“Financial struggle is
often directly the result of people working all their life for someone else.
Many people will have nothing at the end of their working days’’ – Robert
Kiyosaki. The current situation in our country is such now that retrenchment is
been going on in all sector of the economy…the financial, manufacturing, oil
and gas sectors and even government ministries. The economy of Nigeria has been
declared as in recession and that has had its toils on the system, and hence
the massive retrenchment in the economy.
Of recent the oil and gas
union (NUPENG) has threaten to go on strike if the oil and gas giant do not
halt their mass sack of workers. According to the union, about 3000 workers has
already been dropped…and more is been said to be dropped, hence the call to the
Federal government to call the oil companies to order. The question is, will
the call bring the already sacked workers back to work?....
Or will it stop the obvious
truth why the company is dropping the workers? Their reason is been attributed
to the harsh economic realities militating their operation – the bombing and
destruction of pipelines, hence production halt, foreign exchange scarcity, and
the general unfriendly business environment. Unless all these factors are
addressed, the federal government will have little or nothing to do about the
job cut going on the economy.
The federal government has
lost about 2trillion naira in 2016 alone to bombing and vandalizing of
pipelines. The federal government in joint ventures with these multinationals
spend billions of naira to lay all the oil infrastructures been destroyed only in
seconds. It is easy to destroy than to build and people just go on destroying
oil installation unreasonably…
The environment is been
bastardized, the job loss, the loss of revenue…and these things are affecting
you and I. The destruction of oil installation at the slightest provocation has
made the present government led by Buhari to take the issue of economic
diversification very seriously.
Diversification is not
done in a short period; it could take between one to two years to begin to see
result, hence the current harsh economic realities facing you and I. It is easy
to blame Mr President and its government but you and I know that the government
is not sleeping about what is going on. However, it is important to know that
certain policies of the government cannot start yielding result in the
short-run but rather in the medium or in the long-run.
Be that as it may, it is
high time you and I begin to mind our business. Minding our business is the only
way out of this economic hardship. There is now need to purge our mind from
heavy dependent on oil and gas sector for our livelihood. Everybody wants to work,
however, majority want to work in the oil and gas companies. Those that are not
even working want to claim entitlement of been taken care of by the oil company
operating in their area. Entitlement mentality has even caused us much destruction
than good. ‘’To become financially secure, a person need to mind their
business’’ – Robert Kiyozaki.
‘’When I say mind your
business, I mean to build and keep your asset column strong. Once a dollar goes
into it, never let it come out. Think of it this way, once a dollar goes into
your asset column, it becomes your employee. The best thing about money is that
it works 24hours a day and can work for generations. Keep your day-time jobs,
be great hard-working employees, but keep building that asset column’’…
However, today, many are
crying of job loss, some crying of value of money as depreciated which affects
whatever salary s/he is being paid while many has loss their job and have
nothing to fall back to, hence the high unemployment rate in the country. Many
has left cities to their village to farm while some who lives nearby go their
community to farm and come back to the city in the weekend.
The way out now is to go
into farming. Yeah, farming! The price of food stuff is generally high and there
has been complaint everywhere in the country. But I want to believe that price
of goods are extra-ordinarily high in Warri and Port Harcourt. At present, a bucket of custard
power measure of garri is N800, a bag of rice is N26000, a four liters of palm
oil is N4000, 20 liters of groundnut oil is N10000, a butter cup of rice is
N140, while beans is N100 and so on. The people are crying and there seems to
be to respite yet.
Be that as it may, there’s
a need to be patient while the federal government deals with the situation. There
is this believe that prices of food stuff will soon go down. Yeah, I want to
believe that by the time everybody go into farming this year, maybe because the
price of garri for instance is high, by next harvest, supply of these food
stuff will outweigh demand, hence the likelihood price will crash.
On the other hand, you
must not only go for crop farming; poultry farming, piggery, snail, palm
plantation, plantain plantation, sweet potatoes farming etc. You need also go
into skill acquisition; acquire skill if you haven’t, not minding you’re a
graduate or not. Open a small business you could grow…and good to know that a
lot of Nigerians are beginning to realize the need to start doing their own
thing. All hand must be on desk!
