Of Copycats and Court Jesters: The Case of Lacking in Self-thought -By Hussein Adegoke

In this present age and time, I think it is as much crucial to life as life itself that every rational mind has a mind of “his” (apologies to the feminists; my writing is still in its budding stage, I can’t deal with that). Even to be a successful father in this new era and changing world, one is not expected to pass down an idea to one’s child and expect him to adopt them hook, line and sinker—except he would become a nincompoop. To my utmost guess, no one has the ultimate answer to his or to anyone’s future. We, all, as human race, are only boxed within this realm to navigate, proliferate and evolve with respect to the (kinds of) thinking caps we wear.

But sadly, it is in this world we see throngs of people discard of their keys to goldly mines as they have sighted another that unlocks a single piece of brass. The desperateness with which the present crop of youth go in the pursuit of material wealth has not helped this matter either. Everyone now wishes to become the next Elon Musk because billion rains in the “mosque” of coins. We initially had many wanting to become programmers because Bill Gates who blossomed by the “gate”-crashing of Microsoft was one. In Nigeria, the situation is particularly a chase after business because the country boasts of one black rich(est) business tycoon. You see, the parable of lacking in idealism and only filing in the chain of people with “good prospects” is like that of cactus plants which grow as offshoots of an epigynous tree but die off only at the invasion of a wild fire while the tree survives. This would be so as the plant lacks an (original) fibrous root of its own and hence, sprouting would become difficult, nay, impossible. An idea that one has not patented is most likely going to die-off early, having not been tested by one through the challenges of time.

I think everyone should rather strive to look within, to harness one’s potentials and grow in it and become the sole patent to same. There are many routes leading to riches—the good, the bad, the folly, the jolly—but only the championing one is what all see and appreciate. It is the reason the youth of today have chosen to downsize their integrity; to play down their rock-solid moral values and sociocultural expectations. The worse, however, comes when these people choose to serrate their religiosity (if they were priorly inclined to one) with an untoward fecundity. If it requires that they ignite their capes—that they have been known to don since childhood—to become financially “surplus” (note: I didn’t say “buoyant”) by even a negative means, so be it.

Nigerians now troop into Canada for the hosts of opportunities that abound in there—and this is not a bad idea altogether (as they cannot be left to die in a “sinking ship”)— but majority would by then see no reason to practice their faiths and believe not anymore as such things as religiosity is “alien” to their now new domiciliary. In their eyes, Europeans are the more “reasonable” people because their economies blossom so well. They juxtapose an unending convenant with what is a mere verbal piece of agreement; the case of the world to come after and the present one we live. This present world would end (to the critical version of how it does every night when almost all things are forced to a standstill ) and nothing will remain again…shiorr!