends. Trust me, you really don’t need them. Those…
I’ll begin today’s article with a quote I saw somewhere and it says, “In every field of human endeavour, there are always three categories of people; those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who end up wondering what happened.” The following story of someone very close to me, I believe will speak to a couple of people out there and if it even serves to inspire them too, then that would be all well and good. This my egbon, while telling me his story said, “I never knew I could fly a plane until the…
Definition of corruption. Yes, as ludicrous as it may have appeared to most of us, President Jonathan was absolutely right when he said corruption is not synonymous to stealing. Stealing, which is covered by the Theft Act, is to just take what doesn’t belong to you whereas corruption requires the cooperation of another party to give you an unfair advantage, for you to make a gain of some kind. Of course that willing party more often than not is motivated to cooperate because of what he too stands to gain. This could be in the form of a bribe, a…
I honestly can’t speak for other nationalities because I can’t pretend to know too much about what makes them tick but there’s an attribute the British have that I love and it’s their inclination to back and appreciate the underdog. “Well done. Smashing effort. Better luck next time” are very typical of the Brits to say. If nothing else, it’s an encouragement that there should be a next time. Maybe that’s why we don’t see too much of an unholy desperation to win at all cost. Barring the look of disappointment on the face of the losing side, it can…
Life is essentially about continuity. We continue to live through our children and they will continue to live through theirs. There are times when this is as a result of very intentional strategies or actions and at other times, it’s just a natural consequence of subconscious behaviour. This continuity can take the form of reproducing ourselves through our offspring, our employees, or others over whom we have influence. Most Nigerians have become experts at complaining and grumbling about all that’s wrong with our nation and I doubt I have an equal when it comes to this. I’m a “complainer…
A Third World country which genuinely harbours any ambition of stepping up to First World would not be so nonchalant about holding the unenviable record of being the number two public defecating capital of the world. It would as a matter of urgency immediately set about making available to its citizens a more than adequate number of good, well maintained public toilets, which members of the public wouldn’t hesitate to use. A country with such ambition would feel ashamed that it has one of the highest number of out of school, school age children in the world. In which direction…
The Coronavirus pandemic which crept up on the entire world and grounded the economies of even the most developed of nations and totally overran the world’s most sophisticated and robust health services, exposed a need for greater application of technology in the Nigerian health sector. Trying to take the fight to an invisible enemy, which is what the virus is, and endeavouring to both treat and contain the spread of the virus, really brought this urgent need to the fore. Technology was beckoned upon to bridge the gap and widen accessibility to health services. Telemedicine first emerged over forty years…
I’m very sorry to burst your bubble but we won’t get very far as a nation if things remain the way they are. About 13.2 million of our school age children said to be out of school. How is a child deprived of the opportunity to confront the rigours of education expected to strive for excellence when he or she hasn’t been given a chance to know what it means? How can a child unfamiliar with the precision of understanding required to solve a Mathematical question, possibly comprehend the concept of perfection? Four plus four will always equal eight and…
