The Lion and the Gazelle...wake up! Nigerian youth

We live in a generation that bears so much knowledge, one in which kids are super smart and have access to all sorts of smart gadgets, an era of continuous evolution with so much at our disposal… In these times, the competition is high; however, everyone stands a fair chance of survival. But the question is, “will you survive?”

“With each new day in Africa, a gazelle wakes up knowing he must outrun the fastest lion or perish. At the same time, a lion stirs and stretches, knowing he must outrun the fastest gazelle or starve.- Mohammed Bin Rashid Al maktoum 

I like to see this quote as a perfect illustration of our predicament as humans, as I like to see it as a contest between us humans and our numerous challenges. However, we are much stronger and a lot more agile than they, being endowed with a mind so powerful and elastic it can take much more than we have the ability to gather in a life time. Unfortunately, we don’t realize it, hence the possibility of a defeat. So we sit and complain and cower in fear or sheer laziness giving room for our challenges to overwhelm us… Guys, this is the survival of the fittest. Life is not necessarily interested in being fair to you, but you can command it to… 

We take in our environment; at school, at work, on the street, on the internet and everywhere but here’s my question; what do we do with all we get? How do we sieve and how do we maximize the residue? Because we must! It would be a shame to have access to so much, yet be of no consequence in these times of massive opportunities. Everyone carries a solution and when things start getting though, it is probably time to look into your tool box in readiness to fix it because you can!
Its recession guys, our food security is being threatened; talk more of clothing and shelter but I say, it’s the best time ever because in these times I have seen how resourceful  governments can be, how motivated individuals can be…the thought of waking up and not having a decent meal is motivation enough. But far beyond food, should be the need to make a difference, make things happen...That’s why I believe that this is just what we need as it would help us take our eyes off the external and focus on the internal!

There is gold everywhere. I mean gold! Probably buried in a pile of dirt. But instead of us getting on our knees with our hands buried in the dirt in search for something genuine, we would rather wear trendy clothes and shoes parading ourselves as big boys who do nothing but depend helplessly on someone who won’t be there forever. What will it profit a young man if he wears the trendiest on an empty stomach resulting from dry pockets, in turn resulting from highly underutilized brains leading to zero influence? You don’t want to wake up one day only to realize somewhere in the middle of your life that you at point zero influence/control. Now is time to act!

If you are still sleeping, I suggest   you wake up right away, open your eyes and look! Look around you, dig into the dirt if you must, until your hand finds something of worth, something to contribute to life while you gradually but perpetually disable the giants that threaten our peace, progress and stability. Get up! Do something and stop wasting away, polish what you already have and make a difference. An academic certificate these days isn’t a big deal. It’s good but just isn’t enough anymore. How many of us who have certificates work with them? How many of those certificates are genuine? Does having a certificate secure for you a future? Well it may give you a better chance, an opportunity to succeed but never solely gives a secure place of satisfaction and purpose or even wealth. So to your academics add a skill. 

You want to be fulfilled; find your field and plough

You want to be secure; build your own bars of iron 

You want to be wealthy; then create your own wealth, the Midas touch is in your hands. Stop the blame game and get responsible!

You want to add value; just do it already for you have the mind of the creator himself! 

If pastor Nick Vujicic with no hands and no legs can do something, then you must realize that all that you need is in you. God didn’t give us money at birth, He gave us brains and hands to produce whatever our brains have the capacity to hold. It may need a little tweaking but no idea is stupid, bring them all to the table and let’s make a total mockery of mediocrity. Now think guys, search, there must be something upstairs that the hands can handle. You have all it takes to sour even in a recession.

Written by Fidelia Ben-Udi

A letter from a Fallen Hero to the Nigerian youth today

Dear child, I write you this letter because of how much I love you. You are young and full of life, restless and in need of some action but watch it. Watch it, I tell you, for you are about to destroy all I lived and died for, you are about to sacrifice your life on the alter that no longer exits, you are about to be cut short in the prime of your life, you are about to leave your kids orphaned, your wives widows and your parents childless for a concluded cause. 

You take this too far, and that is because you didn’t see the war! If you did, you would do everything to stop any further reoccurrence. I fought and do you know that I lost some of my loved ones? I and my colleagues had reason to mourn over sons, daughters, fathers, mothers and siblings before we finally joined them. I felt raw pain. It wasn’t funny; sometimes we had to take up our alms and fight even on hungry stomachs, we often had to lie in muddy pits and trenches crawling with warms and all manner of rodents, we had to see our friends fall in battle and I tell you, if we could do anything to stop it or turn back the hands of time, we would have. But alas! It was too late. So we fought on till we had to stop and when we did? We couldn’t rejoice that the war was over because of the devastation. We could only hope that our children and future generations would have a more peaceful existence as they build in unity. We took solace in the fact that we had cleared the way for you. 

So now, tell me; are you trying to make our sacrifice of no effect? Are you trying to reopen old wounds that we struggled so hard to burry? What are you trying to do? With your strength and intellect, modern facilities and all manner of technologies available to you, you can chat a different cause; one that is indeed noble, one born out of love for your fellow brothers regardless of what names they bear or tribes they represent. Not a cause born out of hate, un-forgiveness or the feeling of deprivation and oppression. Look at it, everyone member of this great country suffers one challenge or the other, isn’t it unfair to think that you suffer the most and become insensitive to the sufferings of others? But imagine if we were all to rise and fight to overcome our challenges rather than fighting ourselves; no matter how diverse, our unity will grow from strength to strength as we harness all our resources to make one great nation. We only need to be one people with one cause and with God on our side; rising is a sure thing for us.  What would happen to the strength and solace that we found in the company of each other when we choose to see our differences as a plague rather than a blessing? Remember that the brothers that have misunderstandings more often are usually the ones that end up being the closest. Why not give your immaturities, faults and misunderstandings time to be worked out till your friendship gets to the place called ‘closest ’. He is different from you because he is not you, and even if you had a twin brother, he would never be you. Our differences are the very things that make us eligible to be called humans and live with each other. You want to be comfortable and safe? I won’t stop you but think it through again, there is always the right way to go about things. 

What you have now, may not be the best, but it sure is better than what you’ll get if you fight the way I believe you intend. However, if you would endure and build with your brothers, you will definitely have something better than you imagined. Let your name go down into history as one that made a positive contribution to your land, as one who stood for peace even when it wasn’t trendy, as one who lived and let others live.

Indeed, there is no war without peace, but there are better ways to fight a war than with harsh words and ammunitions, especially when I and my comrades have finished the war and laid the foundation for peace. Now, it’s time to build. Build with everything you’ve got, for that is the reason God made you a Nigerian. He put in you just the right amount and quality of muscles that Nigeria needs to whether these storms, so arise above ethnicity and individual differences for we have only one cause- to serve our father land with love, strength and faith. We are a nation under God and in His strength we rise and we build!