Content Matters A Lot

If you read through the history of the world, the people we celebrate 100 years after they've died, and whose lives continually inspire others, were not people with (just) deep pockets and media real estate. They were all original content providers. They provided value mankind wouldn't have gotten without them.

image: appcrawlr.com

My deepest concern for Nigeria is not our greedy and corrupt leaders but the lack of good original content. I can't listen to our radio stations, I can't watch our TV stations and I avoid reading our national dailies. Lots of people are now becoming motivational speakers and life coaches. We content ourselves with low risk and undemanding original activities. All our most hardworking men and extremely educated people work for multinationals, doing what a million other equally educated people across the world are doing. We do not aspire to be like the men who the world still celebrates 500 years after their death. We don't aspire to change the world with our ideas and original content. We only want to make more money than our neighbour and set up a foundation. All we care about is to be better than our neighbour and make sure he is aware of it.

Great books by Nigerians are now rare. No single world useful (and used) innovation from Nigerians. We have become 100% consumers. We strive to be the first in our small circle to buy luxury car, the latest iPhone and to visit the most countries. We don't strive to produce anything the world will be glad to queue to buy. As a nation we are perceived as too dumb to tie our shoe laces, unable to take care of ourselves and always doing the dumbest things. And it's not just about our politicians but equally about us. All our intelligence is spent on criticizing the government and bad mouthing those richer than us. We don't create any globally useful original content. We import everything, from the chair we sit on to the companies we work for. Yet we do not criticize ourselves for being a drag on the world. Taking more than we give and being happy as long as we take more than our neighbour. 

When the world comes to an end, and a book of the world history is written, there will be no Nigerian in that book (unless we start seeing ourselves as equally responsible for the world's progress as the Americans). We have to start generating world class original content. And stop celebrating mediocrity.