Show Me Your Logo: Building A New Nigeria Starts With You and I
I have the seen the parade ignorance
In the masquerade of arrogance.
Posing and posturing in lip service and eye service with false airs and graces are common life styles of many Nigerians, in particular the so called elites among the populace. The irony of their pretentious life styles is the fact that their unscrupulous behavior exposes their falsehood. They have made little or no positive impact in their community and larger society. That is why so much poverty is surrounding them and they cannot create things that would uplift the majority of the poor masses and have failed woefully to boost human capital development in Nigeria. Most of them are mere consumers and not producers.
We have millions of youths out of school and unemployed and the government cannot provide jobs for them.
Corporate Nigeria wastes millions of naira sponsoring TV Realty shows and games that do not add much to our GDP or GNP and cannot create jobs for our millions of unemployed youths.
They are promoting pornographic and psychedelic music shows misleading millions of our young girls and boys who end up with mass failures in our examinations, millions of cases of STDs and HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancies.
Lecturers are on strike as they cannot continue to deceive their students with undeveloped curricula and broken down facilities on campuses where students stool in the bedrooms of their hostels, because their toilets are horrible.
When we disrespect our students, and make them stool like dogs in their broken down hostels, they end up dehumanized and don't care about morals and social cultural values, because they have low esteem. No wonder they have to do all sorts of sharp practices to make ends meet and end up as corrupt graduates and most of them are unemployable and may become our liabilities. Because we now have graduates with questionable certificates and no professional or intellectual skills.
Doctors are on strike, because the government is corrupt and incompetent.
I wonder why any competent government will even allow doctors to go on strike when we don't have enough medical doctors in Nigeria?
And medical students suffer many indignities in our teaching hospitals.
All medical students should be on full government scholarship and medical doctors in our public hospitals should be well paid and given modern accommodations and transportation to motivate them to do their best for the benefit of their poor patients who cannot afford the bills at private hospitals.
The political contractors in power do no care, because they can afford the medical bills at the private hospitals in Nigeria and overseas. And their children do not worry about employment since they have looted the treasury to provide the luxuries of life for them.
It is a tragedy that they spend hundreds of millions of naira on the acquisition and possession of their posh cars and SUVs and luxury homes, when a fraction of that money would have been invested in building cottage industries and creating jobs in their respective communities. With only N3, 000, 000 (three million naira) a cottage industry such as an Adire Tie and Dye enterprise can be developed and create up to 20 jobs in a rural village or urban neighborhood and within 12 months that Adire making enterprise will be making over N5 million profit for the community. And there are many models of profitable cottage industries to use and replicate in every community in every local government area in every state in Nigeria. The untapped Adire Tie and Dye business is a billion naira industry. The Adire cloth can be used to make apparels of all sorts. Adire can be used to make shirts, trousers, skirts, gowns, hats, caps, jackets, uniforms, etc.
In the summer of 2009, I got a franchise for Startup Weekend from the Startup Weekend of America. Startup Weekend is an Information Computer Technology (ICT) initiative to create Internet based companies and creates jobs at every weekend brainstorming retreat that will be held in every local government area. At least 3 companies are created and incorporated at every startup weekend and the companies will be owned and managed by all the participants who are between 100 to 250 people at every weekend. Of course not all the 100 to 250 people need to be actively engaged in the companies, but every one of them will be a shareholder in each of the companies as long as the person participated in the startup weekend that created the startups. The successful models of such startups are the billion dollar Amazo.com, Ebay.com, Facebook.com, and other booming dotcoms in the US.
Startup Weekends can be held in every local government in Nigeria and will create thousands of jobs within 12 months.
There is a Startup Weekend project for Nollywood, the largest movie industry in Africa. This Startup Weekend project will make millions of dollars for Nigerian movie producers and will make more money than Silverbird Cinemas, Genesis Deluxe Cinemas and other cinemas in Nigeria. The captive and receptive audiences for this Startup Weekend project for Nollywood are ready and waiting for the launch.
There is another Startup Weekend project for Nigerian Lotto Games that will gross millions of dollars weekly.
There is another Startup Weekend project for Nigerian tertiary schools that will make millions of dollars annually.
The Startup Weekend projects I have mentioned have been launched successfully in America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. We are ready to launch them for the first time in Africa, right here in Nigeria.
Pastor Poju Oyemade of the Covenant Christian Center has been using The Platform as the pivot for the mobilization, motivation and sensitization of Nigerians for the raising of spiritual leaders, intellectual leaders, financial leaders and political leaders who will be the champions of the nation building of a New Nigeria in the leadership of Africa in the comity of nations on earth. Mo Abudu of Inspire Africa and Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli of Leap Africa and other trail-blazers are busy doing their best to discover and launch young Nigerians who are gifted and poised to make a positive impact in their communities and larger society of our common sovereignty.
Don’t be left out of the revolution of the making of a new nation.
My vision of a great Nigeria was written in my first prize winning essay “What I like Best about Nigeria” when I was only 13 and also in my first prize winning poem “Song of Patriotism” when I was 20. I have used the gospel of Jesus Christ to preach this divine vision to thousands of people on public transport buses in Lagos city for 11 years and I demonstrated it when I launched the first National Literary Essay Competition for Secondary Schools at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies of the University of Lagos in 2003, under my publishing company King of Kings Books International.
What are you doing to make a positive impact in your neighborhood, community and society?
Show me your logo?
~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima,
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