This is a story
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Gracing my feed with Victory Banjo's stunning JPEG, cause Friday is here. You probably must have come across one or two things about her in the recent past few weeks. Okay, lemme spare you the stress of finding out, she's that Nigerian genius that caused a stir with her poignant WASSCE, SAT, IELTS and JAMB results.
Here's one youngster I've drawn a lot of inspiration from, not just in reaction to her Aced academic reports, but linking her outstanding performances to the time she had to get all those done. She did all those in 2020, guys!
I know you might not really figure why this is especially "a thing" for me but... I think you'll do at the end of the day. The bottom line is that PROGRESS IS INEXCUSABLE.
A little time travel to 2020, shall we? Viola!
The pandemic struck seriously in the first quarter leading to lockdowns and shutdowns. Being quite a new thing in people's consciousness, it was a whole new adaptation to be done and no one could readily call it easy. Then series of unrests and chaos followed in the second quarter. Rising price levels, increasing insecurity, robbery cases, incessant killings, car jacking and every evil that is enough cripple any individual's effort at progress, cause what's the stress for?
People got messed up emotionally and chocked with mental health concerns, the media space got saturated with talks of people tuning down or even eliminating their overall expectations (goals) for the year 2020. Some started pushing things over to the "next" week, month, and then, year. All decisions based on a psychological picture of a better next week/month/year.
Truth is, it never really got any better. Third quarter came with an even worse escalation of societal concerns ranging from the aftermaths of the #EndSARS protests which saw thug attacks, hoodlum craze, parliative loots, wanton killings by the forces and 'nots,' et al. Another sequel of bad news! A second wave of COVID followed right afterwards ushering us into the new year, 2021. So you can agree with me that 2020 was quite an extremely eventful year.
Victory did all those work in these very turbulent environmental situations and came out top? Call her something bigger, cause genius isn't a good fit.
Here's to say that the external environment, especially ours in Nigeria isn't promising anyone that safe space required for dreams to thrive. We can already see the progress report for this year, it looks like a dangerous mutation of 2020 we never knew. But, rolling your plans and goals to an uncertain time of "safety and serenity" isn't a good strategy, you're getting in a trap.
You'll have to weather the storm. Create your own serenity out of the chaos. Sometimes you might have to push with your stomach rumbling in anxiety and a fear of what's coming next, don't give much thoughts to it, you can't change much at this time; at least not our federal executives. Keep putting in the work, GIVE YOUR PROGRESS NO EXCUSES.