Because to survive in Nigeria, you need joy. You need joy to take these challenges head on and to keep your sanity, you need joy to maintain perspective and focus on the big picture.
This is not just a soft concept; in a market like ours, it is a business imperative.
You know, one of my most striking achievements is not our Profit and Loss Account, or our Balance Sheer, or the fact that we have never owed a salary even for one day, in 10 years, incredibly proud as I am of that.
It’s stories like Bayo Omoboriowo.
The Future Awards Africa has been identifying and celebrating young people across sectors, first in Nigeria, and now in Africa for a decade now.
In 2010, he was trained by our programme, The Future Enterprise Support Scheme (TF-ESS). In 2012, he won the award for Creative Artist of the Year, for a vision that wanted to use photography to change lives, instead of the fast and easier route of, for instance, fashion photography. He became our a poster boy for the kind of young leader we were spotlighting, across our events over a period of two years.
And so last year we brought him on as official photographer for the presidential campaign, profiling the candidate everywhere from Osogbo to Owerri. The quality of his talent delivered those stunning photos that redefined a 73-year-old man’s image.
Then the candidate became president and took Bayo away from us. And then his like has changed completely. Not just with a diplomatic passport that I hate him every day for, but on journeys across the world, documenting history, documenting change.
Bayo’s life has completely changed, inspiring thousands, and that gives us joy, and that makes us think that our work means something, that our business is changing lives and nations, that our challenges are worth it, that everything good will come.
Does your business inspire you? Even if you’re a dry learner, or a security company does it tap into a place deep in the human spirit that wants to contribute to something greater than one’s self? Does it answer your questions about life and why you are here, does it make you and those around you jump out of bed in the morning and say: Yes we must?!
If it doesn’t, you might soon close it down. And with it your spirit. Your beautiful, necessary, crucial spirit required to reshape the world into that better place we all want it to be.
I thank God I read everything through. Chude is an example of that true Nigerian who rose from being a nobody to a great person we all admire today. I also love the fact that he rises together with whoever choose to go with him. I found great inspirations from this. God continues to keep you Mr Chude.