It's Monday evening in the quiet city of Abuja. I am rushing home after what looks like a busy day at work. The driver greets me, and tells me the fare. His face is set at angle ninety. He looks like someone to whom laughter is as costly as the fuel in his car. I don't argue. The heavens are grumbling with rain. Delay would be dangerous.
Along the road are flowers of people, and also shrubs, planted by the El-Rufai's FCT administration. There seems to have been no change in the look of the city centre since El-Rufai left.
Adorning the road side are fierce-looking, business-seeking, Jerry-Can-wielding, independent fuel marketers also known as black marketers. They spread out like electric poles, wielding gallons of hope. In front of each of them is their liquid gold with small hoses beside, with which they assist any car that might patronize their merchandise.
I am amused, everything happens in Nigeria. But this evening, my plight is not Nigeria. I am bothered because I am the one involved. How much I talk and how little I do. How much solutions are in my head and how little I bring forth. I want to fall down and wail briefly but I don't. There are goals our Organization can reach that it has not yet attained, an International Conference later in the year, the second edition of our magazine, books in my head that have not been written, the companies in my head that have not been incorporated, the people I am yet to help, our continent that is in need, out planet that is yet in peril. I cannot repair all these things, I agree, but I will have to fulfill purpose.
Lately, there's been lots of work on my table. From books to read to unfinished writing works, from letters to proposals and sundry office assignments. Sometimes it's difficult to stitch it all together. But when we were small, we used to build castles in the air, how to become a citizen of the world, live a little in America, a little in Germany, charge your phone in France, shop in Dubai, wield a passport, sagging with the weight of visa stamps. But growing up has numbed some of these imaginations, both the realistic ones and the unrealistic ones. I am waking them up.
It is true that I have hit some milestones but I find out, the difference between where I am and where I could have been is action, not talk. Even though talk, good, quality, polished talk has its place but the most positive of actions can supersede the most elegant words. Sometimes, we love people but we never say anything to them, we never show it. You want to get a job, yet you fold your hands and wait for the job to just fall. What differentiates the talker from the doer is what the doer does that the talker muses about. With little time, the difference becomes like 7up and coke, shining for the eyes to see.
Later, I wipe my frustration over a plate of Yam and beans prepared with some Orishirishi. This is how we roll. At least, man must wack to see clearly. In a few minutes, the food is working. I am a prophet. I get energy to see things more broadly. I become assured, I am not alone in this. No action, talk only group of people. We are many in Nigeria. Our minds are filled with possibilities that are shut out by realities. Our electricity supply is not constant, because we talk and don't take action, we're sandwiched in a fuel subsidy quagmire but we talk and do nothing.
This is why I am often hard on myself, because what goes around, comes around. This thing seems to be affecting me. For a split moment, I want to run away. I remember, the immigrant crises in the West. I calm myself down. I dey kampe. I open a software application on my laptop, Personal Brain, I begin to plan, strategize, restructure ways of bringing in more productivity and less activity.
I finish and I think about my friends, wonderful people on Facebook, who know all the solutions for Nigeria's problems but can't fix their small enclaves, who wear 'my money grows like grass' but know that the grass has long dried up. I remember those on twitter - who throw tantrums, with stone, weighing 140 characters, at the slightest provocation - living in glittering glass tombs, pretending that talk will solve all our problems. I also remember our President, who said he will make one naira equal to one dollar, who promised to stabilize oil price. Now he said we should have patience. But patience has just left. No action Talk only. Then, I wish myself and everyone well, Ogidichamma, Igobeta.
I repent. I quit the No Action, Talk Only group, as I am also not part of the original North Atlantic Treaty Organization, who sometimes, are plagued by no action, talk only. I know who I am; a concerned citizen of a fast-paced world.
Would you like to be all you were meant to be? Then join me, keep your fears behind you, let's walk the talk, take the step and win the race!
Be Inspired, Be Courageous, Be You.
