I over heard a group of photographers discussing in a recent conference that I attended and they lamented their state of stagnation. One of them believed witches and wizards were responsible and he also taught that they could have been richer if their parents taught them how to make money. It is true they could have been richer if their parents taught them how to make money but he erroneously believed that all the people in the developed world taught their children how to make money. I only wish he had read ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ but the problem again is that people like that don’t read.

One day, a preacher said, ‘if the devil has an opportunity to defend himself before God he would say, ‘God you know that most of these things I have been accused of were not done by me. You also know that I was in Asia when this man in Europe said I was the one that tempted him’ but the devil will never get that chance because he is condemned forever.’ Unfortunately today we have people who are not putting things right and are attributing their failures or stagnation in life to the devil and his cohorts.

A long time ago I settled it in my mind that I am responsible for whatever becomes of me especially knowing that God already planned a great future for my life and that it will be my responsibility to access what he had preplanned before I came into the scene. Witches may be able to manipulate the destiny of others but yours is secured if only you know who you are and what you carry. You are an exemption to those who can be tossed in any direction provided you have found out the area where you do not have to struggle to stand out.

I have read in the Bible that if the ways of a man pleases God he will make his enemies to be at peace with him so witches and wizards can be at peace with you. Let me also shock you that witches and wizards can be compelled to join in helping you fulfill destiny and I will back this up by the story of a pastor that I heard. He went into a town for a crusade and it was time for him to begin to operate then the witches showed up. When they realized who he was they said, ‘this is a ‘no-go’ area and they also promised to back him up.’ That was strange because witches should be all out to destroy and not to help.

People have come to believe that they do not have power yet they agree that they serve a very powerful God. God is not like your political government that has so much power and its people are so powerless! It is written in the Bible that our names are inscribed on the palm of his hands so I do not understand how witches can control the destiny of a man whose name is inscribed on the palm of God’s hands. The one who watches over me does not sleep nor slumber and he is the only one that has that quality so who’s that wretched witch that can get God to go to bed and decide what happens to me if God goes to bed?

Do I agree there are witches? Oh yeah I do and I remember Jesus in the Bible helping some men to cast out the evil spirits in them and sometimes at the peril of the swine. The more important thing is for to understand that we have and serve “The Almighty” God who upholds the world by the word of his power and has made us Kings and Priests unto our God. He also makes us understand that we have overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony.

The conversation of the photographers was that of someone who was mentally weak but unfortunately did not understand how much God had invested in them. You are too much to be stagnated or terminated anyhow. Your destiny is on a high voltage if you are on a voyage with God

Where in the world do you think would be ideal for a man to succeed if his present environment does not seem good enough for him to succeed? What do we really mean when we talk about greener pasture? For a long time I have heard so many people talk about a greener pasture but we need to ask ourselves what we really refer to as a greener pasture. Is it a place where there are greener grasses in the real sense of the word ‘grass?’ If all you need is greener grass why don’t you just pick a paint bucket with a brush and paint the grass around so you can keep it green for as long as you want!

If a man leaves a place because he feels the place is not offering him enough opportunities he just might be more frustrated in the new place that was formally referred to as the greener pasture. Before we say things are not working in a place we should be able to hold our heads high and say these are the things that we have done and they have been done the way they were supposed to be done. We must be able to say we know who we are and have discovered the talents inside of us. Beyond the discovery of the talents inside of us we should be able to say we have made bold steps towards using the talent for the progress of the community in form of a service that will in turn fetch us some money.

We live in times where people have not offered anything to the community but we expect so much from the community and we get so bitter when the community cannot meet our expectations. It is very important to note that the idea of greener pasture is about understanding where you were placed in life and remaining in that place. Understanding your place in life begins with knowing what abilities are inside you and finding out why you are the one carrying such abilities and not another person.

Why are you the one with the passion for people’s development? Why are you the one with the passion for young people and the less privileged? Why are you the one with the passion for a change in leadership? Why are you the one with the strong desire for excellence? All of these issues that give you grave concern first point to the areas where you have a gifting and consequently a solution. If you carry the solution to something then you are supposed to be in the middle of the problem where the solution is applicable.

If there is anything called the greener pasture I think it must be defined as the placed where your gifts, talents and abilities can be easily recognized and rewarded! If you seek a place called a greener pasture without knowing what you have and looking out for where it is needed then you are looking for what is not lost. At best you would be like the man in a beautiful book called ‘Acres of Diamond’ who had diamond right there in front of him. He had diamonds in abundance where he lived but went out in search of diamonds. Many today, in the name of a greener pasture are looking for what is not lost because what they need is staring at them but they cannot see!

Before you start out to look for a greener pasture, be sure you know what you are capable of doing which will make you relevant and “reward-able” where you are going.

Countries who do not have responsible leaders should be ashamed of themselves bearing in mind that my definition of ‘responsible leaders’ captures the kind of people who believe in and ensure the welfare of their people, pursue the developmental progress of the society, ensure that integrity is a priority and a culture, always say what they mean and mean what they say. Unfortunately some of the people have not recognised the fact that the greatest honour you can do for a fool is not to give him a platform to express his foolishness. If you think you are not concerned about his foolishness please be informed that the whole world will also question the wisdom of the person that gave a foolish man the platform for expression.
The disaster of leadership in any nation is to see the anomalies become the normal things and the normal things become the anomalies because of the misplacement of values. We live in nations today where it has become normal for people to die not because the death was unavoidable but because a politician was given money to equip our hospitals and such people have squandered the money. We live in nations today where political leaders who cannot afford more than two houses – going by their business empire or their seating allowances as politicians – already four or fives houses in the most expensive parts of the country forgetting that they will only sleep on one bed at a time.

We have leaders who cannot interpret the laws of the nation and execute as expected. We have leaders who do not even know what goes on in an area that is supposed to be their jurisdiction. There are leaders who have no idea of what their followers are going through and they are the ones who sit in the House of Representatives! What else would they be representing if not their selfish interests?

I make bold to say that the countries should be ashamed because we can deny our leaders as the reflection of the society but we elected them or did not do anything about those we did not elect but smuggled into our government houses. The television screens are filled with people who know next to nothing about leadership yet they are paraded as leaders.

For years we have battled with the opinion regarding the people who are in politics and the people who are not supposed to be. We all agree that not all the people who are there right now are supposed to be there but we are only talking about it rather than acting about it. Another election is approaching in a country like Nigeria and previous elections have been characterised by killing of political opponents, blackmailing, exchange of blames and bribing of the gullible electorate.
We have, for more than 50 years, in the case of Nigeria listened to the sweet talking politicians and we have still not taken a step to make sure that the people who get into power are not the sweet talking politicians. We let them get into power before we begin to question their leadership abilities and at that time there are limits to what we could have done because we did not do what we were supposed to do in the first place. We live in countries where people get on television screens and begin to tell us what we all can see as a black material is not black but white.

People are dying in hospitals as a result of the greed of some of the people we call politicians. There are people who cannot even go to the hospitals because they cannot afford what they were not even supposed to pay for in the first place. Schools are constantly involved in one industrial action or the other and those who are supposed to graduate in four years are graduating in five or six years.

The problems abound and you and I can talk about it for as long as we want but we are the ones that started the anomalies in the government even though we are not in government. We started it because we refused to vote when we had the right to vote. We did not even register because we believed that our votes do not count. We have said again and again that our votes do not count so how do we expect our voices to count in the government where our votes did not count?
Some of our friends, relatives, fathers and mothers collected money from the misfits in politics and could not voice out when the politicians where doing what was not expected from them. Those we elected into the National Assembly have begun to keep mute over the right issues. When they have to vote about their seating allowances they will speak up but they will not speak up when they are supposed to speak up against another person in politics who has stolen money.

We unfortunately gave these misfits in politics the open ground to act because we did nothing but we are the only ones that can still stop them when we are ready. The problem is that they can only be stopped when we are ready so when are we going to be ready to stop the people from ruling their pockets while claiming to be speaking for their people.

It is time to act and we may lose it again if we do not work against these misfits. They live with us and around us but we refused to expose them. A country will only know peace and grow as it should with a happy people if we are willing to expose and face the wrath of those who are not doing what they are being paid to do.

Fola Daniel Adelesi
www.foladaniel.com
www.debater5.blogspot.com
www.netlog.com/foladaniel
info@foladaniel.com

I was musing over the recent debate regarding the credibility of the police to fish the killers of Dipo Dina and a few funny thoughts came to my mind. I know this will be interesting to you if you reason with me.
1.) When these killers are fetched they will be more famous than you and I can imagine and that will happen almost overnight.
2.) If justice will be done and they have to be remanded in prison for as long as the judge decides that means they will have a house – prison – to live in free from charge and they may get a life sentence. If they do it means they will not pay rent for the rest of their lives and do not have to worry about buying houses.

3.) They will, in addition to free accommodation have free food from the Federal Prison service of our dear nation so they do not have to worry about what to eat or drink.

4.) The implication of their free food is that the Federal Government will remove tax-payers’ money from the Federation account or from the national budget to feed them when the Nigerian that are really paying the tax have not enjoyed the benefit of their tax.

5.) There is nearly no place in the country that has as much security as the prison especially for high profile criminals as they are called. It means they will have, probably, the most secured apartment in the country.

6.) There is no Nigerian who wants to eat that will decide to seat back at home, sleep all day and still have food to eat at the end of the day. Now these guys will be able to sleep all day, do nothing but still wake up to eat without working for the food or bothering whether it will come or not because it will definitely come.

What if they are not caught?

1.) They will roam our streets freely while their victim will be six feet under the earth. The “victim-by-extension” Dipo’s family and other dependants will mourn and will struggle more than they have been doing because the bread winner is gone.

2.) The killers will have the courage to do another one because this one succeeded

3.) Other politicians will be encouraged to think about killing opponents who get in their way if people keep dying and nobody gets caught.

4.) This kind of development will scare away the real people that we need in politics because the people with good intentions will not want to die and will stay away from politics.

5.) Some other up-coming politicians will think that politics is a do or die affair.

6.) We will not be able to learn the lessons people like Abraham Lincoln taught us – the man who failed about 13 times before getting elected.

So why do politicians kill?

1.) They are not leaders. They are politicians and that by extension means they do not have the people’s interest at heart. They are strategizing on personal agenda.

2.) Most of them trained through experience to win election but did not train to lead the people that elected them so they have nothing to offer.

3.) These people are carried away by the allocations in office and the surety of becoming prosperous through politics.

4.) They are not deep thinking individuals and will be frustrated by the right thinking people so they think the way out is to clear the opponent.

What’s the way out?

1.) We have to train leaders who see politics and governance as service and not as a career. If it still remains a career it will encourage desperation.

2.) We have to build political parties with ideologies because when parties do not have a vision and an ideology they do not really know why they are together!

3.) We know politics is dangerous but those of us who have the interest of the nation at heart must not stay away from it. We have to go for it and stay there until we succeed in changing it!

Some of us question the possibility of change and largely, but ignorantly, talk about the reasons things will not change. Unfortunate, all of those reasons for the most part only reveal why individuals do not want to change instead of the chances of having a changed situation. I do not like to argue the possibility of change in any given society but when I hear people argue about it and some people say it is impossible for the society to change then I see people who have forgotten that the society is just a collection of people, including the people arguing, with varying demography. Consequently, when some people strongly suggest to us that a society cannot change especially for good they are simply giving us an inner picture of people who do not want to change but are claiming that the society does not want to change.

We should begin to ask what it really takes for a society to change rather than join the league of pessimists who say that the nation will never change. The situation in America during the slave trade, in my opinion, is worse than anything we are currently trying to change. All that was required for the change process to begin was the decision of one person and the support of others. With persistence, the person who began the change process and the people who advocated the change began to gather momentum and consequently build a voice stronger than what opposition could silence. There was negotiation after negotiation and they lasted for hours that gradually turned into days. The days of negotiation eventually became weeks of negotiation. Several weeks of negotiation grew into months of negotiation but the people were not tired of negotiating a place in the society that was rightly theirs. The negotiation did not even stop in some months. It lasted for years and people gave their lives for what they were negotiating.

Some of us can readily talk about the negatives but is it not all about us. We start a change process and give up too soon on the end result that we saw. We conclude soon after beginning that it is impossible for things to change and we never encourage others who have not given up in the fight for change. All it takes to have an entire street painted is to get every man on the street to paint his house. All it takes to keep the streets clean is to have everyman clean the plots in front of his house. All it takes to have streets ridden of thieves and rogues is to have every house owner and tenant fight against the activity around their houses that build up to burglary.

I do not question the possibility of change but I question our willingness to change. We want to have the desired changes overnight but none of them will ever happen that way. The only thing that can happen overnight is damage. We can have disasters in the twinkling of an eye. Hundreds of people that grew over the years can die in less than a minute but it is never so with change.

There is such a huge price to pay for change. The first is that it will always stir up our anxiety because it will never come as soon as we expect it and when it does not show up in good time we would have reasons to give up. While working towards and waiting for change, it is very possible to offend the people that live with us or live next to us because in the fight for change we will have to fight mentality. And I must say, it will be the mentality of the people that we love so much. When we are not willing to begin the fight with the mentality of the people that we love so much, we resist change and give mediocrity a chance to thrive.

Lest we forget, change is not a weekend assignment. It is what we have to do day and night until we can think change without any reminder. We would need to see the change and talk about it before we have it. We would need to talk about it and fight for it before it can have a place. We would have to fight for the change and lose some things that are precious to us before the change can last. We will have to lose some pleasure to give change a chance because the process of change must be prepared for.

When a nation wants to experience change it is not only the leaders that can make it happen. If the change will ever happen the followers cannot afford to follow only. They have to be involved and contribute to the development of change in any area where it is desired.

Can we ever change anything? I strongly believe we can, provided we really want to. The reason we still question the possibility of change in our society today is that we do not realize change is a mental battle that must first be fought in the mind before it becomes a reality. If we do not believe the possibility of change then mediocrity has won the battle in our minds and we are left to grapple with the offspring of mediocrity.

We lose the chance to change anything when we agree that we are not in a position to change anything. We lose the very essence of change when we believe that someone else must give us a platform before we can start anything. When we think that what we do not have are the things that we need to make a change then we will never work towards any change and will not have anything new.

One thing is certain, the way we do things today is not the way we have always done things. We didn’t have computers to type what we needed to type. We didn’t have any internet where you and I can read the works of other people. We didn’t have cars that could take people around. We didn’t have mobile phones that could call from wherever you are. We didn’t have electricity to do most of the things that we do today. We didn’t have people flying and even going to the moon. Everything change!

We only need to be completely dissatisfied about what we have or see right now for the change to begin. Whoever still questions the possibility of change should remember that he or she was not born with the ability to read and write. It was learnt! Whoever still questions the possibility of change should remember that he or she was not born as an adult. There was growth! Whoever still questions the possibility of change should remember how we wake up to a new day though we cannot explain it.

When we refuse to change, we will become products of changes that we never wanted.

“How can I start out in business or in any other thing I want to do when I don’t have any money and the circumstances around do not encourage me? Is it possible to start with nothing when we all know that you will need money to start whatever you need to start and you will also need money to do some publicity for what you want to do?” These and many others are the kind of questions that I get when I go to speak in some meetings especially when I have to discuss entrepreneurship with young or old people. I know you can do a lot even when you don’t have money because I have done it and how to do it is what we need to look at.

For some of the people who ask me questions in the meetings where I speak I just perceived they are making excuses for not willing to try anything new and you can practically read the innocence on the face of some others. For those who are trying to make excuses they will argue with you even when you are willing to show them that it is very possible to start something with nearly nothing. The response of those whoa are willing to learn is rapt attention to your explanation and you find them asking question after question not because they are trying to find a fault where they can prove to you that you are wrong but because they are trying to understand you.

Some of the people who cared to listen are already doing fine today after listening to a few tips on how to start something with nothing. I have said in several articles that all I had was a gift when I started and so does every other person! For some other people they may be passionate about a kind of service that the people need and that will be of great commercial value to them if they are willing to try out those services.

There are two kinds of people who have two different ways of making money in the society. Some have the ingenuity with creation and they invent or innovate for the need of others. These are people who come up with products for others to buy, use or sell to other people. Other people’s ingenuity will come to play when they are rendering a service and the only way they can make money from that is to learn how to place a commercial value on the service they are rendering despite the fact that the service cannot be quantified. These two kinds of ingenuity will be interwoven in some places and they will be you understand how to create a commercial value for what you can do.

A great example of interwoven ingenuity is the fact that I did not invent the computer but I do a lot of writing. In this case the man who is inventing the computer can decide the cost of his computer based on the cost of production and the perceived that I, the user, will derive from it. Another example is that I do a lot speaking in conferences and seminars but there would have been no easy way for me to determine the value of what I have done if the clock was not invented. Now that the clock has been invented I can say I have been speaking for an hour therefore, my time is worth ….(Whatever amount you think). The ingenuity of invention (clock) and service (speaking) have come together to create a commercial value for me.

I don’t need to have all the money in the world to start speaking and to make money from speaking. All I need to do is to refine my abilities and be sure that it is ready to be commercialized. That means you must prepare yourself such that if you find your own gifts and abilities for sale on a shelf you will be willing to buy even when you do not know where it is coming from. If you think you do not have a gift I can tell there is probably a gift that you have not discovered inside of you. And you also need to know that your gifts may not be about a visible and an uncommon ability to be displayed. Your gift could just be that you can render a service but when you are the one rendering that service you will render it better than any other person.

You can build yourself to a level in some services where everybody will know if you are not the one who did what they are seeing on display. They may not be able to explain why they feel this one is not from you but they just feel it is not up to the standard that you render. This is what Fela Durotoye calls predictable excellence. Where to from this place is included in the following:

1.) Have an identifiable gift or service

When people mention your name a picture must come to mind and I make bold to say that the reason some people are still poor today is that they have not been identified with any service for which they can be paid. When people do not know what business they can do with you there is no point blaming them for not giving you money. People will not just throw money away because money was not designed to be given away just like roses. Money is a means of exchange and you must have something to exchange in order to have money.

2.) Refine it, and advertise it.

Whatever you have found must not be left in its raw state. Some people have found some gifts and services that can be exchange for money but they have not gotten a dime because they have left what they discovered in the raw state. Polish what you have. If you can write don’t just write it anyhow. Make it appealing to people. If you can talk don’t just talk anyhow. Learn how to talk because there is a difference between uttering words and talking or speaking. Every human being is expected to utter words except for an abnormality so learn how to stand out despite the fact that every human being is expected to utter words. Whatever gift or service you have must be advertised if not people will only admire you for your gifts. Those whose gifts are admired don’t make money until the gifts are commercialized. While advertising the gifts and services that you have it is important to note that you may not always wait for money to produce the goods before delivering them. If you care a great deal about integrity which you cannot do without in business you will let you clients know that you have integrity and that you will deliver if they trust you with their funds. With this you can collect money from clients to produce or purchase some goods and deliver as promised at the stipulated time. In the case of a service you can collect about 70 percent of what is required to render the service so that you have something to start with. This is what is also called ‘other people’s money.’ It’s about doing business with funds from your clients.

3.) Trade and transfer it.

The important thing which now answers the question of starting with nothing is to trade and transfer your gift. I have heard a few fanatics who feel your gifts should not be traded but I have s simple answer for them. When Jesus proverbially gave some people talents the Bible first recorded that the gifts were given according to their abilities which means he expected results in some varying proportions. When they eventually came back with gifts he also dealt with them according to the results from the initial gifts. If you are not supposed to trade your gift why will Jesus question the attitude of the man who did nothing but bury the gift?

The emphasis I would like to make here is that you are to trade and transfer the gift. Some people never make money because all they do is use the gift. You have to replicate your abilities and gifts in other people. When you do this you will be empowering some others directly or indirectly for their finances. When you are transferring your abilities to others you may not be expecting monetary rewards but you know that you are building other people and consequently contributing to societal development or nation building. At some point the people you have impacted may come back to say thank you using monetary rewards or refer some people who need your services to you.

Trading your talent is where you make money directly by structuring your gifts or abilities and services into a business organization. People pay for products that you have created or pay to consult you on areas where you are perceived to be gifted. At some point you would have to learn where you must trade and transfer abilities at the same time.

There will also be times when you will transfer abilities though you are supposed to trade it but you are doing it for the sake of building relationships that will now fetch greater platforms to trade.

I have said you do not always have to start with money. What you need to do is to start with a mindset about what you want and I bet you can get it.

Opportunities are like programmes transmitted through the satellite. If your receivers are not tuned in you will never get them. Let me be quick to let you in on the fact that the illusion called opportunity is simply the result of some decisions we have already taken – ranging from what school to go, what kind of friends to keep, what we have done with our time or are doing with our time, our choice of profession and even the kind of person to marry. Just as one can be frustrated while waiting for opportunities based on the kind of talents and abilities that you have, it can also be an interesting thing to do. Rather than waiting for opportunities we may have to learn how to fast track them if we don’t want our patience to run out of elasticity.

Day after day we walk through the streets looking for opportunities and sometimes expecting to hit the magic wand that makes everything available to us on one spot because advertisements have made our appetites go wild. You look through stores in shopping malls and you find stickers or banners telling you, ‘this is your one-stop-shopping-centre’ but the real truth about life is that you cannot get everything in one place.

Some other times it is not about where to get the opportunities that we need because it does not seem to be forth coming at all. We are desperately in need of a chance to get something done. We desperately want to get a platform to show people what we can do. We desperately want to an opportunity to sell what we have produced. We look around us and it seems we will never get a chance to make money yet we have to face the unpaid bills piling up on the desk at home or in the office.

All sorts of deadlines are fast approaching and all of them need to be met because no one seems to be less important. In the middle of all these you still remember the need to stay relevant and one of the ways to do that is leveraging on training from educational institutions or professional certifications that may improve your chances when the opportunities come. Just then you remember that all the trainings are good but it wouldn’t just be good, it would be great if you had the funds to pursue them. At this moment you are tempted to drift into feeling disadvantaged because at some point you did not get a chance to choose what sort of home you were born in and how wealthy your parents should be. Following that you seemingly have a limited chance to decide what kind of training you get through formal education or other means and consequently cannot decide how people perceive you in life.

You just may want a chance to be wooed by a man and you seem to be deliberately creating the circumstances for the expected event but it’s not happening. You want a job that you are good at and you probably can do it better than the person who is handling it right now but it just looks like the opportunity is not forth coming. There are several things you have tried and there are several things you are still willing to do but you have only done those things because you wouldn’t like to be seen as a lazy person. You are almost questioning the logic behind all that you do because you don’t really believe in it anymore.

When the opportunities fail to show up maybe because you are expecting them from others then I can advise you do one thing. Create the opportunities that you are looking for instead of waiting for them. Many of us think we are less privileged and that someone else must come to our aid. We always look forward to people who seem to have things working for them and we don’t understand why they wouldn’t want to send us abroad for greener pasture. We don’t understand why these people would not send us money from time to time. We don’t understand why these people cannot just picture what we are going through and just come to our aid.

Well let me answer some of your questions about why some will not see what you need and create opportunities for you. They are simply not GOD and they are also expecting opportunities. They don’t have it all even though things seem to be going right for them. Some of the people you envy right now will gladly trade places with you and let you have all that you call opportunities if only they know the kind of peace that you have.

When the opportunities don’t seem to show up, create them! Don’t assume somebody knows how good you are at something. Make some noise about it! You need to be daring enough to walk up to places and people to talk about what you think you can do even when you have never done such before. You have to stop looking at who is going to talk to you about having required experience and just try your hands on something. Don’t wait till you lose your job before you start desperately creating opportunities.

Displaying your talent at every given chance is one other way I have learnt to create opportunities for myself. When I get the microphone, I don’t spare it. I always do this because I know one of the first things to do is to impress my face and name in the people’s hearts until they just cannot forget me. All of those people will eventually get to a place where they need someone who does what I do so well and I will be the one they will call. What that means is that I once got an opportunity to show my talents and I maximized it in preparation for the opportunity to make some money.

Don’t be deceived about opportunities coming tomorrow. The things you do today will determine what becomes an opportunity for you tomorrow. If you are not a writer today you cannot possibly dream about a publishing opportunity! If you are not an engineer today you cannot be preparing for a building contract no matter how much you know about it.

When opportunities don’t seem to be showing up, sit down and decide what kind of opportunities you are really looking for and prepare for it. While you are preparing, I guarantee someone you don’t know is watching and often times we create opportunities by just doing what we know how to do with no intention to impress anyone. The people watching are fascinated by our sincerity of purpose and they just feel like helping us.

Beyond looking for someone to help you, your real opportunities may lie in looking for whom to help. With your seemingly little capacity there are people you can help who may in turn come to help you with what you need. Whether or not they can help you may not be as important as giving them a chance by helping them in your own way.

One other thing I think you can do instead of expecting opportunities that that seem bent on not showing up is to separate yourself from the many activities you are involved in without productivity. Many of us do so many things and are always very busy but after being very busy we end up being very frustrated because we did not stay away from the noise to access what we were doing. If you will ever see or create opportunities you may never see them by being where everybody is.

Some opportunities have been created for us and we are still looking for them. In such situation we give people the impression that we are waiting for opportunities but the truth is that the opportunity is the one waiting for us. Accessing or creating opportunities therefore may require looking back at the things we have been through and some things we have done. There are opportunities in some of them. I remember creating an office just from the luggage I brought back from school when I graduated. If I never looked back I may not have realized that I had a potential office in my bags lying in a corner of the room.

I believe and I know that there are opportunities every where and in every field even in a downturn. Financial crisis will always be someone else’s opportunity to make money. The only challenge about opportunity is that many of us have eyes and we keep looking but we never see! To access or create opportunities, you must look, especially in the direction that others are not looking, and see something that others refuse to see! We all practically walk on opportunities!

History hardly mentions the age of great men but it does mention their tremendous impact transcending the ages. For several years I have heard so many people who say they are testifying and the only thing you hear is, “I want to thank the Lord for adding another year to my year.” Ever since they were born the Lord has been adding another year to their years but they have never come to say this is what they have added to the society! The illusion of figures deceives a lot of people into the perception of relevance until they realize their irrelevance!

We cannot, as a society or as a nation, continue to live with people who just grow older and nurture figures like a calendar as if it was not only profitable but the only profitable thing to do. The society is yearning for impact and people desperately want others who can teach them what they need to know or tell them what they do not know.

Year after year we have told people how old we are but it would have been absolutely fine if telling people your age, especially to prove that you are older and should be respected, solves the problems in the society. What is the illusion of figures all about! At some point you said you were still young. You held unto that and missed out some vital contributions you could have made in life until you realized you were not too young after all. The realization came when you no longer have the platform that offers the opportunity for that impact.

Beyond thinking you were too young you also got to a level where you felt you were not too old and you still have a lot of time on your side so rather than getting down to work because you had a lot of time you whiled away some of that time until you found out you never had all the time in the first place.

You have had enough of assumption about being too young or having so much time on your side. One of the hardest realities is coming to terms with the fact that you never had what you have always thought you had. Rather than just bragging, shouting or ranting about how many figures you have accumulated like the calendar I suggest you begin to work on making your life count.

Let’s see more of how many people are going to experience true freedom as a result of your activities. Let’s see more of how many people are going to experience joy as a result of your innovation. Let’s see how many people are going to live an easy life as a result of your ingenuity.

History hardly mentions the age of great men but it does mention their tremendous impact transcending the ages.

The issue is not whether we are less privileged or not. The issue is not whether somebody in town wants us or not. The problem is not whether they like or faces or not. The battle that everyone is concerned about is not even our major concern right now.

Brothers the issue is that we have always been rejected and despised. Everybody thinks we cannot amount to anything so nobody has a security provision for us. The chiefs don’t even think about us when they are planning the social amenity to be made available to the people of the town. Don’t you even think their heads are too sophisticated to allow their minds be bothered because of people like us?

We are outcasts of the society and are left to survive by chances. Unfortunately they think we are so ugly that we are not even fit to sit at the gate of their town. Nobody needs to talk to us about any hell anywhere because we are going through more than enough hell right now.

We are at the mercy of the “miserly-generosity” of some mean citizens who are just a little better than we are save for the fact that they have not been banished from town. The rich folks who can afford to give us “life-transforming crumbs” don’t even get to pass this place.

I am trying as much as I can to picture the conversation of these lepers who were deliberating the most heart rendering issues as far as they were concerned. The most important thing is that somebody was wise enough to ask, “why sit we here till we die?”

This leper in his proposition did not deny the fact that they would die but he just wanted to know why they would not do anything until they die. Sometimes you need to get up with an attitude of “what am I going to lose after all?” and give it a shot. You have nothing to lose writing that business proposal. You have nothing to lose making the right attempts. You have nothing to lose trying out what other have not tried because you will end up learning what others have not learnt! You can’t keep waiting for things to happen while you are doing only what others are doing.

You cannot even focus on the odds that are against you as an excuse not to do anything. The guys who woke up to say, “why sit we here till we die?” had all the odds against them because they were outcasts in their own town. You are not yet an outcast so why will you sit there and not do anything. Even if you think you are an outcast we read about an outcast in the Bible who had to settle forcefully outside his town but at some point his people got into trouble and they didn’t have a choice other than to go back to him. You still have something that is useful to another person in life so get and go out. Go looking for that person or those people and those nations who need what you carry. You have been sitting long enough who no results so do something.

It is even more honourable to do something with little results than to do nothing. As a nation because can’t even afford to sit here for to long. We have to put our minds to work and get something out so that we can move forward. When we have problems we need to always realize the solution is not always in sitting down!

I fell in love with this guy when I heard the question because asking “why” puts your brain to work and the outcome is usually an outstanding success. Many Christians have problems and are looking for opportunities but they sit where they are exoecting opportunities to come. They think if they prayed to God about it then it must come in some kind of big way. They think God’s opportunities are always in some kind of complex and inexplicable advantages brought together to be called a miracle.

Don’t sit there till you die! Get out and grab opportunities! Many of you pray opportunities into place then you allow them slip by you because you want to pray them into action again. These folks who asked themselves , “why sit we here till we die?” were physical lepers but their reasoning reveals that they were not lepers in their minds. Many today are not physical lepers but the leprosy on their minds is horrible, disgusting and nauseating. Why sit you here till you die?

Some people think it is hard to make money but they say it is easy to spend it. My response to that in this present time is that we have a society that does not understand financial culture, though we all have it. For any society to succeed it must understand that it has a financial culture that it has either neglected or is not paying attention to at all. All the nations that prospered have a great culture and it is not just a culture that explains the way the people live. After all you cannot explain the way a group of people live without talking about how they spend money or how they make money.

It used to be a great thing to talk to young people about money and allow them understands how money is made. Today in every home the leaders talk about money but the unfortunate thing is that some people will grow up leaning the wrong lessons about money and only very few will learn the right lessons about money. The reason we have a society where people in government mismanage money is because some of them grew up in homes where they learnt the wrong lessons about money. Imagine the mindset of a young man or woman whose father or mother is a spendthrift! What do you expect from that person when you are discussing money or when money gets into their hands? Many homes unknowingly thought their children how to spend and to wait for another money to come if it ever comes from someone else who seems to have the right to be blessed and be rich.

There are only a few homes where the parents ‘teach and show’ their children what it means to have money and to multiply money. We have so many things that have gone wrong in our financial system because we already have a defective financial culture. A few examples will include:

1.) A lot of people think everybody cannot be an entrepreneur because they are asking who will be the co-workers? Before the industrialization age was everybody not an entrepreneur? You either owned a farm or something else that produced what other people needed and you were simply paid for your service rather than being paid to slave out for someone else. If you didn’t own any tangible substance for exchange you still were not slaving out for someone else because you were going to negotiate with someone who wanted to engage your time for that day and you could go somewhere else the following day.

2.) The belief that money must be spent is killing the society because people make money and the first thing they are looking at is what to spend the money on and not what to invest the money in. we are beginning to have a poor investment culture in the mist of hundreds of ‘seemingly worthwhile’ ventures. What this does is that the majority of the society that spends will keep sending money into the hands of a few who do not think about spending a lone. At the end of the day those few will be controlling the society because they are custodians of more than 80 percent of the society’s wealth.

3.) More than 80 percent of the society is thinking about where to get (looking for job) rather than thinking about what to create. As much as it is not wrong to think about where to work, it is important to note that you can work for someone and still be your own boss by creating leverages where you find yourself. There are people who see challenges everyday and all they do is lament because of a poor financial mindset. In a system where the financial culture is strong the people will always think about leveraging on challenges to create a financial future for the people.

4.) So long as we have people who want to live in houses they cannot afford and drive cars that they cannot afford the financial culture of the society will still be weak. I have seen people who will in houses where their annual rent is enough to build a house for them at their level. There are people who do not own houses but drive cars that can build a house for them. There are people whose wardrobes can start the companies they have been craving to start. I know about bus conductors whose chains can register a company and make them entrepreneurs. All these things get me crazy because I see people who keep trying to impress others that are not paying attention to them!

5.) Only a few people can explain how the money they make leaves their hands. This is about the worst thing in our financial culture. People know when money comes but do not know when it finally exits. The reason they know when the money comes but do not know when it finally leaves is because they are always thinking spending rather than thinking multiplying. This is why they will buy something before realizing it will cost them more money now that they have it. They have to spend more than the cost price of the goods bought trying to maintain it.

6.) Most of these people who know next to nothing about money and just think about how to spend rather than how to multiply are the people who move into the government of our countries. We have spendthrifts and a host of others who do not have a financial vision in government and you expect that nations will prosper.

7.) The financial culture and only be built when we begin with a conscious observation of how we spend and pay attention to little things like how much we spend in a day and why we spent that amount in a day.

To build a strong financial culture some of the questions we need to start asking and answering include:

1.) Is there a way I could have spent less to achieve more result?
2.) Is it wise to have cut cost and have inferior products that will warrant losing more money at the end of the day?
3.) How much were we earning and how much are we earning?
4.) What’s the difference in the earning today and what justifies the difference?
5.) Do I have an improved skill to earn more or will my experience earn more?
6.) How much of my earnings are my multiplying?
7.) Do I always buy things I will soon forget about or things I can see for a long time?
8.) Why do I always get broke?
9.) What else can I put money into that will bring more money WHEN I need it?
10.) Do I really have a banking culture or I just take money to the bank?
11.) Do I have a rapport with my bankers or I just talk to them when I go over the counter to drop some cash.

With all these questions we can begin to build a strong financial culture and put things right in our society. Don’t just earn money! Multiply money!