Live!

Truth be told, greatness is not only birthed but also made. While some of us are privileged to have it all in all: born with a silver spoon, a happy family, a healthy body, bundles of talents and gifts and a fulfilled life; some others have to fight and struggle hard to have any of the above listed pleasures of life. I do not condemn those that have it all, nor pity those that struggle of it. It is just the way of life. If Nelson Mandela had been born in the United States, or had taken a different path, we would not have a black South African President or if Steve Jobs instead choose to finish school and pursue a well paying job as his parents desired him to, Apple Computers would only have been a figment of our imagination. Oftentimes in life, we have to pursue what we want for ourselves, not what the people around that may mean us well, want us to do instead. This life is short and fleeting and after all has been said and done, after the parents have passed away, after the marriage has occurred, after the job becomes annoying and boring…it is you that remains there, with your problem, not them. They carry on with their own lives and you continue to live in their shadow. There comes a time in the life of every man where he has to make a decision: would he sit back and do all that he is told to do, or would he stand and say no to what does not do him any much good?
Friend, make a decision right now, to do what is deem fitting and to stick with that course of action always, regardless of the circumstances that may follow suit.

Oluwatobi O. Gbemisola
@TobiGbemisola

History in the Making

1st October 1960, 4th July 1876, February 1990, 11th September 2001…what makes each of these dates distinct? In fact, what makes certain dates stick more to memory than some others? None other than the events and people involved. What else or who else wroth such remarkable events if not individuals? Certain life events can never be forgotten in all history because of the profoundness and immensity of it, because such events and the people in it have left such an indelible impression on the course of history, creating a tipping point in the way our lives are shaped.

As I write my mind casts back to various events in my country Nigeria, as a case study, and the people that made such events happen. I remember the Amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914 by the colonial regent, Lord Luggard. I also remember our independence from the British in 1960, 1st of October of that year, facilitated by Tafawa Balewa, Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikwe, our founding fathers. I also cannot but recollect the bloodshed that accompanied the Civil war of 1967, during the Nigeria and Biafra war, with Maj. Gen. Yakubu Gowon and Maj. Gen. Chukwuemeka Ojukwu at the forefront. Each event at it happened in Bible times, in the United States, Great Britain, ancient Rome and ancient Egypt have all significantly defined our existence. Behind every great historical event lie the great men and women that made them happen. Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, Obafemi Awolowo, John F. Kennedy, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Wole Soyinka, Mark Zukerberg, Nelson Mandela, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther King Jnr. all did something cogent, unforgettable, and obvious that we cannot but continue to commemorate what they did and stood for in the short course of their lives.

The beam now then returns to you. Will you also attempt to write your name in the sands of time, making yourself immortal, or would you rather live a simple but ridiculous life, against the desire of your Maker? Therein, inside of you, lie great things: ideas, thoughts, beliefs, values, philosophies and desires that need to be shared with the world. Stand up now and decide to be counted among the heroes of our time.

Oluwatobi Gbemisola
@TobiGbemisola

Are we there yet?!

      For the last few days, in preparation of securing a job, I have been creating my resume or what you may call curriculum vitae (yeah, it took me this long to create one). As I made fresh inputs to the document using the Microsoft Word software on my notebook (which I also use to write all my articles…Microsoft must pay me for this publicity!), I have had to reminisce a lot about my life in the last seven to ten years. Normally, by virtue of human development, I should be doing the reflection thingy by the time all the hair on my head go grey but as the situation called for it, I had to engage my mind for memories.
      As I went on, I had a certain good feeling in my tummy, like I just hit the jackpot. I felt like I had seen it all and done it all, you should have seen the look on my face. But midway I had to grab a hold of myself and shake myself back to reality. ‘You aren’t even close by’, was what I kept telling myself.
      You see, success may bring a heady feeling of having done it all. A small amount of success can bring great retrogression if not well managed. After a small accomplishment, feel good, celebrate, and dance all you want but don’t settle down, move on. Settling down in a place of accomplishment is an act of self sabotage and self endangerment. It will only inevitably lead to self extinction. You must endeavour not to fall into the trap of staying in your success but to use it as a climbing stone to greater opportunities for accomplishments.
     As a biblical example is the shepherd boy turned king, David, who used his success with tending sheep in his defeat of Goliath. Soliloquize and reminisce about your accomplishments to boost your confidence to take on greater tasks. That is the purpose of success, to spur you on to greater things ahead.
Have a great week ahead in your journey to a beautiful life.
Sincerely yours, Oluwatobi Gbemisola
@TobiGbemisola

Where are the good guys?

    For the last three weeks I have been visiting this phone engineer in my area to fix my Nokia C5 phone. I initially had a bit of hesitancy in my decision to visit him for a remedy as I wanted a quick fix since most repairers in that vicinity had an unpleasant habit of delaying repairs. But because of the proximity to my home, with a shrug I decided to try him out, which ended up to be a fatal mistake. Arriving with my brother at his shop, I gave him the phone, he gave a diagnosis of what the problem was and I paid him in part to get the job done. He told me to return in a few hours of which I did but to my mild surprise, he gave me an excuse of needing to buy a part to the phone to finish the job.”Bros, your phone will be ready tomorrow, come and get it then”, was what he told me as I left that evening. Of course I returned on Day 2 to which he repeated the pattern of another ‘tales by moonlight’. “Ah!”, I sighed to myself as I left his shop and headed home, shaking my head and already regretting my decision to transact business with him. I kept making visits for my ‘sick’ phone till the end of the week when he finally gave me a half repaired phone. The unfortunate gist continues with daily visits and wasted airtime on calls with this guy ‘maradonaing’ me for three weeks, ending bitterly with lots of tension and shouting.
For the little time I have been at home in Lagos, I have tasted firsthand how much some Nigerians can get their hands dirty to make money. They lie, cheat, steal and resort to all manners of vile behaviors to achieve their intents. As this engineer guy kept lying to me in form of one excuse or the other, my mind did not need to search far for why things are this bad in the country. Even the ordinary Nigerian has swallowed the astringent pill of desperation to make it fast and big. Honesty and integrity have become alien values that my people live by. I was shocked by how low people can descend to make it. It therefore seems to me that it’s the ‘holy ones’, the small crop of honest Nigerians that are trying to thrive and break even in a system and culture that is counterprogressive.
This deadlier-than-Ebola virus can be traced from the terrible leadership marred with corruption and incompetence that we have in our economic and social systems of government. When the people can see that the very ones they voted into power are not looking out for them but themselves and their pockets, the people then seek their own path by turning on themselves because they know, from that point on, its OYO (Oyo is Your Own). Looking at my situation for instance, I have been at home for more than a month now due to a strike that came about from a showdown between the Student Union Government and the OAU school management. The management had reportedly increased the school fees by over 300 percent because the Federal Government’s funding of the education sector was not forthcoming, so in response they decided to act in haste by getting their money from the barely surviving masses of parents immersed in a horrid web of school fees payment to trying to pacify an angry landlord every other day. So here I sit, unable to secure a temporary job while my mates in other schools are making intellectual advancements. Employees would not employ a student that can take off back to school at any moment once the strike is halted. For many in my shoes, I strongly assume they are probably if not already strategizing for an armed robbery or the next ‘yahoo plus’ deal they would hammer.
Times are tough, things are hard but I firmly believe this is not an intelligible excuse to lose one’s integrity just for the porridge of hard and fast money. Patience is a long gone virtue in our faced paced world these days. While a few may decline to extreme measures to make it like kidnapping and ritual killing, some others take more elusive ways in ripping off their fellow Nigerians. If we keep on this path, we would create deeply pervasive culture of wickedness, venality, killings and subversion for the new generation of Nigerians. We need to ask ourselves, “what kind of future do we want for our children and children’s children?”. We can be better than this, we are more than this, and we are stronger than this. Let us throw aside our selfish aims this once and wear elegantly the raiment of love for one another. Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers all wrongs.* Do make a decision today to stand up for the right thing, eschewing evil out of our nation. Silence is golden, but only when justice is served. It’s time for us as Nigerians to come out of our shells and be counted and as we do this, together we would build a nation strong, pure and holy for our God, ourselves and generations to come.
Oluwatobi O. Gbemisola (@TobiGbemisola)
Nation Builder
*Holy Bible, Prov 10:12 (NIV)