Allan Leonard photo
By
Akintan Nkechor Oluwatosin
Resource is a beautiful thing, it operates on different laws and principles. It could work as an asset or a liability. It doesn’t matter how big or cool your resource is, if you aren’t earning more than you are spending on it, it becomes a liability. This brings us to the Nigerian factor, a giant nation with beautiful people from diverse regions. The beauty about this is that we have great human resources at our disposal, the horror in this is that we are misusing our resources and are operating at a debit balance. We are running at a loss.
Below I will provide a surface analysis of the people in the three regions. (Note: There are other beautiful tribes in Nigeria, but for this purpose, I’m focusing on the three major tribes).
The Hausas are phenomenal people, I know this because I stayed in the northern region for a while. They are crazy (in a good way), meek, relatively honest (when compared with other tribes) and if you try to accommodate them and overlook their faults, you will see the beauty in them. They are the bravest of all, when push comes to shove, they look out for their own and don’t mind the cost. That is why you find most of them in the military and in politics. The northerners are not scared to contest, despite the fact that politics is a dangerous game. They are not scared to come out and vote despite the danger of Boko Haram coming to bomb them. They love power and despite the dangers they go after it. Like it or not, a brave employee is an asset to any organization.
Our Igbo brothers in the east are spectacular (I’m smiling), my mum is from the east and I have many Igbo cousins. I love my people but you need to chill. Igbos are patient souls, a phenomenal virtue, the belief of being better than every other person is their biggest asset. An Igbo man will travel from Enugu to Lagos with no money, no family, bad English and a pair of nickers and shirt. Give him five to ten years and he’s running a chain of electronic stores in CMS, talking dollars and pounds and you will just be dumbfounded. The trick is that he already believes he’s going to succeed, he believes he’s the smartest and that makes him excel among his peers. The mind of a man is a great thing, you are what you think you are and the people in the east have profited from this self-belief.
The Yorubas love to enjoy life, are free-spirited and accommodating. They stay out of trouble as much as possible and prefer to apply wisdom rather than being physical. That doesn’t mean they are weak or cowards, I think the best word is savvy. They are very intelligent and would rather pursue knowledge. They are analytical and can be regarded as the brain-box of the nation. You find most of them in the financial and academic sectors because those environments encourage self-development and this is good because knowledge is power. With exposure and knowledge, the western Nigerians have been able to state their relevance in the country. Without sufficient knowledge to execute a project, even the bravest and smartest of men are destined to fail.
But like every other resource, there will always be a flip side, every region having its own faults and shortcomings, but that’s not important. Your ability to dwell on the positive side of your resources and get the best out of it is what makes it profitable. We fight and abuse each other, engaging in stupid contests about which region is better. We dwell on the past and instead of bringing out the best out of each other, we make ourselves worse. I hear some people talk about the civil war, were you there? Why are we fighting in a war that has already ended? If Nigerians can come together as one, we would walk on moons. With all this potential, if we channel all the negative energy we use to bring each other down and use it to help push each other higher, imagine the result. A country filled with brave, smart and brilliant minds like Nigeria is rare, yet we decide to be poor and terrorists because of greed.
You might think the poor people are not in your region but when you are outside Nigeria, we are all perceived as poor, terrorists, hungry and backward (just at the mention of Nigeria). So let’s help each other to help ourselves. Let’s understand the faults of the next man but dwell on his positive values.
We drive our cars, despite the fact that it is only when you are in a car that you can be involved in a car accident. That doesn’t stop us from driving. We focus on the positive aspect of driving and all the benefits we can get from it. There’s progress in unity and diversity and hatred will only result in more bad debt, debit and loss in our trial balance.
Akintan Nkechor Oluwatosin
Akintan Nkechor Oluwatosin is a Novelist, Social commentator, Reviewer and a Freelance writer. He is a graduate of international relations and political science from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, He loves writing and reading and has been writing for over 10 years. He started writing professionally in 2014 as a freelancer for some online contents. In Oct, 2015, Tosin’s articles first got published in vanguardng newspaper and in Nov, 2015, another piece of his work was published in vanguard National Dailies again. Over the years he’s written many articles and poems for different magazines, commercial websites and individuals. A member of different online writing forums and platforms.
He is an expert at providing content on various matters ranging from education, automobile, entertainment and politics.
Nice piece Tee