ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU

    It has been a popular saying over the years to “ask not what your country can do for you”. If we come to think of it, what really can Nigeria do for you? Provide you with electricity, good roads, pipe-borne water, and maximally, a good job with adequate security. The golden question is, I sour own Nigeria doing these for us? Maybe the nation’s failure to provide all of these for her citizens is owed to bad leadership, over-population or what have you, I really will not get into. Whatever the reason, it is happening and that is what matters.
    The truth that I owe you, is that our nation is fast going under the control of capitalists. The golden question here is, who are capitalists? The quickest response is, capitalists are people who have much of their money and interests tied to business concerns. People like Dangote, Otedola, Adenuga, Ovia, Elumelu etc. They now control the economy from communication to oil and gas to banking and recently to power. Somebody will say it is unfair to have all the nation’s wealth being controlled by a few business people, what I say is, these people never asked what their country can do for them. Instead, they asked, how can my country serve me?
    Every morning you wake up, ask yourself, how can I make my country serve me? When you have a regular job, you are called a ‘civil servant’ meaning you serve government. If you are employed in a private firm, your entire life’s service is spent in enriching the owner of the company, so you are some sort of servant too. But, to be really free, to be really a leader, to be really successful, you must find a way of making the nation serve you. Today, there is no disputing the fact that Nigeria is serving Dangote and his likes because they control virtually everything that holds the base of the Nigerian economy.
    Somebody will ask, can every Nigerian be this free? Can the nation serve all of us? The quickest and most appropriate answer is NO. Just like a billboard inscription in my home town once read, “Only the deep can call to the deep”. Only those who can find it in their hearts to forge a path for themselves can truly make the nation serve them. My expectations thus are that only a few people reading this text will locate that inward desire in them to be a leader of people and make the nation, our nation serve them.
    Zig Ziglar once said, “Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have”.If most employees will be sincere, the jobs they are at does not afford them the full utilization of their abilities. In a government job, you are either being over-paid and under-utilized or under-paid and over-utilized. In either way, the joy of satisfaction that comes from fully expressing one’s abilities is absent. This is not the definition of success, this is the definition of a cage.
JOB SECURITY Vs. FINANCIAL FREEDOM
    What most job seekers really look for is job security. In this case, a paycheck is guaranteed at the end of the month. What capitalists, people whose aim is to have the nation serve them, look for is financial freedom. In this case, the opportunity to expand and contract their financial power at will, I mean their ability to use money as they wish without salary constraints. They can afford to vary what they do with money based on the income they are able to bring in by the effective and maximum utilization of their abilities. Their worth is not restricted to how much the employer pays them, it is boundless because they determine how much comes in by themselves.
    It is why Otedola can afford to buy a yacht and his top employees can not, the same reason why Dangote can afford to ride the best of cars running to millions of dollars and the highest paid of bank executives dare not do whatever is beyond their salary except they go into debt. It is the same reason why all these capitalists can afford to dabble into politics and sponsor a candidate. It is because they control their income, their success is a factor of their utilization of their abilities backed by God’s support and not dependence on what their nation can do for them.
    My message is simple and straight-to-the-point. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do with your abilities that will make you a force to reckon with and make your nation serve you. Get away from the cage of seeking job security and seek financial freedom, invest, do business, sell, just make sure you are about to make the nation serve you.
BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill    2. Think Big - Ben Carson