Do you think you are responsible? I know you will answer yes but before you jump to the answer let me throw a few questions as you. For the young man or the young lady I need to ask you if you have a specific or time bound goal for when you want to leave your father’s house. This is the part of the world where people in the age bracket of 26 – 30 still live comfortably in their parents’ houses and do not even contribute anything to what is going on at home. I heard about a young man who was not working for about six years and that meant that his family was feeding him and was giving him money to do whatever he wanted to do because he was waiting for a job that was not forthcoming.

If you have left your father’ house and you think you were not hit by that then let’s begin to look at responsibility from the angle of the wife that you married. Are you responsible to your wife or to your husband? Have you been responsible to your children? You could not go to the best of schools because you were told series of tales by moon light by your parents and unconsciously you have begun to tell the same stories to your children. You are not taking responsibility now and at the end of the day you will blame your inability to give your children a quality education on the lapses of the government. Your own parents never admitted that they did not have a plan and that’s why they are not rich enough to give you the best. Now you have also started life without a plan and you are on your way to telling your children that circumstances didn’t let them get the best. The meaning of irresponsibility in this context therefore is shifting responsibility when you ought to take responsibility. When you ought to take your destiny in your hands you are expecting a magic and are blaming other people for not allowing your fantasies and wild dreams to come alive.

It is obvious that at this point in time we need to begin a redefinition of the word responsibility. We probably have thought up until now that to be irresponsible means to dress inappropriately all the time or to consistently use vulgar languages. We have come to think that the irresponsible people are the ones who drink and smoke and just neglect their families to a world of despair. When you are done reading this you may be shocked that you have not taken responsibility in expected areas.

Irresponsibility if broken down without much trouble with grammer will mean that you have not taken responsibility for what you ought to be responsible for. When you ask, ‘who is responsible for the furniture maintenance?’ You have simply asked about the person who has taken responsibility. If there are other people who could have but have not then you would not be wrong to say that those ones are irresponsible.

Is it the government that forced you to collect bribe? You got to an office where you are being paid two or three hours after you were expected to resume for work and you think you are responsible. You are the first to collect your salary and you always leave an hour before the real closing time but you see nothing wrong in that. You claim you are collecting salary and you are not seeing the results but you have forgotten that you are cheating on your employer.

You are a contractor who has been paid for a job but you have not done what you were paid for and the money was not refunded. You have said it is government money and we must spend it. I have come to realize that a lot of people have heard the word nemesis but they don’t know its impact on their daily actions. The road you were paid to repair is still there claiming people’s lives. The bridge you were meant to reconstruct is helping to destroy people but you have not seen that as being irresponsible.

You are a manufacturer of consumable products and you started out with good intentions but now you have become irresponsible. You used to produce at a time when quality was your priority but your priority has become money. You make money at the expense of quality and consequently make money at the expense of peoples’ lives so people are dying because of your greed. You obviously have no count of how many people you have killed but let’s do a simply mathematics. If a can of your product kills one person then we should just calculate how many cans you have produced since you started compromising quality. If you have produced half a million cans then you have indirectly killed half a million people. I know this is hard for you to believe but you used to see yourself as a super saint and you never for once thought that you had become irresponsible.

What about that contract you have with a young talented person who only had a dream. You took him or her in because this person had no money. This same person went home rejoicing not knowing it was a predator that has come disguised as a helper. You signed a deal and money came in but you have begun to deny the young talents of their dues. You keep making money through other peoples’ dexterity and you call it prosperity. All of these are only hidden for a while because the consequences will hunt when you have forgotten.

Do you still think it’s the government that is irresponsible? The people will always get the kind of government that they deserve. Do not forget that the people who are in government are not imported citizens of Pluto or Uranus or Saturn. They are people who grew up within the society and are simply reflecting the society to us. We have been irresponsible in a number of ways and that is why we manage to get so many irresponsible people in government. You may not want to admit this but they did not get into power without our consent. We knew about elections but we all sat down to watch them do what they intended to do. We knew some people were not qualified but we shut up and did not say anything about it. We knew the people who were getting into government positions with fake results but we said nothing about them. They used to be our classmates and we all knew they did not pass. Are you denying you know such people? How else do you describe irresponsibility?

I may not have mentioned your specific area but I am sure that your conscience has pricked you. You were constantly thinking about that area and hoping that I would mention it for you to confirm that it was wrong. I don’t have to confirm. Your conscience has said it all!

My eyes grew heavy and I could feel tears in my eye lid. I was boiling within me but at the same time was trying not to talk too much and I think I succeeded in doing that. The laptop on my laps helped me to avoid direct eye contacts during the confrontation because I was playing with the keyboard though there was nothing serious I was doing with it except for my mobile phone that was plugged in through USB. I had just finished printing on some packs of envelopes for my mum when my mum spoke up in the presence of my sister and her husband. The only other person there was their two years and six months old daughter.

My mum said she wanted to report me to them and that was exactly what she did. I envisaged a kind of family meeting like this but when it became a reality it was really heavier than what I had thought it would be. She complained about my traveling nearly all the time even though she knew that I was traveling to speak in meetings. She had always in a way been uncomfortable with my travels when I have to speak. She claims to support what I do but her action does not conform to her confession. While claiming she understands what I was doing she would also keep asking if the people who were inviting me to speak were paying me for the speaking engagement. At that point I understood why some speakers will insist on money when you ask them to speak both in business places and in churches where they receive their nourishment spiritually. I have always had the policy of never charging any religious body or para-church if I was asked to speak in their meetings but I charged business owners professionally if I have to speak for them. Coincidentally at the initially stage most of my speaking engagements were from the religious bodies that I decided not to charge.

At a point I almost had the temptation of insisting on a specific amount to give out to people inviting me for conferences as a way to take care of my transportation but I also began to feel, even before I concluded the thought, that I was violating my conscience. Speaking was, still is, and will always be my passion. I can go around the world speaking for free if I have the resources that will enable me do it. Again an again I have found myself rehearsing how I was going to reject some payments for public speaking as a way to show that money was not my focus.

As my mum finished reporting me my brother-in-law began to diplomatically advise that I get a job. Just before that my mum had said she and the other “attendants” of that small family meeting would support me with any other thing I wanted to do. Just as the meeting was being rounded off my sister again raised the issue of payment in those meetings. “Are the speaking engagements free?” she asked. While looking intently, even when there was nothing to look at, in the laptop on my laps I said, “some of them are free.” I had barely finished the statement when my brother-in-law said affirmatively, “most of them are free.” Then I repeated after him what he said. My mum was uncomfortable with some of the decisions I had taken and she tabled how I had taken a risk to publish my book, WRITING BUSINESS PROPOSAL. I think to make the matters worse the meeting was on a Sunday morning before going to church. In between church service I was fighting back tears and was struggling to remain positive. I almost said it was the worst time in my life but I kept saying it was the most interesting day in my life.

Interestingly, as if God was preparing my mind for the challenge, just the previous night I watched some young men who had been newly selected for COPA Coca-Cola cup. One of them was a tailor for years but always had a passion for football. The other one was assisting his mother with a local food canteen where he also did some cooking and serving customers directly. One thing was common to the two of them. Their families did not understand what they saw in football and mostly complained about their visit to the football pitch where they regularly played football. Nobody saw reasons in their rehearsals but when they were selected everyone was happy. In fact the custodian of one of the young men was shedding tears.

You can be sure it was not such an easy thing sitting in that meeting especially if you have ever had a family meeting summoned because of you. You feel like walking away like one musician once sang, “I am walking away” but you dare not. This is a day that has come to stick to my memory. It was two weeks before my 24th birthday. It happened on the 10th day of May 2009.

I had always known that the challenges I was going through were not going to be there all the time. I just kept seeing myself in that place where the challenges I am going through now had become something to laugh about. I had a chat with a big brother and friend at a time and we were talking about our challenges so he said something very simple but profound. One of the things he said was that we were going through those challenges so that we would humble enough to understand were other people are coming from when we become so rich and those people are beginning to approach us for help. For this reason alone some of us have to go through some challenges in finances, businesses, real estate, academics and some other things in life.

Some of those challenges include your meals sometimes. On several occasions I had gone on hunger strike and I had to call it hunger strike though it was not a deliberate abstinence from food. A deliberate abstinence from food could either be a diet watch or fasting but severally I knew there was no diet to watch and there was no fasting in my agenda but it had to be a hunger strike because there was nothing to eat. In the first place what was my size at the time that can make me think about diet watch?

On one of such days I woke up and I really wanted to eat. There was no cash in my pocket and there was nothing like any raw food that could be cooked. This was not a new thing at that time. Sometimes when you have stayed in a challenge long enough you will realize that abnormal things are no longer new to you. If you are not careful the abnormal things that are no longer new to you will come to be accepted as the norm. Challenges can make you stronger and also broaden your perception about life because that is what it is supposed to be but if you go through challenges wrongly then it will shrink your mindset and you will begin to see life from a small perspective rather than through the big picture. You must be very careful not to allow challenges shrink your mindset.

I was going to say to you that when I woke up one day I was looking for something that I new I did not keep in the house. I was hungry and I needed to eat. I already told you there was no cash so the only thing was for me to find something to eat within the house. I only found stuffs like salt, oil, pepper and tomato source. I had to look in another direction as if there was something that was hiding there I the truth was that I knew there was nothing that had been hidden there. As a way of encouragement, just as I was about to take away my eyes, I found four small sachets of groundnuts that my fiancée had kept there. Those four sachets of groundnuts could be likened to treasures of motivation at that time so I devoured the groundnuts. I had to use the word devoured because there is a difference between eat and devour. It is a satisfied man that eats but a hungry man devours. After devouring those four unfortunate sachets of groundnuts for breakfast I had nothing to eat again for that day until a miracle meal came for dinner.

I remember there was another time when my fiancée and I had to eat dinner and all I had was a hundred naira cash so I had to seat carefully and plan that one hundred naira. The final budget had a provision for a loaf of bread and some sachets of water to top it. Every other thing that the budget didn’t provide for had to become an alternative forgone. It was a time when I made purchases according to my pockets not according to desires or needs.

At some point we may all begin to fall in love with the challenges that we are going through if only we have a foresighted perspective towards all the things happening to us. I have come to understand that the things happening to me are not happening to me simply because of where I am going to alone but it is also happening because of the people who are watching us and learning from us. God wants to teach some other people something very unique and I find it a great privilege for him to use me as a lesson tool. There are things he wants to explain to those other people that they cannot understand but he has taken me through those levels so he can now use me to teach those other people. I can now say categorically that my life is God’s chalk board for another man.

Maybe I should now say that we need to look at what God is writing on “this chalk board” this time. I sat down and had a reflection of some other things that I have gone through and a few things were running through my mind. There was a time I went to Lagos, Nigeria for an engagement but I needed to return to Ago-Iwoye in Ogun State because I had made arrangements with a youth fellowship to teach them business and leadership. My challenges had begun with the arrangements with that youth fellowship because over and over again people become nonchalant when they are getting things for free. When I did an assessment I realized that the announcement was poorly made and the preparation for the meeting was also poor. The organizers did not keep to time and they were still running meetings up until the time the teaching was to start. When I got there some of the people who were supposed to be the core leaders of the organization were leaving so I could easily see a problem with communication about the event.

In all of this I had to think about the personal sacrifice I had made to be in that meeting. It was a meeting I could have called of but passion would not let me call it off. I lived in Lagos at that time and I could have stayed back in Lagos where my father built a house. I am the type who thinks more about the commitments I have made rather than what it costs to keep the commitment. In order to make that meeting I had to think about how to get back to Ago-Iwoye because I had exhausted the cash in my hands. I had come into Lagos earlier because Rotimi Eyitayo was organizing the Spelling Bee competition in Silver Bird Galleria and I was to meet him there through Olulade Bethel. At that time Bethel was working on the graphics of the website for “6th Sense” – his organization on human capacity building – so I had to link him up with Elizabeth Pelumi Olubiyi who came in to Nigerian from US to start her company – EPO designs. The meeting looked more like a networking meeting for all of us who were there because Damilola, a campus pastor at the time and the owner of “Emerald Hills”, had also come in to meet his fiancé who was working with Rotimi Eyitayo.

While the networking was going on I had to think about how to return and the only thing that kept returning to my mind was my slide Nokia 6111 which was a gift from my big sister. Immediately after the meeting in Victoria Island I went straight to computer village in Ikeja simply to sell my phone. The receipt of the phone says it was purchased for nineteen thousand naira (19, 000) but I could only sell it for three thousand naira (3, 000). It sounded crazy but I did it because of what I believed in. I could not imagine myself calling of the meeting on the grounds of cash when I know that someone needed to hear what I had to teach!

There was a time we only had pocket watches and those watches had chains attached to them but you would spend some time trying to reach these watches in your pockets when you really need to check what time it is. After a while someone thought it would be nicer to have the watches on our wrists since it would be easier to check the watch that way. After someone thought differently we began to have wrist watches.

Several years back anything that needed to be written was written on scrolls and stones. Everybody who needed to have a copy of the written materials could not so the only option was to have the written material in a place like museum or a temple where everyone could go in to read. Even at that time not everybody read these things. Someone had to pick up the scroll and read to the hearing of others. With these there was no time to reread what was read and it probably gave a little time for mediation so someone thought of something to do so that everyone who needs to have a copy of these writings can have them. After someone thought differently we began to have papers and we also had ink to write on them.

When writing began people had to use some special brushes and small containers of ink. The brushes would go into the containers for a zip of ink and then come out for a romance with the papers. Sometimes the writers’ clothes were stained by the ink. There was a need to do something different from what was already available and even make it simpler. After someone thought differently we began to have ball point pens.

People learnt how to write but not everyone could write legibly and that meant it was a little more stressful for readers to read what someone else wrote even when it was compulsory for them to read. Someone was thinking about the difficulty of people not having legible handwriting but some else was thinking about solution. After someone thought differently we began to have type writers.

Type writers made the written papers more legible and easy to read but it still had its problems. When you had to type several papers you probably have to type the same thing again and again until you were tired of doing the typing but while this was a challenge someone else saw it as an opportunity to produce photocopiers. Computers that could type and just send orders to printers to print as many as possible papers later came in to make the written words more legible and beautiful.

All of these things that I have talked about simply explain what it means to innovate. Imagine what life will look like if we all want to go to school and we all have to use a scroll in the 21st century? What do you think it will look like if we all have to write and the only thing available for writing is a paint brush? Innovation is simply about looking at what is available and thinking about doing it differently. You can say that innovation is improving on what exists. It has always been a part of humanity to have things documented but documentation started in a crude way. It was the desire to make documentation easier that brought the innovation of computers today.

Sometimes innovation is to think in a projective manner. Taking a look at what is happening and taking a look at how the needs of people are being met through services. When you always take a good look at the way the services of people are being met

A consistently disused head, that is the head you refuse to use either at its maximum capacity or at a lower capacity, can be explained using an equation. When you refuse to use a head it first becomes limited and after some time the limited head becomes a liability. As soon as the limited head becomes a liability it has mature into a company because its limit and its status as a liability are enough to make it a company.

One of the questions you need to answer is if you are running as a limited liability company! There are pressures on daily basis and there are demands every minute that our heads must respond to so we must learn how to put the head to work. Sometimes our heads work like the engines of abandoned cars. If you don’t use a car after some time the engine of that car begins to depreciate and when the engine of that car begins to depreciate by developing fault it will not go as far as it should go. At this point in time if you really need to use this car then you will have to spend more than the normal required money to get it back to life. You are going to need more energy to get it back to life. You are going to need more hands to bring the car back to life.

If the car had been in consistent use you will not need a lot of energy to make it work because the engine is experiencing the normal pressure and exercise that it should experience. Just as the car under consistent use needs less energy to get on the road, the brain under consistent use needs lesser stress to produce result because it has become used to being given tasks and at that time it produces more. The head that is not used to being given tasks most times becomes distressed occasionally when you decided to put pressure on it. This happens because it has become limited since it was not used most times. While it was not being used it was becoming a liability. Most times when some men need to work and they need to use some physical tools to work, they usually prefer to go back to the tools that they have been using for a while. Workers usually trust the tools that they have been using consistently more than the tools that look good but have not been in use.

This illustration with the tool is proven in the contemporary days in the way the government thinks when it needs to make some appointments. I have realized that some of the government officials who are in the position to appoint other people usually like to appoint the people who have been tested already with some positions of responsibility. They most likely would not pick people who have not been used in any place before. They are picking these people who have been in some positions before because their heads have been tested. Even companies want to use people whose heads have been tested and not people whose heads have not been tested. You really need to put your head to work because this is where a biblical principle comes in. There is a principle that says to the one that already has more will be given. The extension of that principle is that things will be taken from those who have not enough to be given to those who have enough. This is simply based on the principle of tested heads that have not been limited. Make use of your head and bring it out of the state of limitation. Your head should not be a limited liability company.