I, The Preacher, I am conscious fellow…I mean I am socially and politically conscious and concerned…

There something in me that does not accept the debilitating poverty to which the mass of our people are subjected to today, simply by the reason of their citizenship…
There something in me that does not want to celebrate pockets of so-called achievements of individuals and organizations in Nigeria, which does not in any way translate into lifting the majority of our people from the doldrums of social inequalities and abject poverty…
There is something in me that does not want accept any more, the impotent mantra of the practitioners, sponsors and protagonists of motivational speaking that it does not matter your Social background and economic environment you can make it, forgetting that your social background and economic environment has unusual impact on you. Please how does the foregoing mantra help 10.5 million Nigerian children, who are excluded from access to schools, except to agitate for their inclusion by all means necessary?
The most celebrated motivational speakers are not from Africa…They are from developed countries, particularly America. As a matter of fact, motivational speaking as we know it in Nigeria today is largely influenced by America. America is a developed country where the state and its government have taken appreciable responsibility for the personal development of their people and have put in place working system and structures to bring their yearnings, hopes and aspirations of the people to fruition…For example, America is called the land of opportunities, where people are empowered to live in pursuit of personal and general happiness. In America, social consciousness is encouraged to create Public Will for people-oriented causes. 
I therefore think that it is an unforgivable fallacy for us to situate and transplant everything the American or European motivational speaker is saying to Africa and Nigeria without considering the context in which he is saying it, the people to whom he is saying he is saying it and our own peculiar context here and the state of our people here. It is important to note that when the American motivational speaker speaks or writes, he/she does not cite African examples or use African personae or places. This may be a clue that it is not everything he or she is saying that is meant for us. Since it is the responsibility of those who receive information to process it, the motivational speaker from a developed clime cannot be held responsible for our inability or refusal as Africans to understand that principles may be a universal commodity but for its application to answer the requirement of wisdom, it must respect the peculiarities of the space and the people, where the principles are to be applied…
It has been said that there is no motivational that can make a carpenter to perform surgery…This example means motivation is beyond telling people that determination is all they need to achieve their dreams, where they are able to dream. For a dream to become a reality, there must be articulated and tested process, sustained by an operational systems. In the case of the dream of a citizen of a country, these process and operational systems must be encouraged, created or support by the state and her government…
Let me declare unequivocally that when you live in a state like Nigeria, where the State as represented by successive governments has refused to pay ACTUAL NOTICE to the hopes, yearning and aspiration of the people, it is not enough to dream and hope to see the dream come to reality like in other climes, where the state and her government pays ACTUAL NOTICE. In Africa, the state pays what I call MENTAL NOTICE to the aspirations of her people. To pay MENTAL NOTICE is to be aware somewhere in the forgotten region of your mind that you govern a people, for whom you are responsible for their WELFARE and SECURITY. To pay ACTUAL NOTICE is to think ahead of the needs and threats to the citizens and make adequate preparations to meet those needs and mitigate or obliterate those threats well before they arise…
Let me say at this point that any attempt to claim that we want to motivate the people in the Third World or Africa to achieve their dreams, without addressing the uncivilized and abandoned social, political and economic state of our continents and her peoples WILL NOT WORK…At least alluding to it or mentioning it may be the beginning of introducing the people to a conversation we need to have in Nigeria. 
I even consider it, a game of deception and at highest level of candour, a fraud of a massive magnitude, to which the judgment of history will be justifiably scathing. If we continue this way, what we will continue to see is people paying in cash and kind for the programs and events of the motivational speaker without too obvious and enduring results. On the other hand the life of the motivational speaker gets better. 
Despite our massive consumption of motivational materials, the candid question is how many world-class home-grown global brands do we have in Nigeria with our so-called wealth of wisdom. The book that I read says, wisdom is known by her children. Our greatest contributions to the global economy till today is still CONSUMPTION, pure and simple. 
It is my persuasion that it is impossible for an average Nigerian, whose all of his hopes are in this country to find full expression for their God-ordained potentials to achieve same. 
There is something in me that rejects a concoction of motivational capsules, (which has no respect for a people’s social realities) built on expiring anaesthetic of false hope of a utopian Eldorado, which when it wears out as it surely does(from time to time) puts the people in the worse state than when they received it. 
The lamentations continue another day because there is something in me that has finally rejected SILENCE as a tool of self-preservation. 
There is something in me saying it is time to start meaningful conversations, aimed at creatively engaging all of us and the system, which seek to divert our attention from the reals issues to shadow chasing. 
We cannot continue invest the best of our mental and financial resources into finding the cure of ringworm when festering and contagious leprosy is left to hold uninterrupted sway, eating off every part of the body, and rendering same useless to the owner and his/her neighbours, who may soon, very soon suffer same fate, to the detriment of the larger society. 
Do have an INSPIRED day. 
I am Taiwo ‘ODINAKACHUWU’ AKINLAMI (The Preacher) 

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