"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." - George Bernard Shaw
I grew up in an environment where survival was a goal and surviving was individually personal. Nothing was ever made perfect for your exploitation - you had to create and recreate everything.
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Let me share my story with you;
Something that could have ended my existence happened: I was about 11, a quranic student under a cleric around my area in Odo, Odogbolu at the time.
On one of our Islamic programs called "Lailatul Quadri" (a night during the Ramadan fasting when the whole Quran would be recited by the students to the admiration of their scholars and parents): our mosque at the time had one and I was obligated to attend - I wasn't one of the students to recite the Quran that night but I was, as a student, expected to attend and help organise the event. Lailatul Quadri is at night (oru abiyi) and usually ends late.
On that fateful year, I attended one, which wasn't really far from my house. Our popular 5 days market is just the divider. That night, I had to either walk home in the dead of the night or sleep in the mosque. This was for two reasons: it was dangerous to walk home alone, as a young boy, through the market where fetish stuffs were placed virtually everyday on different parts, if you know what I mean; secondly, the newly introduced vigilante group to provide security against burglars who breaks into people's shop at night almost everyday at the time were very active and effective.
If you escaped the consequence of seeing or stepping on those fetish stuffs on your path, you can't escape the stop and search presence of the vigilantes.
My mother told me to sleep in the mosque, basically because she feared the consequence of the fetish stuffs than the local vigilantes. She knew I won't break into people's shop anyway. And I agreed with her! I made a deal with some of my fellow Quranic students that we would all sleep in the mosque and perform the "Subui" or Salat al-fajr (prayer dawn or before sunrise).
By 2am when the program finished, they decided to go home in group and I had to go home too, alone. On my way home, through the market, I never thought anyone could be following me in the dark. At the door of our house, waiting for my shocked mother to open the door, 4 men called on me to come down - they were vigilantes. I obeyed and went back to them. They started interrogating me on where I was coming from in the dead of the night and how long they been following me to see where I would enter. By that time, my mother was already out, calling on me.
I told them about the event at my mosque and why I had to go back home and all that. Unconvinced, they chapped the door of a known traditional chief in my hood to confirm if I was of a good character. When he came out, he was shocked to see me with them. Standing outside our house, my mother was restless and won't stop calling my name to know if I've done something wrong. She was apparently disturbed cuz it was dark and all she could hear was us talking but couldn't even recognise who I was with.
They (the vigilantes) asked the chief if he knew me and what he could say about me? He (the chief) turned to me and asked what I was doing outside at such an "ungodly" hour. I repeated my story to him and he turned to them and said; "if not for where I said I was coming from, which is verifiable, he would have said he didn't know me". I was too young to understand that statement until few days later.
The vigilantes let me go and warned I don't ever try such again - which I never, to this day.
My grandfather raised me as a Muslim and wanted me to study the Quran. I went to a Muslim primary school on his request. My mother raised me as a Christian and I had to attend vigils and prayer session with her whenever her father (my grandfather) was not around. The vigilantes had a mandate to arrest or kill anyone found committing crime in my community at the time. Although it was never in the confine of the law for them to kill or beat anyone, but we all know that they could always justify their action as in the interest of the safety of lives and properties of the residents.
I wasn't really traumatised by my experience that night until few days later when they arrested and killed a young man which later turned out to be an hatchet job of ritual killers working as our local security providers.
A man who was washing his clothes outside his house in the middle of the night was arrested and taken to a distant area from his house before he was killed.
Initially, the news of his killing was tagged "a robbery gone wrong", until people found his head missing - So were many of his body parts.
How could an armed robber killed few hours ago be headless and burnt by the local security agents who oversaw his killing? Questions were raised and enquiries into his death began.
Before dawn the following day, all the vigilantes were arrested and taken to police headquarters in Abeokuta.
During their interrogations, they found out the man they killed was not an armed robber as they claimed. In fact, he was a labourer who came home late that night and had to quickly do some washing before going out early again the following morning. Just like my own encounter with them, he was approached and questioned on why he was outside at such odd hour if he wasn't planning something sinister. Maybe he had no local chief to identify him, or a chief identified him as a unknown; or they just knew what they were doing and weren't actually interested in protecting anyone.
He was persuaded to follow them to their boss, which he did without waking his other co-tenants up. They killed him, chopped his head off, his thumbs, toes, pubic hair, testicles and penis. Then set him ablaze. Cruel!
Mind you, this was just 3 days after they stopped me.
That got me really thinking: as an 11 years old boy, it started making much sense to me that, "that could have been me dead and mutilated by those men and my mother would have lost a son she suffered to raise and hoped to live on in her old age". They would have just psychologically killed my grandfather who risked everything to keep me afloat in the face of a never ending family chastisement of us against him.
There and then, at 11, I vowed never to remain a nobody that just anyone can trample upon because of my economic status.
While the whole town was mourning, I was thinking. "I will change my life for the better and these people will respect me. They don't have to like me, but they will respect me and whatever I live for", I would confidently tell myself.
I started thinking positively. In the face of prevalent hardship and lack of opportunities, I was creating my own opportunities. I began building my own future in my head. I would imagine things that are obviously out of my league. My coming to the UK was created in my head long before I was even 15. So were many other things I've tried, failed, or succeeded on in the past.
I would read meaningless novels, books, histories (mostly politics and people) that doesn't really make any sense but I was just too desperate to found something that can give me a clue of what I could do to be outstanding and different.
Just as Senator Sefiu Kaka advised:
"When people throw you stones, it's because you are a good tree full of beneficial fruits. They see a lot of harvest in you. Don't go down to their level by throwing them back the stones, but throw them your FRUITS so the seeds of yourself may inspire them to change their ways."
Life is not fair. But we can live it fairly by creating our own fairness.
Life is about the positive and the negative: a remote control can only function when the battery is inserted in positive and negative positions. Nothing is 100% perfect.
You will need REAL people to help you up the ladder in life, but there is no logbook that advertise the willing REAL people to help anyone. You have to find or create them yourself.
"Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture... Do not build up obstacles in your imagination."
- Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking
Your situation is not worst than mine. I only created my own path from my experience of life at a vulnerable age of 11. The experience changed my thoughts about life. I stopped seeing people as a compulsory helper - I take things as they come my way and had less expectation of the people around me.
The result is what you all are seeing today.
Stand up to an obstacle. Just stand up to it, that's all, and don't give way under it, and it will finally break. You will break it. Something has to break, and it won't be you, it will be the obstacle.
You can turn your life around if you can start believing in yourself. No one will do it for you. Your rich father can't make or keep you rich if your thoughts are poor.
You may be at the bottom rung of poverty right now, believe me, it is because you believe you can't help yourself except someone helps you. No one will help you, take that from me. You have to look around: inward and outward and create your own opportunity.
I came from a moderately rich family but my mother never brought me up knowing I have an inheritance somewhere. Imagine your mother raising you as a kid with no nothing except what you make with your sweat? That's what you should see in yourself too.
Stop expecting the world to help you. Start making the world beg to help you.
Today I can boldly say "I can become just anything I want in life and no one can stop me". Yes. I am a positive thinker and I don't believe in impossibility. This line may jolt your mind but it is true. I am unstoppable except God says otherwise.
Only you can change your story. No miracle can change it for you.
How?
You need to find that out yourself.
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But one thing is, you have to BELIEVE IN YOURSELF! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy. But with sound self-confidence you can succeed. A sense of inferiority and inadequacy interferes with the attainment of your hopes, but self-confidence leads to self-realization and successful achievement.
Maiyegun General
Maiyegun General
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