Let’s build A Society That Will Make Our Talents Blossom…Peter Obi.

Part of our problem as a nation is not having a talent-friendly environment. There is so much misplacement of priorities that the talented get overtly frustrated. These are the views of Mr. Peter Obi.

The former Anambra State governor was expressing this ardent draw back on our path to nation building at the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus, UNEC on Thursday July 6, 2017. The man many love to call Okwute was the guest speaker at the first Leadership Entrepreneurship and Mentorship summit anchored by the Students’ Union Government of one of the nation’s topmost universities.

“In our country, a councilor earns more than a professor. How then do you expect those academics to go into dedicated research that would improve the society and mankind?

“But in developed climes the academia drive the course for improved life in all spheres of it, including economic and leadership advancements’’, the ex-banker expressed.

Mr. Obi pointed out this sad fact while responding to a question from one of the students, who is incidentally challenged physically. Taking the microphone from the wheelchair, the young lady enquired from the Guest speaker what was her fate as physically challenged in a society that is evidently not academic-friendly.

Okwute started by assuring the fourth year student of law that she had nothing to worry about regarding her physical condition. ‘’We’re all physically challenged. I use these spectacles because I can’t see properly…’’

However, the alumnus of Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge and many other Ivy League institutions all over the globe quickly brought Steve Hawkings into the picture. Diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at 21, Hawkings despite being one of the most physically challenged, rose to become one of the greatest scientists of our time and indeed the richest of them all.

But the well-organised summit wasn’t all about the Oxford-born physicist. Rather it was all about leadership, entrepreneurship and governance. The capacity-filled hall listened attentively while Mr. Obi rolled in a marveling encyclopedic delivery of facts and figures. He told them that the richest entrepreneurs in modern world started at the ages of most of them in the hall. He started with Apple, the richest company in the world which has a net worth of $750 million, dwarfing both values of Nigeria(GDP of $420 billion) and South Africa(GDP of $280 billion) put together.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak that both founded the company were 21 and 26 respectively when it was incorporated in 1977. Okwute gave a brief but very inspiring history of the union of inspiration, perspiration and faith. He went on to Microsoft. Bill Gates who left Harvard to the astonishment of parents to found the big company with Paul Allen in 1975 was only 19 while his partner was 22.

Facebook – the Carlifornia-based outfit was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Zuckerberg now 34 was only 21.

While running brief histories of these companies and founders, including their current net worth in billions of dollars, Okwute drew the audience to the very significant aspect of the fact that all these multi-billion dollar outfits sale just knowledge. He then drove home on his earlier emphasis that the world has left baggage economy to knowledge economy and urged the students to spend real time in studying and research instead of engaging in irrelevant endeavours.

‘’Today’s economy and entrepreneurship centre on marketing knowledge instead of physical goods. Oil, gold … solid and mineral resources are gradually being phased out as strong economic earnings. Cars are already running without fuel…and soon to be run without drivers. The world economy is evolving along knowledge and our dear youths of this nation should not be left behind,’’ he lectured.

He assured them that those that founded such knowledge-selling companies were not more intelligent. “If most of the scholars in Oxford and Harvard came here and got subjected to what you go through to study they would all fail. Academically, they’re not better than you are. They only enjoy the privilege of being in societies that have adequately provided them with every appropriate inducement to excellence,’’ Okwute drove on.

He touched on leadership by telling the audience without mincing words that his generation failed their generation. But it was time they stood to take the bull by the horns and save theirs and coming generations. He drew comparisons with many countries’ economies from 30 years before and now with those of Nigeria. Both in GDP, foreign reserves and every other index of economic rating, Nigeria’s figures in areas of growth and improvement were very ominously pathetic. He blamed it on leadership, lacking focus and the culture to consolidate.

The Agulu-born technocrat lamented that dear country lacked the saving culture, the reason our country is in the mess it is. He lamented on the cost of governance, giving very provable examples where our federal and state governments indulged on unpardonable wastages that should have been prudently utilised.

'The society you abuse today will take its revenge on you tomorrow. Rise up to the challenge,'' he concluded while rants of Okwute, Okwute filled every eardrum in that sizeable hall.

While he hit nails on its head the charged audience followed with well-applied. Very noticeable is the glaring fact that the students were aptly assimilating. From the intelligent questions asked a keen observer could infer that the youths are quite willing to toe the path of sustainable greatness. However, there’s still that unspoken despair of uncertainty. That uncertainty, I believe, would be conquered with practical and visionary leadership.

What Nigeria needs is leaders that could inspire, leaders that practise what they preach, leaders that are practical, leaders that can sacrifice personal glory in search of public good. Okwute combined all these indices when he ended with urging the department to create a foundation that he would fund – a foundation that its duty would be identifying talents and helping to nurture them.

PETER OBI

HAHAHAHA!Oga obi are you dreaming?you mean this naija wey we dey so?Abi anoda one dey sumwia?You can have such place in biafra not dis talent killing,failed country.

Teach our leaders 'how to'.

#Nigerian President, 2019.

I like peter obi, he,s an optimist