Freekick

It is an established fact of life that one way of getting fired to aspire to greatness is by studying and learning, as well as reading about or understudying a great leader. This is where mentoring in leadership lessons come in. Greatness though, is all but otiose if seen as an abstract construct.

True greatness is only meaningful when used in connection with persons, events, phenomena or societies. In other words, those who aspire to be great should learn to read about great men and women, as it is the greatness of such persons that made or make their societies great.

Such studies reveal that many became great not necessarily because of their outstanding backgrounds or pedigrees. History is replete with yarns of folks who rose from the dust to renown; persons who ordinarily were not expected, or did they themselves expect to become anything of consequence, because they had judged the day by what the morning showed or presented. Such persons enrich living and offer hope in hopeless situations; they inspire courage in situations of despair and challenge guts in the face of near-defeats.

The Daily Sun in its edition of 22nd September carried an elaborate feature on Governor Akpabio of Akwa Ibom, where he spoke, among other things, on his early beginnings. Said he, "My story is almost like Obama’s. I came from very humble beginnings. I had a father who died six months after I was born, so I was raised by a single mother who did only petty trading. Going to school was almost personal effort…. My story is like the story of a typical Nigerian. Almost every Nigerian child is not born with a silver spoon in his mouth … I know God is still in the business of raising people from the dungeons…. I became a lawyer, but I don’t want people to suffer what I suffered, so I try to assist indigent students and motherless babies…."

Given the fact that Governor Akpabio hails from a well-known extended family, he could, like many others, pass himself off as one who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Only few would know that was not the case. Admitting that he had challenges going through school offers humanity more lessons than doing otherwise. Humanity stands to lose if such lessons are neither known nor learnt. What are these lessons?

It is very possible for God to raise the needy from the dust and place him among the princes of their people. That means that the man or woman who is now in the desert of fear for tomorrow can look up and hope for a better tomorrow. That realization torpedoes taking suicide, as some have done, as an option. Many had taken that route in times of difficulties, when the clouds were dark and foreboding. Not being able to look beyond the overcast skies, they jumped off into oblivion, and failed to fulfil their destiny.

Akpabio, in an earlier report, still in the Daily Sun, had described his late mother as the best father he never had. Speaking with fondness for a mother who is no more, the governor said he never really knew his dad. At that point it was possible for the mother, like many young women today, to abandon the young Akpabio by wrongly seeing him as a burden. If that had happened, the impact of Akpabio as governor today, and in fact, even earlier, on the society would forever be lost.

Since assumption of office, the Governor has shown one thing: the determination to leave Akwa Ibom a better place than he met it. He has engaged in the construction of roads in the place, even going into tackling federal roads. If this tempo is sustained, then in a short while none of the major towns in the State will be left out of the Akpabio blast. He has embraced the culture of continuity, a near-alien practice in our country. Thus, the Independent Power Plant started by his former boss and some other people-centred projects, are ongoing.

Many there are who bulk under the pressure of challenges. Unfortunately, sometimes they quit when it was just moments, hours or days away from claiming the trophy. This the governor did not do, otherwise he would not be where he is today. The saying that quitters do not win and winners do not quit bears this out. Persons facing problems quit when they see half a bottle full as half a bottle empty. Though the two say virtually the same thing, yet attitude and perspective make the difference glaring. That offers a lesson taught by Robert Schuller that, "tough times do not last, but tough people do."

The Akpabio story also illustrates that Chief Obafemi Awolowo was right when he said that a man’s success should not be measured by the height he has attained, but by the depth from which he has risen. By implication, those who were born with silver spoons in their mouths may not necessarily be great achievers after all. The reason is that some one else had paid the price of their success. That is, of course, mere inheritance; and in any case, most times, such inheritors of successes hardly retain or manage them.

For these inheritors of fame and relevance, there is often the tendency to over-cling to their common patrimony and pedigree. The mere fact that they were born with silver spoons in their mouth so inflates their ego that they seize every opportunity to flaunt it. They at times resort to revising their personal stories all in a bid to elongate their importance and relevance.

The Akpabio story, as the bible says, admonishes us not to despise the days of small things. It tells us that though a man’s beginning may be small, his later days could be great. It encourages the downtrodden that so long there is life and good health, there is hope. It tells us, as Governor himself said, that God is still in the business of raising the poor from the dust to sit with the princes of their people.

There is also the lesson of humility in prominence. The governor has used his present status to encourage others to rise to heights they may not think possible, aware that it could be where one can hardly make ends meet. This perhaps explains why he could give out N4m for the treatment of a child who was almost burnt to death by a lunatic mother; why he could release N6m for the treatment overseas, of a hapless nurse; how he could be spending his birthday with motherless children, and how he now wants all Akwa Ibom children to go to school free, never to pass through the narrow path he had trodden to greatness.