#LetUsThink: Financial Crisis or Poverty of Vision? -Istifanus Sarki

It is easy to find a little boy of 8 on his way to school, begging for money from passers-by, here in Nigeria. Beggars are no longer the poor retched, rag-clothed disabled guys sitting by the corner of our streets begging for alms. They are everywhere now. 

On the right is a full grown man well dressed, if not better dressed than you, stylishly calling you as though they’ve got something important to discuss with you. And then they whisper, ‘please help me with some money’. Or if it’s in Nigeria, you’ll hear all sorts of payers preceding each begging.

On the left is a young able bodied woman with two children begging for money by the roadside, and teaching her children how to go after people and beg, telling stories such as they have lost their parents, or that they are starving.

At your back are young men approaching you with stories of how they lost their money on their way from one destination to the other, or how their goods have been confiscated and they need to pay a certain amount to retrieve their goods - too bad for a potentially endowed country like Nigeria.

It is small mindedness to blame the leaders and the government for your circumstances. John F Kennedy would say, don’t ask what the country can do for you. Ask rather what you can do for the country.

Almost every day, able-bodied men gathered around a vendor by the road’s junction, peeping at the newspapers displayed at the stand, and arguing about what the government has done again, or about who is more legendary between Messi and Ronaldo as at 8 O’clock in the morning, when their contemporaries are resuming work.

Funny thing is, some of them are married with kids. Obviously, they are not the ones paying their kids school fees. So their wives get up very early in the morning, get the kids ready for school and then head towards the market where they make sales, return home to take care of the family.

We can change the economic situation of Nigeria. We can decide to move from the level of begging to the level of giving alms to the helpless. We can move from seeking employment to giving employment. One person can change the course of the nation’s history. Just one person. 

But the tragedy is out of over 180million people in Nigeria, very few of this “one person” exist. We used to be hard working and very resourceful until oil was found. Looking back today, I realize what we have as a country is not financial crisis, but poverty of vision and of great minds.

We have two kinds of people in Nigeria: one is either always begging or complaining about the failed economy of Nigeria and the bad leaders. The other strives to make it in spite of the odds. Often times the latter becomes rich. And then the former, who obviously remains poor, accuses the rich of not helping them. But they won’t help themselves either.

Bill Gates once said, if you are born poor, it’s not your fault, but if you die poor, it is your fault. You don’t have any excuse if your eyes, nose, ears, mouth and mind are functioning. People with serious disabilities are making it out there. You can’t sit down here complaining.

Here is a brief story of a woman with physical inabilities. Helen Keller became deaf and blind 19months after birth. Despite her circumstances, she has written her name indelibly in the history of great people. She was an American author, a political activist, and lecturer.

She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. Her entire life has served as evidence that no one ever is defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality. What a true statement.

It is okay to have a good expensive phone with good camera, nice outlook and a large memory capacity, but if you are using all of that, and spending quality time on social media, reading posts, checking pictures watching videos, liking, tweeting and doing all sorts of activities on social media that hardly adds value to the nation, then you are clearly one of the problems of our country.

The gadgets you so cherish now was a vision in the mind of someone who is not more human than you. Every minute you spend on social media adds to someone’s pocket. Every click you make on someone’s site makes them richer and consumes your data.

We’ve got to stop the habit of lazing around, joining the crowd of mediocrity to blame others for our misfortune. We’ve got to resume being the producers that we once were before we willingly belittled all we had and all we are were in the face of the white men.

He who is on the ground fears no falling. If we believe, we can achieve anything. With a positive mindset, and an attitude of great mindedness, there is no stopping on the way to achieving our dream of a great nation as giants of Africa, regardless of religion, tribe, or creed. Let’s stop dreaming, let’s start living the dream. Arise, Nigeria.