𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞
We lost something and is 500 years after we are still searching for it! The black race lost their self-confidence. To date, the structures of slavery and colonialism are still running our lives even though there is a lot of pretension towards independence and freedom.
Nigerians today lack intellectual confidence, spiritual confidence, physical confidence, socio-political confidence, economic confidence, and of course the confidence of personality, when people or a community is set to evolve they become blessed with self-confidence. The basis of every great action is the belief in oneself and not just the absence of fear, we are talking about the ability of the individual to put fear in perspective.
T
oday Nigeria suffers because we have leaders who don’t believe in themselves and of course citizens who also don’t believe in themselves. If the next generation will make anything of themselves and this country they must be confident in themselves.
Confidence doesn’t just come by itself it is something that springs from the knowledge of history, the love of tradition, and a strong belief in one’s creative ability, something which I can’t find anywhere these days amidst us. In our style there is no confidence, in governance there is no confidence, in education no confidence, in religion no confidence Nigerians have been reduced to a little bit of everything and anything!
If you understand how the world works you will realize that everything is stacked against us as individuals and as a country. The greatest danger of lack of self-confidence is that people without confidence don’t build they always rely on what others have built or what others will build for them. It is a lack of confidence that makes us to rely on foreign and imported food, cars, clothes, and the most basic things of life, even the way we govern ourselves is imported! Mentally, spiritually, physically, and socially no self-reliance!
I am not against foreign ideas, knowledge is the ability to put things together for the individual and common good however you may shop for ideas all over the world but the execution must be yours, not theirs! When you put African leaders side by side with other countries of the world you will observe that they are less purposeful, creative, and confident.
It is not possible you can’t have self-confidence and without self-reliance! Nigeria and Africa at large are still begging for food, recognition, representation, and provision from the rest of the world because we lack self-confidence.
Today there is so much cynicism, pessimism, and regular feelings of impossibility that things will never get better, this in itself is a strong catalyst for lack of self-development, it resides heavily in us! How soon that we forget that fortune only favors the bold! Self-confidence is very essential because things don’t change until we take responsibility for it.
Confident nations ask themselves how do we compete with USA, CHINA, Germany, and Others but less confident nations ask how do we develop? The confident individual asks how do I leave a legacy behind but the less confident man asks how do I survive? A man or a system is confident when they possess the ability to put themselves above the fight mentally and strategically.
Those who care to listen have always said it mindset is one of the foremost issues confronting Nigeria but are we ready to live up to it!
Not confidence in ambition, arrogance, greed, self-aggrandizement. Grandstanding we already have too much of it, what we need is the confidence of vision, original ideas, and Indigenous inspiration, the drive to be part of something bigger than us.
How can everything about us and our way of life be dependent on a foreign approach? No! it won’t stand.
Hon. Adeyemi Abidemi Adebola