Poverty of the Mind

Written By Salau Temitayo

Read and Learn

When we talk about poverty, the first thing that comes to people mind is the picture of somebody with hardly any money to survive in this tough world and with no hope of assistance coming and of course this kind of poverty leads to hunger, sickness and eventually death.

That is not our focus in this article, what we want to look at is another dimension of poverty, which often goes under the radar by a lot of us, which is poverty of the mind.

Do you know today, we have many people in the world, especially in Nigeria who are mentally impoverished, you speak to some bright faces in Nigeria and when they open their mouth, the words coming forth makes you want to run for cover. I am sure some of you know what I mean. Oh boy! Majority of the youths in Nigeria today falls into such mentally impoverished classification, what some youths understand today does not go pass the boundary of ; football, fashion, music, latest movies, pornography and internet fraud, when you put them on a mental scale from zero to ten, they actually fall on minus zero level, Ah! What has gone wrong?

There are a whole lot of factors responsible for this, but let us look at some very few reasons;

(a)   No Jobs; Right in school, you are already aware that there is no job waiting for you when you graduate and the possibility of you practicing your mode of study is about a maximum of ten percent, that alone make thousands of youth loose interests in academics or anything that enriches their mental capacity.

(b)  Zero Opportunities; no opportunities to progress as leaders in the nation, what we have instead is an 82 years old man been made a non-career ambassador in Nigeria, when will the youths ever get a chance at the helm of affairs.

(c)   Bad Western Culture; Many youths have imbibed the bad western culture; one of the problem with Nigerians is that when we copy, we copy both the good and bad together. Some of our ladies want to be the next Karshidans, so all they do is to slay(dress like prostitutes) and upload their pictures on social media, while our guys are not left out as they strive to be the next Drake, so they do all they can to get money at all costs. None of these groups are interested in enriching their minds anymore.

(d)  Poor Educational System; it is a fact that education is not a top priority of the Nigerian government, henceforth our teachers are not well paid or well motivated to teach(it is mostly said their reward is in heaven), what some of this teachers do is to give students numerous assignments which will take you ages to complete, while using that spare time to run their own business outside the academic sphere so as to cater for their family, also we have very old and worn out infrastructures in place, coupled with erratic power supply, just to mention a few, how do students assimilate in such strenuous environment?.

(e)   Useless Leadership; many of Nigerian political leaders are opportunists, there are leaders who only see the short term goals, you may ask what is this short term goal? It is pocket enrichment program, when the youths look for motivation up there (Leaders), all they see is leadership filled with corruption and nepotism and of course they (youths) follow suit.

Having written these, still I maintain that everybody is responsible for their actions, for there is never enough reasons for you reading this article to be useless, bad or to be a poverty mindset kind of person.

What Are the Solutions?

It is no good talking about a problem, if you are not ready to proffer solutions to such problems.

(1)  If there are no more white collar jobs available, then you create a job for yourself, don’t wait for things to come into place, put things in place for yourself, starting small is no offence, in other words accept that ridiculously low pay, am tired of seeing graduates stay at home after rejecting series of offers because they feel the pay is meager, even thou the pay is small at least you don’t sit at home idle anymore.

(2)  Create opportunities for yourself, wherever you find yourself, look for something valuable to do and go ahead and do it(make impact), even if there will be no immediate benefits, work hard, be indispensable wherever you are, be full of integrity and very soon there will be room for you at the top(mind you there are a lot of free spaces waiting for you at the top, while the ground is overcrowded) 

(3)  Stop trying to be what you are not, to the ladies, stop trying to be slay mama who is busy looking for a sugar daddy (there is no excuse in this world for voluntary prostitution, you are just a lazy bone that’s all), to the guys stop trying to be the next big boy in town at all costs, make a purpose out of your life and you will end up becoming very big.

(4)  Youths listen, there is no excuse for poor educational system anymore, we now have access to the internet to download various books and materials free and almost everyone has at least somebody in their neighborhood with a generator set, where they can at least charge their phones and lamps, we even have solar power banks now.

(5)  Don’t allow the bad leadership to influence you anymore, make sure you work well enough, sooner than you think, there will be a vacuum for you to fill in government, then you will have the opportunity to make things much better than before, but first get ready.

In conclusion, there is no excuse for anyone, winners don’t give excuses, and they accept realities of life and move on with it. Despite all these challenges earlier listed which makes it easy to have a very impoverished mindset, we really have no excuses to stay down (when life pushes you to the ground, don’t stay down)

 Come on, let’s make a positive difference with our lives, and put your motivation on God and making a difference to humanity.

Always feel free to share this article on whatever platform, also feel free to post your comments; I am always ready to learn from you and eager to hear from you, as we work together to make the world a better place for everyone of us(irrespective of where you come from)

Be a positive change agent wherever you find yourself.

God bless every one of us.