Hello Nigerians! Forget About the Past, You Have Potentials for the Future
Often times when you listen to Nigerian politicians and the citizens talk about Nigeria, all you hear them say is lamenting and complaining about the past and why the country is in the state it is. They complain about all the errors of the past and how negatively they have affected the nation’s progress.
However, you don’t hear them bring solutions and way forwards to reviving the nation and setting it on its toes again. It seems to me that all we are interested in is our past mistakes and shortfalls. We are almost always looking backwards to the past. Not many of us know that we are making a grave mistake by doing that.
If you make the mistake of looking back too much, you aren’t focused enough on the road in front of you -Brad Paisley
Permit me to say that such attitudes will in no way make us a better nation, neither will it prepare us for the great future that lies ahead of us though unseen by a greater percentage of our populace. If we spend all our energy and time talking about the past mistakes and looking backwards, we will soon be heading in that direction. It simply shows that we are not focusing on the road in front of us.
We often forget that the past is gone and that we still have the future in front of us. We still have the ability to create the future that we want for our nation. We still have potentials for the future.
The same is true for your personal life. If you keep looking backwards to your past mistakes or past achievements, you lose sight of the potentials you still have for the future. The past is gone, the future is ahead of you. It is what you do with your potentials today that will determine how great your future will become. So let’s stop looking backwards. We will hardly move forward if we don’t stop looking backwards.
It is not possible to go forward while looking backwards -Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe
Nigeria is a blessed nation. Just look at the potentials and natural resources that we have. Nigeria is one of those countries in the world that has a wide variety of different natural resources. We are richly endowed with a variety of natural resources ranging from precious metals like gold, lead, zinc, Iron ore, manganese copper etc. to various stones like limestone, Gemstone, cassiterite, etc. to industrial resources such as Barites, Gypsum, Kaolin, Marble etc.
Unfortunately, most of these resources are yet to be exploited. Statistically, the level of exploitation of these minerals is very low in relation to the extent of deposit found in the country. What about our crude oil and natural gas? What about cocoa, cassava, palm oil, rice and all other agricultural products that we could harness and export to other countries. Nigeria also has large human resources with a population of about 180million people. It is my belief that we are too blessed and potentially endowed to be an economically recessed nation. All we need is to recognize and convert our potentials.
If we could just harness the potentials of our agricultural sector alone, we could develop our country twice faster than it is now. What if we could get all our refineries to function and build more refineries so as to refine our crude oil by ourselves and not having to import finished products! Can you imagine how that will boost our economy?
What about our taking advantage of our large population and tapping into the potentials of every citizen through skill acquisition programs, agricultural and scientific research schemes, small and medium scale entrepreneurial coaching, academic workshops etc. harnessing potentials and encouraging human capacity development, wouldn’t we raise the likes of Cornelius Vanderbilt, wouldn’t we raise men like JP Morgan, Rockefeller, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie who will through the power of their potentials specialize in building various sectors of the economy, from railway industries, to oil industries, to steel, to automobile and even the banking sector.
I appreciate what our own economist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, Tony Elumelu is doing to raise young and upcoming entrepreneurs in Nigeria. I also recognize the work our industrialist Aliko Dangote has done in the industrial sector of the nation. If we could get more people who would recognize the potentials we have as a nation and who will work hard to convert those potentials into industries, businesses, processes of production and schools, etc for the benefit of the entire nation, we would soon become a great nation.
It is my belief that we have more than enough potentials to develop our nation and make our nation a praise in the earth. We, therefore, have potentials for the future. That is why we must forget about the past and focus on our potentials for the future. Marilyn Ferguson got it right when she said:
“Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future.”
All we need to do is to recognize our potentials, believe in ourselves and convert those potentials into industries and processes of production that will engineer the economic growth and prosperity that our nation needs.
Believe me, friends, we can liberate the future of our nation. We have the potentials, all we need to do is to work on those potentials and use them to build a nation that will become the envy of the world.
To learn more about solutions and way forward to making Nigeria the envy of the world, read my book by clicking the links below.
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