I just thought I should a share short story here with the aim that it speaks a little to somebody.

It is the year 2015. On a quest for knowledge, Eugene Pam had applied to the University of Ibadan for a Masters degree program in Physics. All applicants were tasked to prove their proficiency in English by taking a test – were they applying to Cambridge or Oxford? Well, I shouldn’t be all that surprised; a lot of Nigerian graduates could hardly make it over the hurdle of spelling their own names. Eugene could recall sometime in his final year when a bunch of his course mates intercepted him on the walkway and repeatedly hailed, “GREAT PHYSICIAN, GREAT PHYSICIAN!!” It was a complete debacle. He tottered shamefully to the hostels with his head bowed. You could say it was an honest mistake but the same group repeated this act twice again albeit in a less embarrassing place. Final year and you think you’re a Physician for studying Physics. Once they say, is happenstance, twice, a coincidence but thrice? It’s the devil at work. The educational system was and is that rotten, we have reached a point of radical crisis. I may have gone overboard with the name-spelling analogy but the roots of our decay are plunging deeper by the minute and may soon become unassailable.

Having taken the test at the University of Ibadan over the weekend, Eugene decided to go to Lagos for a few days. It was going to be his first time in the city. He had heard so much about Lagos. It was Nigeria’s “land of opportunities”, almost every job post on job portals were for positions available in Lagos, so he wanted to find out the possibility of working in Lagos while pursuing his Masters in Ibadan which is just about an hour away. He had a friend called Jason in Lagos who was into music and hoping to be the next big export from the booming entertainment industry in Lagos. On getting to Lagos, it turned out the friend was living a completely awful life, which he termed “Lagos life”. Practically living from hand to mouth daily. He woke up at 4 am to have his bath claiming the water would go off at any time later than that, then leave the house at 5:30. Eugene was okay with the plan until they got to town. Jason didn’t have a single thing to do in town; he didn’t have a reason to leave the house at 5 am. Eugene, on the other hand, had addresses of companies he’d like to visit so they ended up doing that. On further enquiry, this had been Jason’s routine for the one year he had spent in Lagos; ambulating aimlessly around the city.

To cap it all off it was time to make dinner when they got home. There was practically no ingredient nor spice to give the food some taste. Jason wasn’t interested in adding anything to the meal, serving it bland seemed to be what he wanted. At first, Eugene thought his unemployment status was the reason and he didn’t have the funds so he offered to buy what was needed. He was going to get tomato paste, smoked fish and a few others. At the sound of this, Jason goes off ranting, hauling abusive words at Eugene but just the one word he associated with what Eugene was going to get stuck in his head – Luxury. He specifically said going to get those things were luxurious and that’s not how to live in Lagos.

That was when Eugene knew what he was dealing with. Jason had been drawn into the suffer-before-I-make-it mentality of humans. He was deliberating crafting out the rags part of his supposed “Rags to Riches” story. Like Dr Stephen Hawkins said, “The secret pleasure of suffering is addictive.” We must, by any means necessary eliminate the glorification of suffering. Most of successful Americans of the 21st century are benefitting from the 100year or so head start it got as a result of the successes of the past generation. It is okay to be on the driver's seat all through your lifetime. It is true that to truly experience real joy you must also have the wherewithal to also endure sadness, but, this doesn’t include carving out sadness for ourselves. There’s no crime in living in constant luxury. Trite as it might sound: let us work hard and smart and not just hard.

Have a wonderful week ahead everyone.