Only Naive Folks Spend First Fortune On Fried Dough With Friends 

Fraudsters are so bold these days, they invade constituted authorities like Police, Army and Politics. They announce themselves in a big way on social media as conspicuous spenders, ostentatious displays of vanities without added value to their lives. We cry and complain about bandits, terrorists, thugs and cyber crimes in low places. What do we do about crime fighters, constituted authorities in high places that kill subordinates for fear of exposing those at the top?

Many of us are at a loss or baffled at the celebrations of the poorest among us trying to understand why they celebrate criminals. There are many countries going through poverty, wars and fleeing their villages but only a few or a couple take out the drums and trumpets to make them a joyous occasion in the midst of abject poverty. Suffering and smiling was noted a long time ago by FELA but these celebrations today within many poor, are beyond comprehension.

There is this African proverb about kids spending their first fortune in a toy store. Most people do not become matured and seasoned until they have gone through trials and errors as they grow in life. Some achieve maturity early while the rest of us blow our first thousands or first million on vanities. Smarter children (not freeloaders) learn from their environment created and influenced by wiser adults around them.

What if you are surrounded by poor managers and adults that exhibit bad behavior at home? It is good to dream big as early as you can as long as you realize that you have to crawl before you walk. These days, not only young people want to jump before they crawl. When we were growing up, we used to walk around some beautiful neighborhoods for inspiration about the house we want to build when we grow up. Others learn from sober drunken sailors.

How can a young man today without a job or visible means of income dream about a Mercedes Benz for his first car? It started gradually from the self entitled children to the point where a recent graduate would complain that his father gave him only a Peugeot when his friends got Mercedes Benz after graduation. They are teaching hard work or encouraging a boy without a job living at home!

The first dream car was a Volkswagen beetle. Never forget this advertisement displayed on billboard with: Sisi come ride my Volks! But then, pastors and imams preached against worldly luxurious possessions that made it difficult to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Today some pastors fly in private jets, competing with one another by the numbers of jets waiting for them idle in their hangars.

Pioneering Politicians were the radical young activists that created Youths’ Movements and fought for the common man in the face of injustice and indignities. Today politicians steal from the poor and deny them basic necessities for survival while they live abroad part-time where their children attend school and they all get treated in hospitals they refused to provide at home. Some of them even brag that they could afford it from their government salaries.

Therefore, if this is the environment you grow up in and the aberrant behavior you see as examples, it takes more to aspire to a normal life. Poor children are denied their play and pleasure periods while neglecting school to help their parents make a living. Youths that have seen their parents in poverty while politicians loot the incomes that should be used to nurture them, develop weird behavior and look for shortcuts to riches by any means necessary.

Wealth creation is not fast or easy. It is not just money or printed papers that are a mode of exchange for more substantive products that build morals and morale. It takes endurance or perseverance by trial and error investment over a period of time before returns or seed money germinates. Many Youths cannot wait that long. They want money fast and right away to catch up to constituted authorities disguising as crime fighters looting their treasuries.

As builders of Arts, Culture and Science were crowded out; Politicians established the most endearing and dangerous pathway called “do or die” endeavor. It is easier for the thugs and hooligans used to threaten opponents to go into politics and make it an ignoble profession. Since they made people and opponents fear politicians, they might as well be the politicians!

Therefore, politics has become the mirror images of everything wrong and immoral in many communities. Those deserting their villages for greener pastures do not care how they accumulate money anymore. They just want to go back home to show that what they could not achieve at home has been gotten outside. Do not be surprised if they claim they turned a bush into a town better than the villages they come from.

They compare themselves to missionaries that came to “civilize” Natives. If the Natives were abused by plunderers, pillagers, pilfering of African talents and resources; pay back by fraud, 419, cyber crime and deception of those willing to reap fortunes where they did not sow, then African young ones in poor countries are justified when foreign old ladies are jilted.

Other Youths see themselves as Ibeto, Adenuga, Dangote and complain that there is no infrastructure to enable businesses at home. But went into thick forests in East Africa to establish power generating plants for their mobile phones or cement factories and staff. Even the Nigerian Government built a Refinery in Niger for crude oil to sell refined petroleum products back into Nigeria while home refineries are non operational or working below capacities.

Of course the finished products of goods and services produced outside, command higher prices in Nigeria than anywhere else. Like Nigerian Pastors collecting tithes from churches abroad, learned from missionaries that converted them to Christians and Muslims. The only problem here is that Africa has no Army that can invade rich countries to enforce chicanery the way Europeans did in Africa against the Chiefs.

Youths are telling us they are just glad to break out of poverty anyway they could. The problem is whenever money becomes the only focus and the most important game in town, many important pursuits are lost. Arts, Sciences, Sports and Crafts are neglected without progress towards discovery and invention. Indeed, most of the ways Youths see as the easiest to money; become the most dangerous, deceitful and abrupt. No difference between Bandits and Police.

 

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