By Great Imo Jonathan
As we prepare for the NEXT LEVEL governance under President Muhammadu Buhari, there is the need to bring onboard men and women who are ready to work round the clock to help Nigeria achieve progress. This is necessitated by the need to tackle some issues urgently. And this can only be achieved by men and women who have developed such work ethics that can drive set objectives, notwithstanding the sector of government they may find themselves.
THIS IS WHY DR. UCHE OGAH COMES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR APPOINTMENT UNDER PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI.
Some years ago, I walked into a charity organisation to discuss on possible collaborations with them. The lady I met in the office was the founder and happened to be a former colleague of Dr Uche Ogah in Zenith bank. In the course of our discussion she got to know that I knew Dr. Uche Ogah. She was so excited and she could not resist telling me many wonderful things about him. They resumed work in the bank about the same time. As marketers at the time and they shared the same desk. So, she could at least say one or two things that she observed about him and which I confirmed to be truth.
In the course of our discussion she kept saying ‘’I knew that Uche was going to make it big’’. And when I asked her: why? She said to me, ‘’Uche is a hard working guy’’. She confessed to me that in their days as marketers in the bank, none of their colleagues was as hard working as Dr. Uche Ogah. She told me that Dr. Uche Ogah will visit customers even after work hours to ask for deposit and to know how their businesses were fairing. He did not only meet targets, he exceeded them. It wasn’t a surprised to some of them that he rose to the position of Assistant General Manager in the bank within a space of ten years; he was about 36 years old when he resigned from the bank to focus on running his own company.
Considering where Dr Uche Ogah was coming from, his poor background and the challenges he had to face to become a graduate, it was literarily a huge achievement. Not because there were not a few Nigerians who had achieve such but because the odds against him were way too heavy. At a time in his life, he was engaged in private coaching whiles he was looking for admission. He did anything legitimate and worked hard at them in order to succeed. Through hard work and tenacity he rose from poverty to riches.
I have watched Dr. Uche Ogah attend business meetings after business meetings. I have seen this man fly more than three times every week from one part of Nigeria to the other and from one country to the other. I have seen this man attend to people from morning to about 10pm at night. Sometimes when you get to his office you meet over 50 people waiting to see him. Some of them actually need to see him and not his staff, because they have personal issues that will require his personal attention. Even with all the high calibre managers in his company, there are still people and businesses he has to attend to personally and they are usually too many. I mean these activities are not one offs; they are like a daily routine. Only people with such developed work ethics and capacity as his can handle them.
The good thing about this virtue of hard work that he has embraced is that it is not anything new. From the beginning of time till date, many who have succeeded in anything they do are known to be hard working people; be it President Muhammadu Buhari, Dangote, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinibu, Dr Uche Ogah, Bill Gate or even Mark Zuckerberg of yesterday, they are all hard working people, irrespective of whatever privileges and opportunities you think they may have had. Many people have had such privileges, opportunities and maybe better education than they have but did not make anything out of them, because they did not embrace the philosophy of hard work. Even people who were bequeathed with riches have ran aground because they did not value hard work.
Hard work is one of Dr. Uche Ogah’s secrets of success. Coincidentally, it is not much a hidden secret. But unfortunately it is not much discussed or practiced in our society today. This is one of the greatest secrets that can help deliver an individual or a nation from poverty. A society where it is not much discussed, embraced and practiced, poverty is bound to exist and increase until there is utter hopelessness. Our founding fathers were notable for this virtue but it currently eludes most politicians, public office holders, civil servants and even people who work for private companies; laziness has permeated our society and it is to our greatest disadvantage.
Neglect hard work and you neglect the greatest source of wealth and national prosperity. Neglect it in a society and you end up with armed robbers, prostitutes, kidnappers, drug peddlers, ritual murderers, hackers, yahoo yahoo boys, fake drug dealers, import duty evaders, smugglers, corrupt police, dirty judiciary, purposeless legislators, visionless governors, mindless thieving executives, crime infested SARS, dubious EFCC officials, compromised army, fake engineers who can’t construct anything, yahoo plus, bad roads, illiterate teachers, sex for certificate graduates, empty headed cult boys, no electricity, hunger/food importation, deadly nurses, quack doctors and such related characters.
Neglect hard work and you end up with everything that is wrong in our society today. And this I suspect was the reason President Muhammadu Buhari once said our youths are lazy. He was obviously using that statement to highlight the fact that most of our young people are no longer putting in their best to help build a prosperous society.
The only alternative to hard work is easy money which can only come through these vices that are currently plaguing Nigeria. And if nothing is done about it now, it won’t be long before we self-destruct.
Forget people who tell you that if it was by hard work bricklayers would have been the richest. Yes, a bricklayer who does not apply wisdom and that is not respected for excellence in his job may end up poor. Yes we don’t all have to be bricklayers. Yes we don’t all have to do physical jobs; some have to use more of their minds so that we can have a balanced society. But the bottom-line is; a society where hard work is not respected and rewarded cannot possibly ever breakthrough.
THE CAPACITY TO CREATE VALUE THROUGH PRODUCTIVE LABOUR IS A KEY DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC OF HUMAN BEINGS. NATIONS AND CIVILIZATIONS HAVE ALWAYS DEVELOPED THROUGH THE APPLICATION OF HUMAN, MENTAL AND MANUAL LABOUR TO EXTRACT A HIGHER STANDARD OF LIVING FROM NATURE.
And as the Bible says, when you see a man or woman who is diligent in what he or she does, he or she will rise to prominence and royalty. As much as it is good to work smart, there is no alternative to hard work.
Even with all he has achieved, Dr. Uche Ogah is not slowing down. This does not mean he does not have a life outside work. He is an evangelist and field officer of the Full Gospel Business Men Fellowship.
He is a thorough family man. He shares his time with friends and associates in their moments of celebration and grieve. Yet he runs a conglomerate of 16 companies employing over 18,000 people directly and indirectly. This is the kind of capacity needed for THE NEXT LEVEL.
