THE LEADERSHIP WE NEED... By Dotun GEORGE

Being an effective leaders begins with you,  being self aware, becoming conscious of life and the environment . Being aware of the impact you have on others. Knowing what really matters to you and what drives you . Behaving in alignment with your core purpose and values. Expressing yourself in an authentic way.

To the emerging leaders, great leaders throughout ages and history possessed some traits that actually distinguished them from the packs and ours is not going to be an exception except we follow through the created ancient landmarks.


1. Learning, growing and development.
Creative, innovative and charismatic leaders love learning, in the process of learning, they grow and the growing culminated to their development. Invariably they do and pass the same to their followers.

2. Appreciate and value diversity.
Human beings across the globe are created differently and if you are going to lead well and impact the people, you must recognize the diversities in the human formation and disposition. Appreciating and placing value on diversity will help any leader in any setting to achieve the peak performance and leave indelible impact behind.

3. Provide service to others without creating dependency and entitlements.
Leadership in Africa and in my country is centered around dependency. Helping people and turning them to slaves, the next generations of leaders must avoid that pitfall. Creating dependency and sense of entitlements have prevented our institutions, organization and society at large from braking the cycle of mediocrity and laziness.


4. Encourage and empower others.
Only few individuals who ascend the position of a leader actually understand this concept. If they do, our society and institutions would have been better than What we have at hand. We need now team of encouragers in leadership and those who empower people to do what is in their minds to and they are capable of doing but have no means and capacity to do it.

After we are able to get a team of encouragers, we need also influencers. According to the leadership expert, J. Maxwell, the apex function of leadership in the 21st century is INFLUENCE.
Today's success hinges on the ability to INFLUENCE people to achieve common goals and purposes. INFLUENCERS are the best leaders in the world history, then we must get it right that, influencing positively to do the right things is the best way to go.


The power to influence is PERSONAL. We must all decide today as parents to influence our children and ward positively, as teachers let us influence every pupils and students who will ever sit under our teaching and coaching. As preachers, you must influence your congregations positively to be example of what you teach and pass to them. As political actors,  migrate from being an actor to player and influencers, you will influence so much if you refuse to take that bribe, falsified your age, and your academic qualifications, if you refuse to inflate the contract, if you refuse and say no to padding of budget, if you refuse to sleep around with your daughters mates because you have the money to throw around. As a media player or personnel, you will influence well and accurately if stop circulating falsehood and unconfirmed stories, stop all unnecessary propaganda. Information is the baseline for any transformed life and society, when you feed the people with right and accurate information, you serve well. The lists are endless, we can all make this world better than we met it.

RELIGION; ITS WOES AND ITS WEAKNESS.  By Dotun George

From my experience and my dealings with people, most especially my students and their curiousity in knowing my believe system. Sometime they asked me which religion do I practice and in my characteristic manner, I will tell them none. One young lady walked up to me one day and said to me, I have observed you for years and how you talked really convinced me that you don’t believe in anything and in any religion.
My write up is not to discredit or rubbish any religion but to help people think and stop all the nonsense going on in our clime and the world today.

The greatest threat to the future of the world is religion. Nuclear weapons, terrorism, SARS, shifting government, military coups, and AIDS are simply tools used by religion. More wars have been fought in the name of religion than any other influence. Millions have died over the past 2000 years under the destructive hand of religious zeal. Misplaced and misguided religious passion has produced such historical scars as the Crusaders, the Inquisition, ethnic cleansing, and the horror of the Holocaust.

Why is religion so power and controlling? Why is it more powerful than politics, military arms and scientific advancement? Because religion is not just a social, cultural, political, or ideological, instead it finds its power in the personal chambers of the soul of the individual who embrace it. Within the soul we discover the source of the private motivation that forms perceptions and behavior. Man is more willing to die for the sake of his religion than for any political, social, or ideological reason.

Religion is as old as mankind, finding its roots in the private recesses of the human spirit. Every culture, no matter how old or far removed, has developed some form of religious practice that attempts to satisfy an elusive vacuum in the pit of the human soul crying out for reason, purpose and significance. For mankind, life on planet has been nothing more than a long tedious march down the road of time, with each new generation searching for something they cannot define. The long chains of civilizations have undeniable imprints on the pages of history – evidences for our generation that the search continues. From the secrets etched on the walls of ancient caves to the grand archaeological monuments to the remnants of the great empires, man marches on seeking to find himself and make sense of his world. Man travels through this world have produced a tapestry of religion practices and ideologies that only serve to create more problems than they solve.

A brief look at our modern, sophisticated, technocratic, cyberspace age world of today can be the source of fear, depression, discouragement, insecurity and uncertainty. From the archaic world of the cave men and bush hunters through the progressive succession of the agrarian cultures to the advent of the industrial revolution leading to the scientific age of post-modernism and the computer age, we are still on better than nor different from our ancestors of old. Why? Because we fail to adopt the greatest ideal and fundamental that sustain human existence, which is love.

Nigerians are the people who have misguided passion and conviction when it comes to religion, most cases we wasted our energy on the altar of religion in order to score cheap political or ethnic point, which invariably draw us backward and retrogressively prevented us to achieve a better society built on love, social justice and equity.
God did not start any religion and He is not going to start anyone tomorrow, because it was never His ideal and idea. The whole issue of religion is man’s idea to regain what he lost or to return to God he was disconnected from. My appeal  goes to those religious extremist who perpetuated evil, wickedness and harvoc in the name of religion and doing service to God, that, it is time to embrace the greatest gift in human history which is love.

My maternal grandparents are muslim, they love me and my siblings with passion and we never relate on religion anytime or anyway. My paternal grandparents are traditionalist, before my paternal grandmother became a Christian and to many, it was an accident. To this wonderful people, we never had issue base on religion.
What surprised me most of the time is how we desecrate our humanity in the name of religion and destroy our human dignity in the name of doing service to one God, who never approved or compelled us to do the things we do. Can we have a rethink today. I will never be offended because someone beside me decided to worship and adore Allah or Mohammed, neither we I be offended because another decided to follow Jesus.
Let us stop all the nonsense going on in the name of religion and accept each other like brothers and sisters. The only cure for the degenerated society and dying world is “God” and  “love”. Love for God and love for humanity will save us unnecessary calamity.

NIGERIA ZUCKERBERG WILL ARISE... By Dotun GEORGE

Zuckerberg started out as an ordinary young man—he had shoes, clothes and everything call riches and wealth  but those were not his true wealth—ideas were his main currency. A young man with ideas in Nigeria is as good as dead in a country where policymakers themselves, despite decades of speeches claiming the contrary, care very little for young people or any ideas that don’t involve their own fortunes.

Speaking of our members of state and federal assemblies who should be creating the laws which facilitate everything from business to our most basic comfort—reports about their huge salaries and entitlements have once again surfaced. If every one of them relinquished just 10% of their state sponsored income, Nigeria might afford to recruit graduates into the police system, making them detectives or agents entrusted with special, more sophisticated duties than the very many unqualified individuals wielding guns.

Gradually, the later could be weeded out of the system. We can’t afford to keep employing mediocre people, be it in public office or any related government service. What’ll happen to those who’ll be rendered irrelevant by the changing times is the crux of our inability to reform. Politicians are afraid of “new blood” because of its game-changing potential. If from a rent-seeking society we progress to a productive society, virtually half of our business and political elite would disappear. But “every dog has its day”: it is the very nature of the universe to have a season for everything; so Nigeria’s Zuckerbergs, etc. will undoubtedly rise no matter what is done to stop them.

CHANGING THE MOULD.. By Dotun GEORGE

The urgency of now....


It is only when farming truly becomes mechanized and a profession that wealth would be found in it, it is then we begin to talk about serious economy . In the developed societies, farmers are wealthy as everybody depends on their production for existence. Nigerians should not be an exception. Above all, they are employers of labour besides wealth-creators.

This special position keeps farmers kilometers or miles away from poverty. The lackadaisical attitude of Nigerians and we the youths towards embracing farming as a profession is a “borrowed–culture” from the Government, it has not avail us in any way . Instead, youths look for white collar-jobs which are unavailable. Idleness and restiveness among our youths should be checked through agriculture.

A situation where there are more hotels, beer parlours, pool betting centres, casinos, native wine drinking joints and film centres than libraries, factories, palm and banana plantation and farm settlements have shown the direction of the country in few years time, and that is why Nigeria is still poor and continue to be poor until there is paradigm shift . Worse still, the rate at which Nigerian youths have turned into mobile sales dancers for herbal drug sellers because of unemployment is alarming. The rate of fraud and prostitution is alarming because of poverty. This is a disheartening development and wrong type of empowerment.
Every Nigerian should always remember that his chickens are not safe when his neighbours are hungry. It requires wisdom to understand wisdom and the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. Quo Vadis (Where are You Going) Nigeria?
We can salvage this country, we have all that it takes to turn the tide, it is time to break the mould and re write the ugly story of this once upon a time giant of Africa.

The time of redemption of this country is approaching provided we can begin to do the needful at the leadership level and more than never before at the followership level. The people who are ready and determined can surmount any mountain.

FOUNDATION FOR DEVELOPMENT

Nigeria and Nigerians need plans for prosperity and national development. There is no nation that prospers and develops without the input of government and the citizenry.
People must let government know what kind of Nigeria they wish to live in, now and in the future, and government must listen to the yearnings of the people, provided they are worthwhile and progressive.
Government on its own part must let the people know how it plans to overcome the deep and pervasive obstacles to progress that the government and the people have identified and role all Nigerians must play in pursuit of the collective vision.

To create a prosperous nation, we need to know the kind of nation we desire to build, and the direction we are going. What is the vision for Nigeria? What kind of Nigeria do we want for ourselves, for our children, and for the rest of us. These questions were our starting point in creating the plan for prosperity. Unfortunately, we are not asking and nobody is providing an answer.

Our government at all levels must identify what Nigeria people want for the future, what problems they face and what can be done to overcome them.
We cannot build a virile and prosperous nation without recognizing core values and the importance of respect for elders, honesty, and accountability, cooperation, industry, discipline, self-confidence, community building and moral courage.



We need a new breed of citizens who values hardwork, self-actualization rather than dependency and who realizes that one cannot have something for nothing.
We must begin at all levels to create a Nigeria that Nigerians can be proud to belong to and grateful to inhabit, a Nigeria that promote self-reliance, entrepreneurship, innovation, rewards hardwork, protects its people and their property, and offers its children better prospects than those they may be tempted to seek in Europe or United States.

All citizens, regardless of gender, race, religion, or politics, should feel that they have a stake in Nigeria future and that their loyalty and diligence will be rewarded. Except we start and begin our journey to nationhood will this postulations, we cannot emerge a prosperous and great nation.