Voice of Change

Corruption 2 - 29-05-2018 by Olajumoke Adenowo

The month of March is fast drawing to a close. That means the first quarter of the year is about to end. 2018 is moving forward at lightning speed, and for some of us we already are getting tired, because we think; this is the time some begin to realize, that the New Year’s resolutions have taken a tumble. You planned to go to the gym, every single day, but you haven’t quite made it have you? Truly we all get discouraged, we get tired, maybe at the end of a quarter may be midyear, lost when the ‘ember’ months come, you just think there are some things you should have achieved, that have not been achieved. What then keeps you going, some try and buy a new car, some try and buy new clothes, retail therapy, some drink. What keeps me going? Will you allow me to share it with you? What keeps me going is purpose, impact, knowing that something I would do that day would make a difference in the life of another individual, the smile on your face when I am really depressed, and sometimes it happens. Somebody defrauds you, somebody lets you down, and somebody disappoints you. Things don’t go your way, if your hopes are dashed and you get depressed, how do you pick yourself up again? by making somebody else happy. That sounds unusual, yes, I give away what I want to get. This is how I started the journey of awesome treasures foundation, 19 years ago, April 1999 because I decided it was better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. People say somebody should do this, somebody should do that. I am somebody, as are you. Everything you say somebody should do, you are to do, as the one who noticed and is passionate about it. We live in a country and in a continent where the government cannot do everything, and they are in many ways lacking. We need to be the ones to take charge as far as we can, to do something for our fellow African. We need to right the wrongs that we see and galvanize the people, to make a change, that’s true leadership. When I started awesome treasures foundation, I didn’t think I wanted to be a leader; the idea was just to make a change. And today I can tell you a beautiful story, I would speak at the Muson centre and there would be a woman in the crowd, screaming ‘yes, say it!!’ and I would think to myself, ‘should I not get security to pick her up? This noise is really distracting’ but you know I could tell there was something going on inside her, she would scream from the bottom of her heart. The room had men and women in it, and you could tell, something was happening with her and when I heard her story I understood. Her name is Elizabeth and you can watch her story at www.awesometreasuresfoundation.org which is the Awesome Treasures Foundation website. Elizabeth lives in Olodi Apapa. When she came to Awesome Treasures Foundation she did not even have an account. When she was now telling her story, she said when she heard me speak and address what she could be as a woman, in her own words ‘the lion inside her awoke ’she felt as if she had been dreaming and she suddenly found someone who could interpret her dreams. So my listener, who is waiting on you to step forward, whose dreams? Whose entire generation and the course of their life and destiny is waiting on you. Starting up that idea you keep toying with, writing a business plan about, and keep analyzing. If I am to leave you with one charge today, it is one, just do it, start with what you have, from where you are at today. Nobody asks more of you. Do what you can with what you have today. Make today the first day of a glorious future that generations to come will write stories about.

What would purpose do for you? What is great about a new year? A new year is a chance to start afresh, a chance to measure what has passed and to put a closure, a tight lead on what has gone behind. A new year helps us mentally to put a close to the mistakes of the past year, not only the mistakes though, even the successes of the last year. You know the greatest enemy of success is your last success. It’s a New Year and many people are already their New Year resolutions again, it’s not bad, I believe that of course you must have goals. Where I have a problem is where people’s goals are independent of their purpose, independent of what they really believe in, and are all about maybe peer pressure, people’s expectation, the state of the economy, the political state of the country, the circumstances that surround them. A wise man once said “what lies behind us and what lies ahead of us, are mere trifling matters compared to what lies inside of us.” You can probably survive the good times without purpose, but you certainly need purpose to keep you going through the rough times. Today, celebrate that body you were born in, no matter what it looks like - that is your design.

We are not at war and there are no natural disasters, but we still keep counting the dead in Nigeria. It bothers me that we have no value for human life. I believe that every human being has a spark of the divine within them; they have the imprint of God. There is no human being who has the right to cut short the life of another human being. Unfortunately, we’ve had a series of crises with alleged Fulani herdsmen, alleged because nobody carries an identification card, and we cannot say indeed who these people are. They are not settlers in the community, they are people who rove. The crises that just occurred in Benue state where at the most conservative count, 73 human beings died. It is just a tip of the iceberg; it’s been on, in Adamawa, in the South-East, various parts of Nigeria. I don’t know what it is about Benue that just hit the public consciousness in Nigeria, so poignantly so strongly. I think it is just the last straw that is breaking the camel’s back. We are all Nigerians, first and foremost human beings; let us choose those who would lead us to a country that we can truly be proud of. Do not believe everything you read. It is very easy to put a name on a broadcast and claim somebody said it, Let us be wise. Let us not be inflamed by what we read or what we heard someone said. Let us work with evidence and proof. Let us not take the law into our own hands, let us remain law abiding citizen. Anarchy is the only thing worse than bad governance, that should not be allowed to happen under our watch.

Happy new year to all our listeners in voice of change Let us look to this year as the year in which we decide to be part of the solution. Fighting corruption in this great country Nigeria. We can change our image, but Nigeria is not just for one person. It starts with me and you. This year we must say no to corruption, you would not be part of the problem, be part of the solution. Realize that we cannot complain about corruption, we cannot point fingers if we are not doing anything to stop corruption. At the next checkpoint do not put hundred naira in your driving license. At least that is within your power. Make sure that driving license is up to date and correct. Let us do things right so we can confidently fight corruption

Do you know that the average Nigerian does not demand good leadership? No, we don’t, when we say someone is a bad leader, we mean is that his leadership has not pay us personally, that’s all. The minute the man or the woman settles us it no longer matters that he has ignored the healthcare system, education, corruption is rife. No matter what, once he takes care of us personally, we are okay. This appals me, it gives me grief, how does anybody take even five thousand dollars in an envelope at election time, and you are settled for four years? How long does it take to spend five thousand dollars? I can hear a listener say “try me with it first” how much is five thousand naira? Right now it is two million naira, God forbid that you get ill, you will spend the two million in one hospital visit. Is it not much better for us to throw this five thousand dollars back at the corrupt politicians and ask him where he got it from, and say “why don’t you give us a good healthcare system?” Five thousand dollars is not enough to send a child to school for four years in a good school in Nigeria today, not a good secondary school, not a good university. Go invest this in our educational system. Five thousand dollars would not fix a good car that gets ruined on a bumpy road that breaks its axil.

The thinking that sets a leader apart. It is very important that in this generation you be set apart, why? There’s information everywhere, the mundane is everywhere, so the information I would need, a whole library of encyclopedias to access 30 years ago, I can now get at the touch of a button, is this good or bad? It’s good in that for those who really are diligent, they can press in and get the information they need; it’s bad in that everybody has access to the same thing. You know where the difference lies, diamonds are not gotten on the surface of the earth, you dig deep, so you just cannot with a click on the internet get a paradigm shifting, revolutionary, value adding idea. The beauty of technology is that when you do get it, you have the means like never before to disseminate it to the entire connected world.

To rise above the crowd, you must be a leader and there are 3 spheres of obvious leadership. These days, to be a highly skilled worker or employee where you know you are just better than everybody else and your boss knows it, you’re the one given the opportunities and the challenging tasks and the rewards or you are a superstar and I’m not talking about the famous –for-being-media famous types who rise like meteorites and in a flash they are gone, because they really contribute nothing. Those are entertainers, not superstars. When we talk about superstars, we’re talking about legends in their fields. Whatever field it may be or you’re an owner of your patent, your idea, your proprietary or intellectual property, you are a leader and it’s a thinking of a leader that separates a leader from the rest of the pack.

It's been an interesting time in my country which is Nigeria in the last few weeks, a governor took upon himself, not the first time but he just happens to be one that's very media attractive should i say a media attractive governor decided to run a test for teachers to find out if they were capable of actually teaching. Like I said, it's not the first time it's been done, it was done in Ekiti state, it created a lot of problems for the governor why, because teachers form a huge chunk of the civil service and the civil service do vote and when this tests were administered in Ekiti state and in Kaduna state as you know recently, quite a few teachers did not pass now for some reasons, there was protest and as someone who is a product of the Educational system in Nigeria when the educational was world class, i felt sad, i don't know the politics of it, some say it was a tool of persecution, let's forget the politics, let's just focus on teachers being competent enough to teach.

Vision is the ability to see the future beforehand. And purpose Is our reason for being, why we’re here -our assignment. Myles Munroe defines leadership as the capacity to influence others through inspiration motivated by a passion generated by a vision, produced by a conviction, ignited by a purpose. So we see that purpose is the ignition for leadership. It’s the reason for leadership, purpose has a conviction. Purpose creates a passion; purpose is what generates a vision. Vision is one of the most critical factors to leadership and you cannot give what you don’t have. This is why we all must have a personal vision. Also without a personal vision, you don’t know if the vision of the leader is taking you to your preferred destination, and your vision is designed around your purpose.

We discuss leadership on voice of change because we were all born to be leaders. We may not feel like we were born to be leaders, we may not feel like the seed of leadership is in us at all, but everyone of us is a leader in one sphere of life or another , or at one time in life or another. You look at yourself and wonder, me, a leader? Who is a leader? A leader is someone who can mobilize people, resources, material resources, financial resources, goodwill, favor towards achieving a stated objective. So you see that even if you just organize traffic at a point, at that point you are being a leader. So many people that you have obeyed in traffic, you never even ask “who asked him to get on the road and begin to direct traffic?” but you obey without question. Why? He put himself forward at that time and volunteered his services to make sure chaos was averted. He stepped forward at that time, that was his time of leadership.

I often find myself thinking about Nigeria, and about how great we would be if we were not as corrupt, as I hear we are, as Donald Trump says we are. Everybody has his own area of specialty, perhaps our president’s area of specialty is fighting corruption, but he has a point beyond that. I think truly if we do something about corruption, if we all begin to blow the whistle, things would change. I think a people get the government they deserve. Let us begin to demand a better government. Let us demand as Nigerians better service instead of just complaining about corruption, let us begin to blow the whistle Today I want us to learn as leaders from the Eagle. We make a lot of animals an example of leadership, the eagle amongst the birds, the lion amongst the animals in the forest or in the jungle, what can we learn from the eagle? What can a leader learn from the eagle? If there is something that sets the eagle apart from every other bird, it is that it’s got keen vision. The vision of the eagle is endowed by nature, it has more cones in its eyes (the rods through which we catch light and see) it has more in its eyes than any other bird. It can spot another eagle 50 miles away, it has 3 -4 times the vision of a human being.

We are concerned about how to broaden our influence, how to make sure that our influence is strengthened, that we become the leaders that we are meant to be. It has been said that if you think you are leading and nobody is following, you are just going for a walk. A lot of us are just going for a walk, because we have no influence, there’s nobody following us. We have a high title in the office and people just listen because they are forced to listen. We ourselves feel the tension, the uphill struggle it is, to make people do what we want them to do. There is a better way; you can actually make people want to do what you want them to do. This is what influence is, when people really, really want to do what you want them to do. You are no longer threatening them with appraisals; you are not kicking them and screaming at them. They willingly volunteer to do your will.

Suicide in this African society has been on the increase in recent times, some people blame the economy, they say it has affected the family ties, everybody is struggling for themselves. But does depression affect leaders differently? Does it affect the people at the top differently? What is depression? What is it not? This is something that affects a lot of leaders but they don’t like to talk about it. Leaders and leaders to be, leadership is lonely, it is lonely at the top, it is only when only you can see the vision and nobody else can. It is lonely because really exemplary leaders invest themselves, their very being, everything they have into the vision. Sometimes they even lose their families in the process. Mandela lost his family, not just his wife, his close immediate family. He was lonely, he married again, too late to start all over. He had paid the ultimate price and it was not just him. Would it have been easy for Mahatma Gandhi to have been in an ashram in a loincloth? Maybe that was not his first choice of how to live his life, but at a point his life was no longer his, it now belonged to the people.

We live in an era where nations are actually been created. The Soviet Union broke up, while Eritrea, Southern Sudan, , and so many that never used to exist all of a sudden are in existence. Some are thriving and some are failing and what makes the difference? These are some of the things we’re looking at. Common history, A history that unites and does not divide, common enemies, common values, and common vision is the foundation of a people deciding to move together and be one. You might say that African countries are not nations, because we were colonized and forced to come together , but so was Singapore. Colonized , Ethnic Malays, Ethnic Chinese, a mixture. Religion mixed, some are Muslims, some are Confucianists, they are not homogenous. Some are forced together but they make it work. And some are forced together and they keep harping back to a past that is precolonial. That predates when they were forced to be together and they would not move forward with common values, with a common vision.

VOC is a radio broadcast dedicated to unleashing the transformational leader in you. VOC teaches us to ask the right questions from those who offer themselves to lead us and discern between the legitimate leaders and the impostors who seek to serve none but themselves. We seek to birth a national renaissance through the new breed of Nigerian Leaders.

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