Creativity is the ability to generate ideas that result in new products and services that contribute to the socio-economic growth of a community. Every Nigerian has a creative ability that can be released for the mutual socio-economic benefit of the person and our nation. We’ve excelled in this area in various communities worldwide. However, the socio-economic growth that results from embracing creativity has not been replicated in Nigeria.
What can be observed among Nigerians is the reality that rather than support and enable creativity in others, there is an increased occurrence of deliberate attempts to frustrate the creativity of their fellow Nigerians. This tends to be achieved through varying acts of intimidation, deception, discouragement, oppression and piracy. The challenge for us as a nation is that these acts are rampant in our families, local communities, associations, institutions, organisations, governments and we seem to have exported it to the Diaspora. The reality is that when we frustrate creativity in others, nobody wins. And this will ultimately breed restlessness, strife, violence and invariably encourages corruption.
Mr Debo Adesina explains further the appalling state of creativity in our nation, in an article, “Good time to be a Nigerian!” on January 4, 2016, in The Guardian Newspaper. In the article, he was celebrating the achievements of two Nigerians in the United States of America – Mr Adewale Adeyemo, who was appointed Deputy National Security Adviser of the United States by President Barack Obama and Dr Bennet Omalu, the first pathologist to report chronic traumatic encephalopathy in high impact contact sport athletes and military war veterans.
He indicated in the article, “These achievements have, nevertheless, exposed the ineptitude of Nigeria’s leaders and challenged them to a better utilisation of human capital. For, were Adeyemo and Omalu home-based, their stars shining as they do now are a possibility. A more potent possibility, however, is that those stars would probably have been extinguished by a bureaucracy that stifles merit, a system that is the graveyard of talents.”
To be continued.
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