IF YOU JUST PASSED OUT

IF YOU JUST PASSED OUT

Permit me to give you a brief history about salaries. During the Roman Empire, there was a need to have a strong military force and as such while other kingdoms used soldiers for the sake of patriotism, the Romans opted to give their soldiers an incentive to keep them at war hence at the end of each war, the soldiers were given stipends to buy salt and add to their food when they returned to their families (Recall that salt was just discovered at that time). So they kept the money and used it to buy salt to spice up their food. It is mainly for this reason that salaries are never enough for the earners, because it was never meant to be enough.

This implies that anyone who depends on salary to survive would need to work for a pretty long time to garner enough bags of salt.

It’s another day again when I get sad. I was moody all through the day and I couldn’t place where my depressed emotional state was coming from till I got out and saw the reality. The second stream of Batch B Corps members who had been serving their nation for the past year will terminate today and they would be pushed to the wider world.

For some years now, I have been following the statistics of the nation on different sectors and the rate of unemployment in the country vis-à-vis the annual manpower output from the corps members who pass out yearly is grossly lopsided. It makes me wonder why the scheme is still in place.

The truth is that the government literally has it’s hands tied at the moment as per provision of resources and jobs for the teeming population of corps members who pass out almost on quarterly basis. With the complete removal of subsidy, it became official that the government of the day is providing virtually nothing for the people, and all that anyone who lives in Nigeria needs to make his or herself comfortable must be well planned and provided by the person in need. With that, it becomes glaring that the government has nothing in store for the Nigerian youth who has just completed his or her National youth Service.

But people are growing every day and achieving financial freedom. There are some things that distinguishes the successful people from the mediocre, chief among them is the mindset of that person with respect to the times and seasons.

If you just passed out of NYSC today or you know a friend or relative who just did, please don’t advice the person to depend on government for a job. The times have changed. What each person needs to do is to think of a need to solve, a business to start.

Now, I have looked around all the civil servants I know (and those I don’t know) and none of them achieved financial freedom and success from earning salaries (Many of them actually had to steal to become what they are, those who are honest belong to the middle class).

Don’t start life by depending on the salt money; there is a bigger vista for you. I write this with the mindset that many corps members would start up big businesses. The truth is that if Aliko Dangote had been dependent on salaries, he wouldn’t have been listed today by Forbes as the richest man in Africa. That means to achieve financial freedom, we need to do more than depending on the Government for stipends.

When we were kids we used to have very big dreams, but life has a way of stifling it from us. I would rather have us going back to those days and bring back those dreams to realities. This does not preclude that fact that some people have peculiar dreams of what they want to be and they need to be salary earners to achieve that dream.

I look forward to seeing a new generation of people with progressive and entrepreneurial mindset. I am headed for the top and I hope to see you at the top.

Thank You.