AMBITION IS PRICELESS

AMBITION IS PRICELESS

When I interact with some young men of my age and status, I shudder. it baffles me what comes to the recess of my mind. I just think there are many madmen only few roam around the street. Most of them waltz through life without an ambition. Without a specific, glaring goal in the heart. They have become broken and damaged because their plans fell through and didn't meet fulfilment. It is quite easy to make a caricature of these persons whose dreams and ambitions have been altered by the vicissitude of life and the 'vulturistic' approach of those at the corridors of power and at the helm of affairs of this nation who have truncated their dreams by shortchanging them in many ways than one.

Some have looted all the funds that should have been put back into this country as scholarship programmes and schemes. The Government of Nigeria have nothing in store for the youth. This can be substantiated with emphasis on my life as a Nigerian youth. I do not generalize. I am a product of this decrepit system, I speak with emphasis on my many experiences as a young man who have been into the mess firsthand and is still being fucked over by it.
Repeatedly.

I left the University some good seven or more years ago.
The utopia on the inside of our head was not translucent. Most of us thought that at the expiration and completion of our programme we would be given top notch jobs as ambassadors of the federal republic or jobs with the immigrations etc. We were not told that it was survival of the fittest? We were not told in lucid terms that we only waste precious time reading up nonsense that wouldn't effect and affect our life on the long run? The curriculum stays obsolete and like a ritual we all go through it without amendment. The lecturers stay vindictive and parasitic venoms feasting at the human cadaver whose crime was just to widen their horizon. But some of us had ambitions in our heart not even the Nigerian context could break. Tenaciously strong. People like me.

Ambitions that stays like that candle in the wind.
Fickle. fluctuating. Unstable. Fleeting. Easily snuffed out

Some of us learnt almost too late that the government of the day have nothing in stock for her citizen in all ramifications. The earlier the better. I realised that if I waited for support from people, from relatives. From the sky god. I would not amount to any good.

I taught English language as a subject in a local school in Isolo area of Lagos for months where I was paid paltry sum of ten thousand naira. It was such a herculean job. I was always tired and spent and many nights I cried with my Mother always consoling me. "It will be better for you" she had said one fateful day and i can swear I believed her. I told myself, "there is more to life than this." ---You are bigger than this one. That was the drive that eventually got me speaking to a reputable interior design firm in Lagos. Eventually, I got that job as an assistant project manager. That premeditated move was a product of good ambition. I wanted a better tomorrow and none could give it to me except me.

I have long left that design firm and have moved on to a better means of livelihood but the fact remains that ambition is priceless. It is the drive on the inside to succeed. To surpass your equal. To amount to good and relevance at all cost.
How can these people stay unambitious? What is happening to the present day youths? Why do we have the brains of a mushroom? What happened to people thinking about their lives and plotting the graph to changing all the codes to their favour.?

I've only one fear in this life. The fear of dying a poor, old and broke man with back problems sitting in a wheel chair before my demise. I fear poverty like an albatross.
Owning and having nothing. stricken with deep wants. Craving attention and care. craving all of the best things of life. wanting, yearning, needing and having nothing.
I fear not having a dime saved somewhere for the rainy day. Despairing. Dejected. Beaten emotionally.
Like the situation that transpired when my mother was in the hospital before her eventual death. I grovelled at the feet of people begging and needing assistance. Pecuniary assistance. I practically knelt on the floor for one of my 'stupid' uncles. I will never kneel to anyone in my life again. That is the motivation. That is what I am talking about this morning.

I ponder deeply on that musician , (Peter Okoye's) line when he said he was allergic to poverty. When you have nothing, you smell bad. You begin to smell like a rotten fish. Poverty comes with a type of odour. suffocating. nauseating. Demeaning.
People look at you with their nose in the air.
You become "disgustingly" attractive. No one accords you that respect and importance. Put an ambition to your life and try to surmount all the odds that life puts on your way. Walk the talk. Believe in what you can do for yourself. God is pretty much very busy at the moment to save anybody. Save yourself from disgrace, penury and shame.

I am always afraid these days as I grow older and wiser. Afraid of being nothing. Having nothing. occupying space like matter. Being insignificant. A faceless dot.
I am afraid of who I am right now. I am not even a complete nobody as it stands. But when I see my mates elsewhere achieving and breaking up fallow grounds. I weep. Why shouldn't I weep at my slow pace to relevance and prominence?

And there must be somebody reading this piece and so comfortable with the average life of nothing. No drive to succeed. No motivation. If you cannot be motivated by affluence and the material grandeur you see around. How about being motivated by hunger? Do you know being hungry is a motivation? You must eat then you must go and work brother.

How can you not think about tomorrow, I asked myself for the umpteenth time. Onyeka?----The rich and very affluent men in Nigeria are asleep at this moment. Can you afford to sleep for 5hours? Why? What have you achieved to give yourself that luxury?Are you not mad?

I am awake.
My head is burning. my embers hurt with putrid depression. I am nothing but not for long. I am thinking about my nothingness.I am also grateful to God for the people who have helped me thus far.

Ambition is priceless.
Put a motivation into your life.
Strive to be different. Achieve.
You are only recognized when you are successful. Nobody associates with a broke ass.