CHANGE: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
By Joshua T. Abu
The focus of this presentation: “Change: Challenges and Opportunities with the youths being the main target. In the modern world, change is endemic (regularly recurring) and is constantly picking up break neck speed - but what should concern us most is its causes and how it comes about, the understanding of which will help us cope with it.
We believe there are three things that shape and propel it (change) on. The first is People – the population of the earth is now well over 5 billion while that of Nigeria is over 140 million (2006 Census figures). The aspirations, needs, and desires of people will themselves demand changes in the way we live, work and play as well as changes in infrastructural facilities and so on often over stretched by population explosion. With growth in population and infrastructural development, most facilities are no longer adequate and pose some challenges to the people and government. Expansion then becomes imperative and necessary  and opportunities abound for job creation, contractors and so forth. Population is therefore a prime mover of change and in the process brings about challenges and opportunities.
Secondly, is Technology – one could say that the last two decades has witnessed more technological advances than the sixties and seventies in this country and globally. If we look at the telecommunications industry in the country for example, this becomes more manifest. Before 2003, telephone was only for a very few elites and the lines were equally very few such that it was easy to compile a directory of telephone owners in the state. Today with the coming of mobile cell phone, the story is different. Even one network provider can today boast of having more than thirty (30) million subscribers.
The cell phone has revolutionarised communication and has made business and life generally easier, even though it has also increased expenditure for individuals and families especially for a talking people like we are in Nigeria. The telecommunications network providers are raking huge resources in Nigeria comparable only to petroleum products - the major revenue earner for this country. With night call facilities, our youth unfortunately spend more time at talking in the night and of course at the expense of their studies and health as valuable sleeping times are lost in the process, a challenge that needs to be moderated. Internet facilities are equally gradually becoming more accessible such that students and teachers alike have access to information. This also comes along with its own challenges and opportunities (especially that parents cannot restrict what their children view on the Internet).
Thirdly Knowledge – information – the quantum of information almost doubles every five years. Our access to information and data is equally made easier with technological advances as mentioned earlier. The more information we have the more change it provokes. As is often said, knowledge is power. It is a great agent of change with its attendant challenges and opportunities.
For many people however, change poses a threat. It is seen as undermining stability and security and therefore a natural re-action is to oppose it and treat it negatively. But as Alan Cohen rightly observed, “It is a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new” but was quick to state however that there is “…no real security in what is no longer meaningful” rather, “there is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.”
 In the fast changing world in which we live today therefore, having negative thinking about change has no place. As a matter of fact if we are to succeed, then we must be prepared to embrace change and see in it, its opportunities and challenges through which we as individuals can progress our own careers and fortunes. A statement alluded to the former President of the USA; John F. Kennedy is instructive here when he said: “Change is the law of life. And those who look only on the past or present are certain to miss the future”.
How many people for example, have found jobs and made fortunes out of the telecommunication advances in this town and country at large? What a contrast there is today compared with the times of our fathers and particularly grandfathers. In times past things virtually stood still for decades on end. To pass information you either wrote letters and send by post or courier, sent telegraph, radio message etc. Today through text messages using your cell phone, you could send instant messages to even very many people at the same time. News now flies like birds in the air. Sometimes things will happen here in Jimeta and people abroad might hear of it before those in Yola. Even villages are gradually being linked to the rest of the world through telecommunications advances.
As mentioned earlier, change is endemic and is constantly picking up speedy technological advances that is driving forward and virtually eliminating certain types of jobs. It is at the same time creating a highly competitive world where the individual has got to be prepared to change and to meet the challenges or he/she will be left behind. We must however acknowledge as rightly observed by Bernice Johnson Reagan that: “Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you”; but rather, “they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”
Computer literacy for example, is gradually becoming a necessity rather than a luxury and has pushed so many people out of job (or forced them to retrain) even as it has created jobs for others who are trained for it. No longer can you as young men and young women therefore, expect to find and settle in a job for life as some of us were lucky to have done. But there are many opportunities out there that you must grasp, even though some of might require re-training.
Getting admission into Nigerian universities has equally become challenging. In days past after finishing your examinations, you just waited at home and your admission letter would either reach you by post or you could see it on pages of newspapers, without any additional personal effort. Today the story is different, the competition is keener and tighter as there are far more candidates than the spaces available in our universities and other tertiary institutions due to the dearth of academic facilities in the existing universities. Out of the 1.5 million applications received by JAMB this year for example, only about 300, 000 (or 20%) may gain admission into the 96 universities across the country. This leaves 1.2 million applicants including thousands of qualified candidates without admission (Punch Newspaper, Monday, 6th July, 2009). This development therefore poses serious challenges to our youth, a challenge they must face with perseverance and determination.
But as Albert Einstein once said: “In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity”. Arising from these developments for example, many state governments are now opening their own universities to absorb some of their qualified candidates. That was not necessary before now because some states could not even fill their quarto in existing federal universities. The Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) and other open and distance learning programmes of some universities are similarly creating alternative and additional opportunities for university education. Furthermore, the falling standard of education in our public schools has equally created challenges and opportunities leading to the establishment of more private schools and colleges and even universities.
Similarly, mid-life career change would have been looked upon with horror a few years back, and even regarded as a foolish gamble, but now it is regarded as progressive, stimulating and ambitious. So many people are now changing their careers to other more challenging and profitable ones. It appears today as if it does not matter what subject one study in the university or any other level of education as you could easily switch to doing anything else at any opportune time. We have today for example, many very good actors and musicians, who neither studied theater arts nor music in school respectively; many who are bankers who never studied banking or finance and many more of such mid-life career changes.
One therefore has to be dynamic and sometimes as the situation demands, re-train to fit into new job opportunities and challenges. There is an old adage that says – some people “live to work” while others “work to live”, but the most important thing, is that you should enjoy your work, because if you resent what you are doing, and the same applies to your school work, you will never be a success.
You should therefore seek a career or course to which you can relate and which will give you both pleasure and satisfaction. You are going to spend the greater part of your life at work and to do so in a job that you dislike, can be demoralizing and depressing. Your choice of what you want to study or do must therefore be thoughtfully made because of its consequences for the rest of your life. In this case, the parents must be careful not to insist that their children must offer courses of their choice. Remember that it is the interest of the children that matters here and not that of parents as they are the ones to live with such choices for the rest of their life.
I must in rounding up this speech suggest that in everything you do, you should strive to do it well and accept every challenge that comes along. You should appreciate the fact that every challenge that you accept provides an opportunity – an opportunity to prove yourself. Never on the other hand, should you allow failure to divert you away from your focus and vision. If having set your objectives, you fail to achieve them as could often be the case, don’t despair, don’t give up, don’t quit. You should rather use the experience gained (because failure is itself a challenge and a great teacher), pick yourself up, dust yourself off, re-assess the situation and keep going. Remember that the real test of success is not in success itself but the ability to rise above your failures. The Americans have taught the world this principle – they have the ability to drive forward despite setbacks which many of us would otherwise consider to be disasters.
Arnold Palmer Golfer, who was a legend in his life time, had a framed plague on the wall of his office which is very inspiring and it reads:
 “If you think you are beaten, you are
 If you think you dare not, you don’t
 If you like to win, but think you can’t
 It’s almost certain that you won’t
 Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger woman or man,
 But sooner or later those who win are those who think they can”.
President Barack Obama also taught this to the world through his popular campaign slogan of “Yes you can!” and there he is today as the first black to be the President of USA in over 200 years of America’s independence.