AGAINST ALL ODDS, WE MUST REFUSE TO BE ROBBED OF HOPE!
AGAINST ALL ODDS, WE MUST REFUSE TO BE ROBBED OF HOPE!
By: Olanrewaju Ojuoluwa
I sat on the couch in the dark, hating myself.
I felt so stupid:
Educated, "creative," visionary… with a wife and kids looking to me to provide not just food and shelter, but to LEAD them into a life of love, adventure, joy…
And I was FAILING...
I felt more a slave at my 
business than my underpaying job. Each passing day shredding my confidence, my bank account steadily draining out like a severed vein in the neck, worsened by the biting economic hardship... Frightening and unbearable inflation, minutes in, minutes out.
All around me, it seemed, men less creative, less educated, less visionary and most embarrassingly, politicians (who are the source of the dilemma) were succeeding wildly… creating the life of wealth and abundance for themselves while all that I crave for is a life worthwhile. Not luxur(ies). They are eating away my life and that of others!
I had spent countless sums (hard earned monies) on courses and seminars and had nothing to show for it: millions worth of knowledge sitting there behind my dead, spark-less eyes, wholly inaccessible.
I realized I had spent all this time piling wood (knowledge), then despaired when it did not catch fire. It was not more wood I needed, but the means to light the wood already there.
Across the globe, millions of men, just like you and me, are going dead inside.
Men once filled with hope and anticipation reduced to ghosts at the table, the fire inside them quenched by a sense of nobody-ness which have engulfed their day to day lives of striving with nothing to show.
This is the situation of most Nigerian youths... Millions of us have our legs cut off and yet condemned for being cripple. We hope and hope upon hope... sometimes frustrated. The society keeps demanding and we keep giving all our best even when nothing is given in return...
Meanwhile, there is the lie that keeps eating our souls for lunch. They've been drilling it into our heads since we were little kids: "work hard and success will follow!", as though hardwork matters these days...
"As long as you keep your head down, do as you're told, and trust the system, all your blood, sweat, and tears will be rewarded!" Unfortunately, the hardworking fellow now turns out to be the very poor fellow...
It's an idea that captured our imagination... and it was all a lie. A lie designed to dull our wits and make us docile so they can feed on our live forces, like pigs at a trough.
The truth is that hard work is NOT the deciding factor in our success according to the present system, hardwork is the only way left for survival! So please my friend, hardwork will not get us lives worthwhile, rather, it will only keep body and soul together that we may serve (them) more... The profit goes to the users (government) and the big losers are the used (you and I).
Unfortunately however, most people still believe in the system even when the system is as good as dead, they personalize their problems and predicaments blaming their il-luck, underemployment and unemployment on spiritual attacks, as though there were jobs in surplus and they would just not get one...
It is time we had a rethink, all of us. Let us shift our focus on the system that is not working rather than taking responsibilities for infrastructures which the losers in government have not provided.
Take it or leave it, Government is a major catalyst to nation building and until we get good leaders into governance, then we can be rest assured that, we are getting nowhere 'better' soon... In short, there's no promising future where life would be worthwhile in view going by the way things are as at present, it will only get worst except something meaningful is done.
The solution however as I have always presumed is; let us unanimously retire all this present breed of wicked politicians who are mere position occupants; professional thieves who deal rather than lead as this is the only way out of our predicaments.
Remember, poverty, unemployment and low standard of living is not an accident. Like slavery, it is man made and, must be fixed by actions of men. Let us fix this once and for all!
...I rest my case!
I am Olanrewaju Ojuoluwa (Sharpminds), Youth Advocate and Social Reformer... And, I THRIVE!