THE DILEMMA OF WORKING HARD VERSUS SMART WORK IN THE TYPICAL NIGERIAN ENVIRON

Based on the negligence and greed in the political and financial institutions of the nation, its immediate environment exposure is at a retrogressive state. This has imprinted some wrong notions in the thinking of its common citizenry; as a result, our survival instinct is based on hardship.

In a situation where an individual does a laborer or menial job in which physical strength is exerted in a non-conducive environment and his gain is minute but steady, that individual is regarded as a hard working individual in the typical Nigerian setting. This logic was basically for the slavery era, where the blacks input is at its maximum and gain at its minimum giving the task master (white man) an exponential output, where by their input is minimum. We have a slogan in pidgin “monkey they work baboon they chop”.

As time will have it, change started coming in and few Nigerians with bright minds started getting opportunities and began to work in cooperate organizations, where their input has to do with what they have to offer in terms of brain work/expertise, giving ideas that will propagate the company’s vision and productivity hence, their working environment became conducive and gain at a rather higher side compared to what the laborer earns. Now for an individual in this class if he says he is tired after work at his local community, eyebrows will be raised as comments like” what did you even do at work? You that have been under the air conditioning system all day”. Then a Yoruba slogan “Ole!” meaning lazy is attributed to him.

In actual fact the man doing the brain work is the smart worker and unknown to them burns more calories as brain work saps the human energy faster. Ignorance as it is said; is a disease and it has been eating up many Nigerians for quite some time now. For every disease that science has identified there is always a hypothesis that births a theory that leads to an eradication of such disease. The Nigerian government is aware of this fact and do know the right thing to do, but if every citizen has the opportunity to be as enlightened as those in power, then the nation will be a better place and resources will go round, looting and every form of corruption by any individual in power will be answerable according to the supposed law of conduct governing the nation.

Nigeria needs more smart workers and it’s time for the smart ones to unite and act for the liberation of their fellow Nigerians to the smart era.