Nigerians: A People In Undue Haste
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- Category: Bobby Udoh
- Published on Friday, 02 September 2011 06:01
- Written by Bobby Udoh
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“There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honors too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.” Jean de la Bruyere
Evidence is available everywhere you look – in our schools, the workplace, on our roads, in government policies initiation and implementation, in how we conduct our businesses & execute government contracts and even sermons from places of worship encourage this culture.
While there could be legitimate reasons like the fact that our development has been hindered for too long and we urgently need to catch up with the rest of the world, we see quite frequently the consequences of being in haste and this includes the actions of the best of our leaders.
Our effort to build a develop Nigeria will remain a myriad if we don’t acknowledge this problem and take concrete steps to address it in our lives, our community, workplace and in all areas of our influence.
Why is being in haste bad?
Poor Decision Making: A key reason why we Nigerians make poor decisions in our families, workplace, in business and even in governance is because we take many decisions under immense pressure caused by our haste.
Mistakes & Misses crucial points: A result of poor decision making is mistakes and the missing of crucial issues that needs to be factored in when making decisions. The famous French Actor and Playwright Moliere once said “Unreasonable haste is the direct road to error.”
Poor Implementation: With undue haste, we not only make mistakes and take poor decisions, we achieve poor implementation. Not having sufficient time to think the consequences of our thoughts, words and actions, we regularly find ourselves less prepared to deal with problems that arise in the implementation stage. These unplanned incidentals affect the quality of our implementation and that applies to decisions in our personal lives, family and workplace or business. As we are poorly implementing, so are our leaders in government
Encourages Wastage: There is a famous proverb that says ‘Haste makes Waste’ and this so true about we Nigerians. Because we in an undue haste, we waste time, money and energy trying to make up for lost time or to achieve our desire for swift result. Before we attack government for wastage we must also look at the wastage in our own lives because we cannot expect to see change in government when we exhibit the same acts as those in power. Haste also encourages corruption and the breaking of the law
Increases Cost: An international flight ticket that would cost N100,000 when booked well in advance can cost over N300,000 when booked in a haste. This is just one example and we all have personal stories of goods, services, building projects, etc., that cost us a lot more when we acted in a hurry. This is same with several government programmes.
How to avoid Haste:
Planning: This is the main thing we Nigerians must inculcate into our culture. As a people (ordinary citizens and those in government), we do little or no planning and that is because we believe money can get us whatever we need or it can get us out of trouble. But money alone can never deliver the best results because that comes through sufficient planning & implementation. We have to become a people that apply sufficient planning to the little issues (like travel time to our meetings or events) and to the big issues (like building a house or launching a business).
With adequate planning, we can take better decisions and carry out better implementations as parents, community members, employers/employees and even government officials.
Time Management: Along with adequate planning, we have to also imbibe the culture of managing our time better. This means, we become strict with the time allocated to undertake an action in order for us not to find ourselves in an undue haste. A detailed and well implemented planning will encourage effective time management.
Hopefully, this is put an end to the culture of the ‘Nigerian Time’ because we would now appreciate the need to allocate sufficient time to arrive at meetings or events and to conclude such activities on schedule. Besides improving the quality of such activities (good planning and time management improves performance), this will also eliminate a significant number of accidents and road rage on our roads.
Long Term Thinking: This is crucial to dealing with our haste. As a people, we rarely think long term because of our love for short & medium term results. But to build something that would last for many generations, it will first require a long term mindset. This is because such projects require sufficient time for planning and for implementation.
It is time we start thinking how our thoughts, words and actions will affect not only our current generations but the generations to come. We must remember that it is our responsibility to make our tomorrow (which will be their today) better than our today. This is not a role left for government but to every citizen of Nigeria.
In summary, when we become a people with less haste, we will reduce our aggressiveness, argumentativeness, self-centred living, etc. This and many more are the qualities of a person in an undue haste.
Some will argue that what we require to build a developed Nigeria is a credible leader in Aso Rock and the various Government Houses. I will continue to argue that Nigeria will remain underdeveloped if we the citizens will not identify those traits that have held us captive and first change them in our lives, before modelling the change in our circle of influence. It is these individual initiatives that will build a momentum that will eventually touch all spheres of our nation, including our political leadership.
Time to change is now in order for us to change Nigeria.
Bobby Udoh is a nation-building evangelist, passionate blogger, impact public speaker, trainer and change agent, who seek to equip Nigerians with the vision, direction, focus and tools to become nation-builders. Read more articles on his weekly blog – http://nationarise.wordpress.com/
