Mr. Kelvin Okechukwu.
Story by Dili Utomi.
The unexamined life is not worth living-Socrates.
The world over, concerned individuals, groups, professionals such as psychoanalysts and philosophers are constantly committed to examining and giving meaning to human experiences.
The collective experiences of each individual to the other at any given moment add to enrich and/or degrade the quality of life of any given society and the quality of the individual directly and indirectly impacts on the society that such individual person finds him/her self.
It is in consideration of the nature of the quality of the individual person that we went to town to seek the opinion of an entrepreneur, an advocate for a sound society, a concerned Nigerian and a man with a particularly defined sets of principles, Mr. Kelvin Chinedu Okechukwu. He spoke to us on the need for there to be a sort of reorientation of the mind of the individual Nigerian to become more positive and ultimately more useful to the nation.
Below are the excerpts from the interview
Question: Good afternoon, sir, for the purpose of this interview, please introduce yourself.
Answer: My name is Mr. Kelvin Okechukwu the chairman of Nedu Logistics, we are a haullage company with a with bias to the maritime sector.
Question: Alright sir, we are talking about reforms in various areas, the Correctional Centre, the Judiciary, the Police, but of utmost importance is the core of all reforms which we should have, the reformation of our individual minds, because it is a collection of these individual minds that make up the society. Don’t you think that the average Nigerian person needs to reform his or her mind so that we can have a better society, Sir?
Answer: Thank you. Mr. Utomi, human reform is very important. In fact, the human mind is the key to progress and the economy and everything you can think of. I do tell people that the greatest resource is human resource, and that human resource is mainly mental resources. Human Resource is far better than mineral resources, natural resources, agriculture or whatever you can think of because if you have a reformation of the great human resources, you will be richer than any country, no matter the kind of oil they have, no matter the quantity of gold or diamond they may have. For instance, we have countries that do not have much mineral resources yet do very well. China does not depend on mineral resources, neither does Japan, South Korea and all these great countries that are doing so well economically.
So in Africa, we should lay less emphasis on natural resources and reform our mind and lay more emphasis on human resources. I can also tell you that the best way to go to create very good human resources is through education. Yes, the difference between poverty and wealth is education. When you have quality education, a society changes for good, because with education, you can free your mind from many negative things. You can be more productive.
You can do a lot of things for the society. Any educated society will progress with or without natural resources. So I believe Nigeria can do well without mineral resources, if we have great human resources. When it comes to Nigeria, our human resources have a lot of things to do. We have to reform or reorientate the minds of our human resources in different ways. Nigerians, for instance are so spiritual, they believe anything can be achieved with prayer, consulting God, consulting one oracle or the other or going to one prayer house or the other in this 21st century when other people are talking about robots, drones and the information technology, Nigerians still believe that somebody can make money through human sacrifice.
I do not really understand it. Somebody will believe that they can go to one church and pray and come out after to become billionaires without the requiscent work, it does not work that that way.
Someone will believe that you can go to one alfa and he will do some sacrifice and do some prayers and you start having economic progress, with all these kind of mindsets, you see, we have a very long way to go.
So we have to reorientate our human minds. We have to reform our human resources. We should be telling our people that education is the key, and we should be laying less emphasis on spiritual things. One is not saying that spiritualism or going close to God is bad, but every person has his role to play when it comes to what God can do. We believe God works, but when it comes to where human beings, you walk through the right direction.
First of all, we are supposed to pursue good education, when you have good education, you now know that spiritualism or spiritism is not everything. In Nigeria now, you see that pastors with these big churches are making so much money because of the ignorance of our people, because our people believe that they can break through economically by going to one church or the other or through secret cults.
That is not what is obtainable in every other country that has developed or rapidly developing, we have been praying since, we have been doing all these since and we have not seen any breakthrough. This is to tell you that spiritism and spirituality is not all the answer, but hard work and education are inclusive and there is the answer. Yes, even spiritually, the Holy book says that he who does not work should not eat. Well, that is aside, the Holy book also says that you should work and pray.
Work first and then pray, pray that God blesses the works of your hand. But let’s leave that aside. Each and everyone of us in the society has a role to play in the reformation of the mind of the individual person.
Question: What role do you think the individual, the family and the government along these lines should play so that we have the right kind of mindsets so that we have the right kind of society that we dream of?
Answer: Okay, I think individually, we should be more politically active in the right direction, education first, okay? I think we should pay more emphasis on education like I said, quality education, for that matter, not quantity education. Government should also help make sure that the poor educate their children. In Nigeria, we are supposed to have free and compulsory education especially for the poor because the rich know the value of education and they do educate their children. They send their children to the best schools, but the poor, some of them know, yet some do not know the value of education.
Mr. Kevin Nedu Okechukwu, chairman, Kirikiri Truckers Association.
Some poor persons who know the value of education may not have the money. So that is where governments come in. There should be free, compulsory and quality education, especially in primary and secondary schools. When you go to many primary schools that are government run, you go there the teachers are not teaching, the facilities are not there. Some of the buildings are not even good for people to sit down and learn. So government should help us in that area, because it’s the basics. For you to have a good society, you have to have a well educated citizens.
We should have at least 90 to 95% literacy level in Nigeria, I do not think that we have up to 50% literacy level. Many Nigerians cannot read and write, which is very bad and this is the 21st century. In some countries, like Japan and some countries of Europe, they have as much as 97% literacy rate.
So why should we be talking about 50% literacy level in Nigeria? And we are bragging about it. So governments have a lot to do in education, which is very important. We have to teach our folks, I mean our parents to send their kids to school.
Question: Don’t you think that also the issue of the economy contributes to the lack of proper human capital development and the reformation we are talking about here. Some parents like you said consider education very, very key, yet they do not have the means to send their kids to school?
Answer: Some parents can manageably send their kids to school, but probably do not have the opportunity. Maybe schools are too far away from where they live.
Again, the teachers should be made to do their jobs and teach also, because if you go to many public schools, teachers will go to school without teaching anything for the whole day. They will just sit and be discussing, no proper supervision. Government is supposed to supervise those teachers. Well, they are not well paid yes, but then no person is well paid in Nigeria.
So the most important thing is that you have the job, and you want to keep the job, so you have to do the work. Government should supervise teachers to do their jobs. After all, I think that on the average, public schools pays better salary to teachers than the private ones in Nigeria.
Question: What is your advice to society and individuals on this issue of reformation.
Answer: I also want to talk about political reformation of the individual person. Our people are so petty about how they think when it comes to politics. You see that people vote according to their region, their tribe, or their religion, or sectional interests. I want to vote this man because he is from my state, or he is from my tribe, or because he has helped me, one way or the other, he is my friend. Here some politicians are not supposed to be in power, but in prisons. Politics is supposed to be ideological.
It is supposed to be ideology based. Okay? This man that want to fight for president or governor or this position or that position, what is his ideology? What is he thinking? Does his thinking align with my own personal thinking? That is what the questions are supposed to be and not that he or she is from a particular political part, no.
For us to move forward as a nation, we have to have our politics to be ideological. Are you a socialist? Are you a capitalist? Are you an extremist? What are you? What is this party all about? Not voting according to tribe or section or region, which is what has been going on in Nigeria for donkey years now. So with that kind of arrangement or thinking, we will not get to where we are supposed to be. So we have to reform ourselves politically at the individual and then the collective levels.
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