WHY HAPPINESS? SEVEN IMPERATIVES FOR FREEDOM AT AN INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY

Why Happiness? Why Is Freedom Key?
Freedom is key to happiness and happiness is key to good intention and creativity. When we are not free, we get unhappy and become unable to give our very best to life. Whenever we do not give our best to life, life recognizes this and pays us in ways that are detrimental to our wellbeing. Rich or poor we become restless when we are living below purpose, we become restless when we are not truly happy and free. That is the reason for the common saying that 'In Nigeria, the poor can't sleep because they are hungry; the rich can't sleep because the poor are awake'. In the end, none of us can truly sleep. Most of the world know us to be loud and restless. We need to work together in love to change these narratives. At 57 years of independence and more than a hundred years of corporate existence, here is a country in need of healing. With Life expectancy hovering around 46 for males and 56 for females; with one of the highest maternal and child mortality in the world; with a rapidly growing rate of male and female infertility; with one of the lowest energy production and consumption per capital; there is indeed work to be done.


This is a population of over 200 million human beings with unimaginable potential. In a world where data is the new oil, where data is the new capital; the real resource is in these people. Yes what is underground is important; more important is the things above ground. The water, the air and then the people. The truth is we are earthlings and together with other humans in other countries, we have a common motherhood; The earth. As we seek to make progress, we need to put the earth in focus. We also need to work in love as a community.

Yes virtues and values are key to freedom. Values like love, Joy, Peace, long-surfering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, meekness and temperance are key to freedom at both the national level and the individual level.

What we have today is a country that is Independent but not free. Many are tied fearfully to their religion, others are bound by their ethnic belonging, some others are just tied to one form of parochialism or the other. Independence without freedom is birthplace for a broken environment, a unity that is not authentic, a peace that looks more like desolation.

what are these imperatives?

1. We need to spread knowledge to design out Ignorance  
2. We need to create and spread abundance to design out poverty
3. Identity management
4. Restructuring to democratize access to capital and energy
5. Designing out not fighting corruption
6. Religious reforms and Liberation of thought
7. Putting humanity above other divisive or parochial inclination

We Need To Spread Knowledge To Design Out Ignorance

Growing up in Nigeria and in Africa means that you will need to unlearn several layers of falsehood. Many times people live through all their lives without outgrowing these falsehoods. For instance the belief in witchcraft is so real that it even provides an alibi to many to not give their best in life. you hear things like 'Na im mama wey be witch na in dey worry am' meaning that 'His mother is a witch and she is the one shortchanging his/her destiny'. This is usually not true as it is either the child is either lazy or is a victim of social injustice or a system designed only to favour the rich. We need to spread knowledge to enable people become able to survive without depending on systems that oppress and repress their potentials.

At HomeCoach, we are very committed to this. We want to secure the next generation by making the environment healthy enough for knowledge plays. We want to make human societies able to access and use information to both imbibe knowledge and create new knowledge. We want to begin from Nigeria and the rest of the third world.

We need To Create And Spread Abundance To Design Out Poverty

With one of the lowest GDP per capital in the world, about 120 million Nigerians barely have enough to eat not to talk about access to energy and then access to knowledge. You really can't read when you are not well fed or haven't eaten well for a long time. The human cognitive function is a high-energy function; that is why many Nigerians will accept other people's thinking than do an independent thought. This is where most of the slavery, injustice and absence of freedom come from. so people depend on their religious leader, their political leaders and maybe their employer for their thought. 

On the other extreme, people with independent thoughts are said to be rude and treated as outcasts. So in order to survive, they go back to these systems that trap them and their minds. No wonder the herd mentality is very prevalent just as in pre-medieval Europe.

At HomeCoach we hope to do a lot of work here using technology. We are considering USSD's , Internet applications, API's, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain.

Identity Management

Through the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and the Bank verification Number (BVN), the Nigerian government is already attending to this. Identity management for 200 million people is no easy fit but we must be be grateful for technology. The internet and other technologies like blockchain is doing much in this regard for the 7 billion human population.

Identity management is critical for individuation and ensuring that people do not have a tendency to cut corners. Individuation follows freedom as in order to be truly free, you must fully accept yourself; your strengths and your weakness. 

Nations that are poor are nations with systems that strengthen individual weaknesses rather than design them out. For instance in Nigeria, there is a quota system that ensures that the weak and maybe undeserving get access to opportunities in employment and education even at the detriment of the potentially deserving. Many have argued that this is against meritocracy; which is very key to our development. Personally, because of the state of backwardness especially in the Northeast (which is unsurprisingly a part of the poorest part of the world) I don't think it is against meritocracy alone, it is also against authentic development. i think the quota system can be redesigned. We at homeCoach are ready to work with the Nigerian federal government and other governments in the third world to fine-tune such policies.

Restructuring To democratize Access To Capital and Energy

Nigeria currently has 36 states and the Federal capital territory; Abuja. This makes 37 districts. Apart from Lagos with an average population of 20 million human beings, the other districts have an average population of five million people. Nigeria currently generates and transmits around 6 GW of electrical power mainly from gas and hydro. Now, the global lower average for energy usage is 1GW per million people. This means that what 200 million Nigerians have access to, should actually be meant for just a state or district. This also means that Lagos state should be doing a lot more about 20GW; so that cumulatively total minimum optimum national power should come to 250 GW. I hear someone asking 'where will all the generators go?' My dear, even at the level of 250 GW generator sales will still do very well and more so energy is so critical that you need both generators and batteries to maintain sustainable domestic, industrial and manufacturing life. for instance, many times when I pause my writing it is the result of power outage and battery depletion. I hate generators especially the one called 'I pass my neighbor which is around 1kVA in capacity.

One of the biggest killers of MSME's in Nigeria is cost of  Energy. Usually about half of the initial capital goes into the acquisition of energy devices and systems. This often shrinks available starting capital and increases overheads. The energy 'trap' explained above is here ultimately leading to a capital 'trap' leading to very low GDP figures. Nigeria with all her population is doing USD 500 billion in GDP, While many countries like Norway and Singapore with around 10% of the population of Nigeria are doing tens of trillions of Dollars in GDP. The energy trap makes production globally noncompetitive. Hence it makes more sense to import fairly used clothes from Europe than make them here. It makes more sense to make very large quantities new clothes for Nigerian consumption in Turkey than make them in Nigeria. This energy trap leads to poor value-linking across all sectors from Agriculture to Legislature, medicine to oil and gas. Poor value chains mean that non of the sectors of human endeavor are sustainable. No wonder some think that without restructuring, Nigeria will implode. 

The near absence manufacturing leads to a rental economy driven by massive fiscal indiscipline, the crudest forms of the Abrahamic religions and injustice. I do not like to call it corruption. To me, the word corruption oversimplifies issues. For example, age and state-of-origin falsification are forms corruption more serious than diverting public funds; yet many do not find it so. A man who can falsify his age and other bio-data lacks integrity and can really do anything. So the stealing is most times only a symptom of some form of insecurity.  All these culminate in a low quality of life and well-being that is prevalent.

Now, where is the hope here? Africa is the least contributor to climate change but one of the most hit by the effects of climate change. Hence many analyst believe that Africa should lead the world in renewable energy deployment. Personally, I believe that four-fifths of the needed 250 GW in Nigeria should be from Renewable energy. Another area of hope is in the aspect an energy policy that will put the Nigerian into the energy value chain. If we are to sustainably hit 250 GW at least 20 million Nigerians will be put directly or indirectly into the energy sector and when this happen we could see a GDP that is largely green hitting USD 10 trillion. 

Designing out, not fighting corruption

It is said that the corrupt are also victims of corruption. That is, if things were right no one will really want to be corrupt. I believe this a lot as evidence show (from the Scandinavian countries with the closing down of prisons for lack of prisoners) that human nature is intrinsically good. So fighting corruption by criminalizing offenders is often ineffective and often ends up heating up the polity. Policy and technology can be used to design out corruption. Let us see a scenario. I have worked in several organizations and in one of them the register of attendance is done manually. I discovered that members of staff often lie about their time of arrival at work and sometimes those who miss work try to also find a way to get their names down so as to receive full monthly pay. This often lead to strained relationship between management and staff  which often showed up in poor deliverables. Yet in another where I worked, technology was fully deployed in a process called 'clocking in and out' which was automatically synchronized into the payroll system. This other organization had greater overall effectiveness. A third organization I know of, serves high quality breakfast just before Clocking in. This other organization had the most effectiveness and sense of belonging among staff and management.

What are my trying to say? It is more effective to design-out corruption than fight corruption using policies and technologies like Universal basic Income (UBI), The National Identity Number (NIN), the Bank Verification Number (BVN). Providing sustainable Infrastructure in Transportation, Healthcare and energy and overall easing of doing business are ways of designing out corruption.

Religious Reforms and The Liberation of Thought

 

There are very many religions in the world. In Nigeria and by extension Africa we have three mainly; Christianity, Islam and Traditional Africa Religion. These different beliefs systems have since metamorphosed into political movements as they seek to wield power in order to control access to resources. So far, this hasn't fared well as it has bred a mentally of 'what can I get', instead of what can I contribute. This is evident in the bloated recurrent expenditure and lean capital expenditure of the Nigerian budget. 

There are several ways to manage the menace of religion. Some of which include allowing the authorization of more of the world's religions like Budhism, Sikhism, Confuscianism etc. This I think will help to reduce the intensity of the unspoken struggle between the Abrahamic religions in Nigeria and will help re-emphasize that all of the worlds religions are actually about the same thing; which is love. Another way is to seek active means of livelihood for pastors, Imams and priests; this will remove the need for them to become high-handed in their dealings as they often be.

Someone made a very interesting comment on facebook recently. He said; 

Finland has the most stable economy in the world today. There are less than 20 churches in Finland. Switzerland has the second most stable economy in the world. Switzerland has less than 30 churches. Denmark is the third most stable economy in the world. Denmark has about 23 churches in it.these are countries considered largely atheist in nature, yet so blessed. Come to Owerri town, SE Nigeria, from MCC junction to Toronto junction there are 36 churches. That stretch of about 5 km harbors 36 churches, more than the churches in the entire Switzerland. Between Owerri and Mgbidi, I counted 97 churches and gave up. According to CAC there are over 8 million registered churches. We have more churches than schools and hospitals combined. More pastors than Doctors and Teachers combined. Everyone is born again; all are covered by the blood of Jesus. All are filled with the holy spirit. Yet none of those claims reflects in the expected moral elevation of society. We are still one of the greediest, laziest, corrupt, deceitful, hypocritical and hateful set of beings on the planet today; with all our Jesus Christ and holy Spirit. Our people need to draw the line between religion and spirituality.

Putting humanity above other divisive or parochial inclinations

I recently became an agnostic humanist and discussions on my new status were very interesting. you might want to view.  http://twineer.com/76NJ copy and paste on your browser.

At the core of whatever we are is a human being that require nurturing and cherishing. If we are to survive as a species,we need to place a serious value on being human.

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