If you have lived a year or two in Nigeria, one thing you would have noticed is that there is not enough room for laziness; everyone is like a bee, they are busy getting engaged with one thing or the other regardless of the result or its status before the law.
This habit must have been what President Buhari was referring to when he hinted after his 10 days trip abroad, that he knew the Inspector General of Police was tackling headlong the issue of insecurity particularly kidnapping in the country because he could see that the IGP was losing weight. Although the president might have meant to give a sarcastic reply, such comments however revealed the habit of many of Nigerian youths engaging in all sorts of menial job in order to make ends meet.
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Daily, thousands of youths are seen on Nigerian roads trying to hustle their ways through life difficulties. While these actions are not condemned because of the issue of unemployment in the country, it is necessary to implore our youths to take a gentle ride with the daily activity of waking up and setting out to work all day under the harsh condition of the Nigerian weather. The result of this is that it often leads to stress and depression, which has a way of reducing the already low quality of life in Nigeria.
In 2017, a research conducted by Bloomberg revealed that Nigeria tops the list as the most stressful place to work in the world. With this in mind, it would not be wise to continue to labour everyday and pay less attention to our health.
I think the focus of the Nigerian youths in their daily activities should be results and not just working hard and losing weight while having little or nothing to show for it. They need to realise that the measure of hard work in this century lies in result, not weight loss. If this is adopted and our daily work habit is adjusted, it is believed that we would create an environment where stress is reduced and of course prevent the occurrence of modern ailment caused by stress.
Oluwadamilare Ajiboye
Ibadan