Now that open letters are flying around…

Dear all,

Now that open letters are flying everywhere, ...
Let me say this first, I am no politician.

Having stated that fact, I’ll go ahead to write my own “open letter” of some sort and I address it to all Nigerians. 

I stumbled upon the open letter written by Former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo to President Goodluck Jonathan, about a week ago. I took my precious time to read that long letter – of course not because I like such political thrills, for I am way beyond such level of indulgence but because as a person who thirst for knowledge, I have come to understand such letters contain certain information one may not learn elsewhere.

Now, before I share what lesson the letter re-taught me, I would like to say this letter wasn’t borne by the said letter but by another letter. Of course, this new letter which put some thoughts in my head is also an open letter, written by Iyabo Obasanjo to her father Olusegun Obasanjo.

One maxim that has followed me for the last decade of my life was learned from an article with the maxim as its topic: He who Comes Into Equity Must Come With Clean Hands. Suffice to say, Iyabo’s letter truly reflects the meaning of this maxim and I have learned it over again. I have come to understand how selfish we humans can be and it is really bothersome when we preach against what we practice. 

One may be quick to say Chief Obasanjo’s letter may have been timely so as to appear as Nigeria’s “Mandela,” considering the demise of the great Mandela (May his soul rest in peace) a few weeks ago, but I was made to understand the letter was not the first of its kind. Chief (Prophet) Obasanjo may have felt the urge to “save” Nigeria from an impending doom (remember his letter was titled, Before it is too late), of course after his 8-year democratic rule as Nigeria’s president. And by the way, I do not see any reason why president Jonathan should reply OBJ's letter in the manner he did, even though he gave 10 reasons he should. I personally think all the open letters are borne out of personal grief towards the addressees and do not really reflect the purported claims, except of course that of GEJ which obviously is a reply (or defense, as it were).

Let me pull myself back from commenting on the trio's letters and face my own letter before I find myself writing a letter of 18 pages (who does that?) which may bore innocent Nigerians who do not kuku like reading long stories before. The questions on my mind are: who do we need to save Nigeria from? When can it be too late? And how do we save Nigeria?

Now, those questions are the motivations behind this letter and some answers lie in Iyabo’s letter. Hopefully, you have read it and you understand how she described Nigerians. She appeared to be living in the US now and would probably not want anything to do with Nigeria in the future. Many Nigerians resident abroad do not want to return home for many reasons. And among those who do return home, some claim to regret it. Well, if you live in a developed country where your light bulb only goes off because you switched it off and where you can download a 1GB movie in 8 minutes, you’ll probably not want to return home, trust me.

Now before you begin to ask what the point of my letter is, let me be quick to answer the questions I have asked earlier.

Firstly, we need to save Nigeria from Nigerians. Yes, that’s correct. Nigerians can only save Nigeria. No one else will. Even if the US or UK claim to give helping hands, they wouldn’t do it with the same passion as would a Nigerian.

 

Recently, I watched a video on a website with disgust, how a woman and her step daughter were sexually and physically abused because they stole pepper and clothes. I couldn’t even watch the whole video as my heart bled. Some young men who caught the woman decided to strip her and tortured her to confession as they poured some substance on her, flogged her and poured something in her private part (Sorry I had to make you picture that image, in case you didn’t already see the video). 

Those who maltreated that woman were “Area boys” and thugs who themselves, I’m sure, live off the criminal act of theft. As the saying goes, “he who is caught stealing is the thief.” The corrupt politicians who loot all the money are no thief, unless of course they’re caught in other countries. Don’t get me wrong, I do not support stealing. But must we be blind to what our problems are while we try to correct what we perceive as wrong only with barbaric acts of compounding the problems?

Secondly, it can never be too late. As the Chinese proverb goes, “the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago and the second best time is now.” If we all, including Chief Obasanjo and President Jonathan retrace our steps and stand for what is right and noble and righteous, it would only be a matter of time before Nigeria becomes the country where everyone wants to live in. If only we will have the interest of Nigeria's future at heart.

And lastly, how to save Nigeria is in both our hands. The moment we stop wearing our caps of selfishness and remove the logs in our eyes so as to clearly see the speck of dust in our neighbour’s eye, we would have started the saving. We must learn to genuinely love each other and do unto others what we would have them do unto us. We must learn to cast the stone only if we are without sin else we must cast ‘correction in love.’ We must live to stop being barbaric and embrace civilisation. We must listen to the voice of reason and have our minds renewed.

We must learn to stand up for what is right and shun corruption. Imagine a Nigeria without ‘jungle justice,’ and one in which institutions are built rather than personalities. Imagine a country where the average person will not litter the streets but look for the nearest bin to empty the waste. And let me quickly add that it should be a Nigeria where there are waste bins on at least every five-minute walking distance on the streets. Also, it should be a country where the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government will not allow the higher institutions remain under lock and key for six months.

While I do not blame Iyabo Obasanjo for relocating to the US and others who have vowed never to return home, I believe it is not in the interest of making Nigeria better. I will not refrain from praising others who chose to remain in our beloved country and strive to make it better; those who return home from abroad so as to introduce what they have learned overseas to Nigeria, and finally, those who in spite of everything have never lost faith in Nigeria.

God Bless Nigeria!

Sincerely,

Concerned Nigerian.

Assumption

I often wonder why the human mind is wired to make assumptions. If a man suddenly becomes rich, he is perceived to have been in a shady business or worse still, thought to have stolen the money. If you walk past an acquaintance who didn’t greet you, then it is perhaps convenient to decide, to cease to greet such a fellow based on the assumption that the acquaintance would not want to be friends with you. That girl at work who smiles at every male colleague is soon perceived to be a flirt and the friendly handsome young man who has many female friends is seen as a player.

Of all the scenarios above, there are a hundred and one answers different from the assumed ones. The rich man may have just won the lottery and the person who didn’t greet has a loved one in the hospital and has too much to think about that he didn’t notice you. The smiling girl is genetically wired to wear big smiles and that young man is just a friendly person.

“Assumption is the lowest form of knowledge,” says transformation strategist, Olakunle Soriyan. Since the Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines assumption “as a belief or feeling that something is true or that something will happen, although there is no proof,” then we can agree that assumption in itself is a form of knowledge that is not based on fact and from which conclusions can be drawn.

The human mind is wired in such a way that there is a need to understand everything and have answers to every question so as to feel safe. This is why we make assumptions. Unfortunately, we do not engage in communication so as to ask questions in order to satisfy our hunger for answers but resort to drawing conclusions in our mind based on flimsy and presumed views. These assumptions, more often than not cause pain, grief and misunderstanding. Assumption is not ipso facto a bad thing, as there are times when certain assumptions help to prevent pain and trouble.

Based on the results and effects of various assumptions, they can be classified into two: healthy and unhealthy assumptions. Healthy assumptions are those we make in order to psychologically cushion a potential shock as a result of an unknown outcome. Like Billionaire Warren Buffet once said, “I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five days.” Buffet was ranked as the world’s wealthiest person at the age of 78 and he acquired a large portion of his wealth buying shares. You will agree that that assumption of his is healthy; else he might have died as a result of heart attack on any occasion of his major losses trading stocks. Healthy assumptions could also be made to temporarily answer certain questions we ask ourselves in such a way that the answers help to prevent conflict and/or keep our mind at peace.

Unhealthy assumptions, on the other hand, are those made towards people or situations where facts are accessible but neglected and conclusions drawn from premises with no fact or cue. Unhealthy assumptions are made fast and unconsciously and are usually in agreement with our belief system such that they are taken to be true with little or no doubt. These assumptions, for unexplainable reasons are accepted and believed to be true by the person making them and they eventually lead to emotional poison, trauma and misunderstanding; all because questions cannot be asked about what is not understood. 

For example, a woman is angry at her husband because he didn’t get her a Valentine’s Day gift and begins to act hostile towards him. She fails to tell him why she’s hostile because she assumes the poor man knows. The husband who notices his wife’s hostility assumes she’s angry because he had turned down her request to change their son’s school; and because he doesn’t want the school changed, he fails to discuss the issue with his wife. The marriage could spiral into a divorce. Why? They both made unhealthy assumptions without checking for facts.

We all have preconceptions about every type of person we meet every day. These preconceptions, stereotypes and prejudices of course, are based on what we have heard in the past, what we see on TV and perhaps from experiences of close friends. While some of these preconceptions may be true, you never know for sure they are true about someone you haven’t related to. They are mere assumptions and they lead to generalisations. Examples of such generalisations are ideas that “many attractive ladies are considered snobs” or that “many handsome-looking men are players.” None of these statements is true.

We often see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. We don’t ask questions when in doubt and we don’t perceive things the way they really are but the way we want them to be. As Margaret George wrote, “we use our supposed ‘knowledge’ of others to speak on their behalf, and condemn them for their words we ourselves put in their silent mouths.” A friend once asked why I developed feelings for her even when I knew she had a relationship with someone else. I didn’t have an answer to the question because it wasn’t really a question. She was literally telling me I had feelings for her even though I had never mentioned anything of such to her.

The truth is that we cannot stop having preconceptions about others because that is how the mind works but we can limit them and ensure they don’t stand in the way of building a healthy relationship with others or cause us pain. We must consciously make ourselves aware of the underlying danger of making assumptions and begin to form new perceptions as to how everything is or should be. We must always give the benefit of the doubt. Generally, you must not act on every feeling or thought that runs through your mind because, in the end, you will not be accountable for them whether good or evil; but you will be accountable for every action you took with respect to those feelings or thoughts or assumptions.

In his book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, Don Miguel Ruiz wrote; 

“One way to keep yourself from making assumptions is to ask questions. Have the courage to ask questions until you are clear as you can be and even then, do not assume you know all there is to know about a given situation. Everybody has the right to tell you ‘no’ or ‘yes’ but you always have the right to ask; likewise, everybody has the right to ask you and you have the right to say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

If we have good clear communication, there would be little or no misunderstanding; no trauma, no war. With less assumptions, we will be at peace with ourselves, with the people around us and the environment at large.

Service and Humility

The great Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Apparently, there are many ways to discover the self but getting lost in service to others (or a cause) is the best and perhaps the most appropriate option. The last one year of my life has been mainly characterised by service to my country. I didn’t join the army, just in case anyone’s wondering. Actually, I just completed my one-year compulsory service under the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme.

Before I go on, I would like to sincerely apologise for waiting this long before posting on this blog – it’s been about three years since I last updated the blog. I have been going through a transition of some sort which has not only divided me mentally but also emotionally. In a nut shell, I wasn’t in the best position to write anything sensible to keep the readers of this blog inspired. My transition story will be for another day anyway. Be assured that you’ll always get the best of inspirational articles from here henceforth.

Back to the gist; I was posted to Abia State (a South Eastern State in Nigeria) for my youth service and like many others who have served or are serving, the one-year compulsory service isn’t exactly the typical service. It is seen as a waste of time and a sort of delay to achieving one’s goals in life. In fact, the acronym NYSC has been given new meanings which includes Now Your Suffering Continues, thereby indicating how displeased many Nigerian youths are about the programme. However, not everyone who completes the programme continues to think the scheme is a waste of time. Surprisingly, it turns out to be the best year of many Nigerians who pass through the scheme.

The one-year NYSC scheme begins with three weeks in an orientation camp where the overly regimented life becomes so frustrating it begins to appear like months have been spent there. A watch is useless in the NYSC camp as the sound of the bugle becomes the ticking sound of the clock. The bugler’s sound literally tells you the time to do everything from waking up to meal time to parade time; even bedtime. Hereafter the one-year service begins proper. Some people are sent to villages where there is no electricity and extremely poor telecommunications reception. In fact, some get to live the village life they have only experienced from watching the wrapper-tying characters in many Nigerian films where the young women have to walk a distance to the stream carrying clay pots on their heads. Once the corps member’s monthly allowance of 20,000 naira (sorry, 19,800 naira as a friend often corrects me) is paid,  these village corps members have to travel to the nearest city to withdraw their money, shop a little and enjoy city life before retiring to their firewood-fetching, candle-burning village lifestyle. I am not making fun of them, nay; I actually envy them as I was unlucky to have served in a city.

Everything that has advantages comes with relative disadvantages, and serving in a city has its: little opportunity to serve. The corps member who got the Abia State award of 100,000 naira and an honours certificate served in Ubakala, a not-too-city area of Umuahia South Local Government Area where he taught in a secondary school. I heard he was initially posted to Umuahia city but asked to be reposted to Ubakala. His personal project of building an ICT Centre cum library among other things like his service in the Federal Road Safety Corps Community Development Service Group fetched him the award. 

Many corps members did get lost in service especially those who taught in village schools as they did everything humanly possible to impart the students they taught. They didn’t mind the meagre allowance the Federal Government paid them but gave all they could to invest knowledge in those unwilling students. Many took on personal projects to renovate and equip the schools, community libraries and even police stations. A host of corps members belonging to various groups devoted time to carry out services like sensitising the community on achieving the Millennium Development Goals, cancer awareness, peer education training, encouraging mass literacy, HIV/AIDS awareness and going as far as rendering social services to the people of various communities. As a matter of fact, these services were eventually carried out by corps members with all willingness and humility.

Nigeria sentences her young graduates to one-year compulsory experience in a foreign part of the country. Though unwilling at first, these young men and women end up loving every bit of their experience – the people they met, the new delicacies they were forced to try out, the new and interesting cultures, the foreign language they spoke and of course their discovery of how much joy selfless service could offer. Many of the corps members, upon passing out, are often transformed and forcefully humbled through service. They were called to serve their country but they ended up being served. They gained new perspectives on certain issues, discovered the path they must follow to achieve greatness in life and found ways to continue in service.

Service, as it turns out is indeed the best way to discover self. If you find yourself in a corner of confusion and emptiness, try service. If you think you have come to the end of the road and there seems to be no way forward, try rendering service to others. If you really do want to feel fulfilled, help put a smile on a sad face and give a helping hand to those who need help. Dr Albert Schweitzer, the famous missionary doctor and the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize winner who spent his life helping the poor in Africa once said, “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” Indeed, the motto of the NYSC is well deserved; “Service and Humility.”