Connect with us

Opinion

Hustle Culture: The Deadliest Virus

Published

on

Ayomide Bakare

By Ayomide Bakare

The term “hustle” is a norm in today’s society. It serves as a means to survive and thrive, in spite of the devastating economy, with people trying to provide whilst sacrificing their dreams, their pride, and their social time to make a dime. This demeaning lifestyle has pulled  away the drive of the youths to aspire for what they desire. This deadly virus has made its victims  lose touch of their true self in pursuit of the  society’s unhealthy view of success.

Hustle culture, in its simplest term, is seen as centred on hard work for a long period of time and sacrificing one’s social life and self-care in order to succeed. It is mostly spread through social media: “Young people are millionaires,” “money can get you power and recognition,” “it is the only way one can be happier and more comfortable,” “it is completely worth it.” Social media has found a way to make hustle the only medication for life’s issues. On social media apps such as TikTok and YouTube, there are over a million searches on “side hustle,” and most  of the content created does not teach one to make money but remains another form of hustle, creating a vicious cycle. But how did this cycle really begin?

Using Nigerian homes as a primary example, the family is the first agent of socialisation and the place where the cycle of hustle culture is bred. It is a fact that most Nigerian parents compare their children to other children, and it is for this reason that as they begin to socialise among classmates and friends, comparison begins. Comparison enters their minds, and it becomes a pacemaker, a sort of symbiotic drug that constantly takes more than it gives. It is from that stage that they become insecure individuals whose only form of reward is  through gifts for being the smartest, the neatest, and the  best, up until their workplace, where rewards are given to the ones who work the hardest. The individuals aware of this cycle create a hustle to benefit from it, and the ones who are unaware are unfortunately left prioritising long hours for their success.

There must be a curiousity that lingers; perhaps one might wonder, “How does working hard not breed success?” It is an excellent question, and the truth is one must work hard to become successful but not to the point it becomes an upmost priority to the person’s health. It is known that “health is wealth.” Therefore, when a person gains money but loses their health, surely that person becomes a vacuum for their own money. Yet hustle culture heavily chains down an individual’s mind, causing guilt, shame, and anxiety because there is an overwhelming sense of unfulfillment that weakens the identity of that individual. For example, young people who are unemployed or receiving a small amount of pocket money feel an overwhelming obligation to improve themselves.There’s impatience and a constant feeling that they are wasting time when they have not discovered their own identities. Family and friends have now become unimportant, and success is the greatest milestone. It also allows for toxic positivity—the act of remaining positive no matter how dire a situation might become.

Moreover, hustle culture significantly drains an individual physically; the list begins with fatigue and insomnia, leading to high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, and tension headaches, and continues until there is nothing left to give to the hustle.

If we look at Nigeria today, the youths have become apathetic towards political activity and their education since what matters most is to become successful because success breeds respect, respect breeds power, and power is everything. It’s a vicious cycle, to be sure!

The question that remains is: how must one avoid hustle culture? After all, it is a deadly virus. The most important thing a person can do is define their version of success. Society has defined too many versions of success in different aspects of an individual’s life. There must be something more important to you than putting in a huge amount of time working hard. Another solution is to set boundaries. “One must work hard,” which is true, but there is an allocated time for everything. Create a working schedule that does not completely ruin the way you behave towards others; be ready to say “no” to particular things that feel like obligations; and work at the time you know you can put in the most.

There is also an option to rest. Create time to reset; it is the only way one can perform at their best. Burning out will only lead to the sacrifices being made going nowhere.An individual should also be ready to ask for help; besides, it is taught that one should not bite off more than they can chew. Asking for help goes a long way against taking on several responsibilities that will, in the end, leave one incredibly stressed. Finally, focus on your priorities. When priorities are defined, one will find themselves achieving most of their goals in an easier and healthier manner. It allows one to make proper time for multiple tasks they hope to complete without getting burned out.

Ultimately, hustle culture is a black hole; it viciously takes everything that comes next to it until there is nothing but mental, social, and health issues. It takes away one’s identity and replaces it with success, which remains cancerous to the world in the end. One must remember that “Rome was not built in a day.” Success requires patience, and there is no hustle that comes with patience. Making proper decisions about how one may impact others and knowing that there was something other than success experienced allows an individual to become their entire selves. No matter the situation, do not give into hustle culture. By prioritising self-care and being healthy, success can become attainable.

. Bakare writes from the English Department, University of Lagos.

 

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Opinion

Toyin Falola At 72: The Conscience Of The Nation

Published

on

Prof. Serges Kamga

By Serges Kamga

One of the most important yet demanding jobs in life is teaching and writing. Teachers, by virtue of their calling, foster the right to education and shoulder the responsibility of transmitting values and information to the learners who are believed to become the leaders of tomorrow. Teaching is difficult generally because it mandates the teachers to involve themselves in many activities in their efforts to become active and relevant in their engagements and management of the students. The teacher becomes the doctor within the four walls of the classroom because they would have to carry out pedagogical but not surgical operations in the minds of their students who would graduate to become valuable to the project of community development. To, therefore, become successful in this engagement, the teacher is required to have sufficient information that they can use to enhance the success of students in all ramifications. At the same time, the teacher is a lawyer, for they are expected to defend the students when faced with consuming challenges in life or the process of their development. Again, teachers, irrespective of their discipline, will have to inconvenience themselves just so that they can become valuable and useful in the lives of their students. There are many other things that the teachers must do in an effort to transform the lives of humans and the human society itself, and they often embrace this very responsibility with open arms. It is difficult to come across humans making invaluable contributions to the human world who have not passed through the tutelage of sound teachers. Interestingly, the responsibilities of a writer are similar to that of a teacher.

Meanwhile, the expectations of excellence from the teachers and writers are not exclusively for the students; human communities also have high expectations of their teachers and writers for obvious reasons. The teachers and writers in every community are their conscience and even their consciousness. Without them, society may be stuck in a stagnant state for a very long time. Writers especially are believed to undertake the mandate of wrestling the soul of the society from the hands of beasts who want to use it for provincial objectives. Falola belongs to the category of writers who have remained committed to helping their homeland to detoxify its organs of things that could potentially bring about its imminent destruction. He has become the champion of ethics. However, it is not unlikely that the human system will take up behaviors and attitudes that are potentially destructive in very many ways. They often do this not because they are unaware of the destructive consequences or potential of what they are about to do but because they prioritize personal ambitions beyond collective safety or beyond the common good. The responsibility of detoxification, therefore, rests on the human conscience to ask them why they think certain actions are to be considered even despite their knowledge of their possible problems. In a nation, humans are the different organs of the body that take up negative, destructive, and dangerous behaviors because they are calculated to be of immense importance to them, even when it comes to the detriment of society. In the same vein, certain humans are controlled by conscience. In this case, Falola, a writer of international repute, is the conscience of the nation, given his very significant responsibilities. Follow me.

In legal parlance, the State is the duty-bearer of human rights. This means it is obliged to ensure that citizens enjoy their rights. Yet, for this to happen, sometimes the state needs to be held accountable and reminded to deliver on its commitments to people. As the conscience of the nation, Falola has been at the forefront of intellectual protest examining efforts and policies of African countries, including his country, Nigeria, in a bid to identify the potential benefits associable with them, and where it is nonexistent, he has always spoken his mind to question the moral rectitude of efforts and decisions of the government. Of course, people are at the center of everything in the human world, to the extent that it is their responsibility to create ideas and values that they believe would bring sanity to the world.

Once it is apparent, for example, that they are, however, overcome by selfish ambition, they need to be examined in critical ways so that the decisions of the few would not jeopardize the interest of the collective. This is called “speaking truth to power,” as the well-known Journalist Prof JJ Tabane would say in South Africa. Falola, on many occasions, has subjected to test the policies and interventions of the government not with a view to discrediting the actors in these institutions but to ensure that their contributions are eternally effective to the project of resurgence and emancipation or full enjoyment of human rights. In that case, the writer is conceived as an integral part of society, for he/she offers resourceful contributions to collective issues even when dissatisfied forces threaten his/her position. The sense of right or wrong is not always important to people, especially in situations when they must achieve parochial intentions, but then, if such is allowed without intervention or questioning, it would expose everyone to problems that they could be incapable of solving at some point. Falola has produced knowledge at different phases of his growth, and recently, he has increased his dedication to this mandate, and a couple of them will be examined here.

Falola became an in-expendable voice of emancipatory advocacy through his continued consistency about the place of language in the preservation and access of resources or historical materials needed for contemporary insights. As I argue in my book on Falola’s works, The Complex Interplay between Power, Politics, and African Agency: The Philosophy of Toyin Falola, Falola contends that the otherwise stereotypic sentiment tying African knowledge production to the marginal space has been sustained because there is an archival problem when it comes to accessing the records of epistemic discoveries associated with past Africans. He believes, for example, that the absence of knowledge production linked to Africa has contributed to the emasculation of their intellectual power in the community of intellectuals where ideas are used for the growth of a people. Meanwhile, absence does not signify a lack of existence in this sense; it only showcases that there is a force that challenges its existence in fundamental ways. That force, that is, would be eventually realized as an archival and linguistic barrier that is militating against the recognition of African inputs in the global knowledge economy. Falola reminds his country and the continent at the same time that unless they retrieve knowledge of their ancient time and refine it for contemporary adoption, Africa will continue to be a trashcan for others where they dump ideologically ineffective solutions to the myriad of homemade challenges. For that, there has been a steady reminder to his country that it is important that knowledge mining should start with their conscious efforts to promote Indigenous values so that they can chart new ways to develop in this time and period.

Falola has always been very consistent about the multidimensional nature of Nigerian (and African) leadership problems and has remained with his argument that the nature of power transition has always impeded true growth, especially for Africans. In my examination of power in the works of Falola, I argue that Falola is unequivocal in showing that the transition of power from the Europeans who took it from African kings and queens but bequeathed it to the elites during independence has been a cringing problem for the potential of the people. He mentions, for example, that African neocolonial leaders have always been victims themselves, but one that basks in the surplus of material wealth, which was enough to silence them. This is what he means. Nigerian and African leaders of the current time benefit from the shamble political structures that they inherited from erstwhile colonial imperialists, and that is the reason for their continued patronage of the system. The structure was dismissive of established and existing indigenous systems, and its survival was built on the onslaught of the latter. The power that was taken from the indigenous leaders was, however, returned to the hands of the elites, who themselves are the very creation of the European colonialists. It goes without saying that the unscrupulous government available in the country and the continent is aware of its relative minimum impact, which is where they should have been giving maximum results. They are content with that slow level of development because they do not share the mandate that the traditional leaders have towards their people. This, therefore, helps to remind politicians that much as they might have the interest of the people at heart, they cannot bring home success if they continue to maintain the structures of despondency that they inherited. This is a clear call for the inclusion of the African indigenous system in the governance of African countries, as requested by His Excellency Thabo Mbeki, the former President of South Africa.

The contributions of Falola have continued to penetrate the various disciplines known to man. As a watchdog and conscience of the society, he educates us about the invaluable contribution of women to the development of African epistemic legacies and, thus, calls for the reevaluation of the collective stance against women. Females have always been critical to the growth of the continent, and it goes without saying that what they achieve in Nigerian and African history cannot be underwritten. If anything, they have always been recognized as a very vibrant tool in the making and transmission of knowledge for the benefit of humankind. Beautiful contributions associated with women cannot be overemphasized on the ground that they are not documented in orthographic representation as their male counterparts. And as I argue in my book on Falola’s philosophy, women in recent African history have not been found wanting. More importantly, they have used their forward-looking ability to project a future through the creation and transmission of knowledge. African women are found in the category of educators who used oral mediums to put across their messages, and they have been very instrumental in creating invaluable knowledge useful for humanity at different points in time. For this reason, they do not deserve the marginal space created for them by their male counterparts or through institutions that are erected at different times of human inquiry. Falola ensures that such engagement helps to reiterate the significance of women’s rights and gender equality with specific attention to the role of women in building a worthwhile culture and sustaining a civilization for a very long time. For this, he always reminds society of what they must do in order to make themselves continually relevant and productive. Without a conscience of the nation, the standard of living of people will not improve, and human rights in general will not be worth the paper they are written on.

Professor Serges Kamga is the Dean of the Law School, University of the Free State, South Africa .

Continue Reading

Opinion

Professor Babafemi Badejo: An Icon Of Icons

Published

on

Dele Jegede In Conversation With Prince Yemisi Shyllon
Prof. Toyin Falola

By Toyin Falola

People’s journey in life differs for fundamental reasons. First, every individual has specific God-given responsibilities to fulfill in the land of the living, and for that reason, they are imbued with fitting characteristics with which they would navigate the jungle of life where they exist. Second, humans have a body of history of which they are usually unaware but become players in the sustenance or resistance of the same history. For illustration, people come to life from a family with a special history, and ahead of them is a permanent mandate to make their mark in building or destroying such history so that people who would come from them would not face unwarranted complications that can endanger them.

Such is the complexity of the human world in which everyone would shape their own life. Professor Badejo falls within the category of individuals who boldly face the reality of their world and decide henceforth that rather than be mere observers in the unraveling of their existence, they would become active determinants that shape, write, and inscribe their names on the sand of time. The activity of struggling to acquire education during the youthful time is mostly undertaken by courageous individuals, not because it was actually a hard thing to enroll for academic work but because on the shoulders of every schoolgoer is the responsibility to channel their energies to change the tides of their people and become a compass of their collective aspirations. In essence, it was not enough to attend school as everyone would want; you needed to make something critical out of it.

Badejo’s acquisition of political and legal education was the foundation of his intellectual evolution, becoming the basis of his cognitive development while simultaneously exposing him to the rubrics and universal ideals of the human world. The sage became conscious of his responsibility to operationalize his initiatives that would transform society, and that was the turning point of his sagacious disposition to everything.

The first indicator of his awareness lies in his decision to become a teacher. It is not an exaggeration to argue that teachers are the shapers of human society, literally because they are given the responsibility to develop the collective cognition of their environment to trigger the minds of their students to become useful and helpful. This professor became a teacher, and his quality intellect during that exercise can be measured by the number of people he has nurtured. Many people today are a testament to his exemplary teaching qualities and how his skillful delivery of educational insights has become a constant source of energy renewal. But this does not tell the whole of his story.

Unbeknownst to many, Badejo started his early work as a productive researcher. He has been able to gather important data that are used in a number of educational departments, and I cannot emphasize enough how this has inspired some level of changes in the human world. No wonder that his intellectual significance stretches further to the conflict management arena. It was during his time as a learner of law that he added this feather to his cap.

When you examine the aggressiveness of his intellectual production, especially one that can be accessed in his writing and publications, one cannot but concede that he remains an outstanding individual in whatever he does. I have the honor to inform the public that no one can overemphasize Badejo’s contributions to decoloniality and decolonization. I need to remind you that this intellectual engagement is a dedication to the course of cognitive remodeling and freedom away from the shackles of ideological contraption that Africans have found themselves in for ages.

Badejo thus understands that the first duty towards the reclamation of lost African values is to re-engineer their cognition, which has become a trans-generational victim of self-defeatist teachings that have altogether weakened their ability to progress in whatever form. In one beautiful piece of work, this talented professor emphasizes how deeply ingrained the contamination of African knowledge content has spread across different domains of their existence. For example, political ideologies that are projected in Africa have no particular co-referentiality with their social and cultural systems, and it is important that when such contradictions occur, it would be very difficult for the attainment of progress. Therefore, it is just a logical decision that such irreconcilable political ideologies be dumped entirely, and where that is impossible, perhaps because people are deeply immersed in it, it should be radically recalibrated to accommodate the things that are peculiar to the people. This is a testament to his extraordinary intelligence.

No wonder, in his work, “Situating Democracy…,” Badejo explains the rubrics of the term, revealing that democracy is only “beautiful” when it reflects the nuances of a people. He insists that democratic governments could be dangerous to themselves and the people over which they govern on the occasion that they do not contain and internalize ideals in the local community. If a people collectively decide that this is the form of democratic policy and governance that they wanted, it would be an affront to their human rights to negate their position if they are not self-destructive or immolative. After all, the fundamental definition of democracy is that it comes from the people, and it is meant for them, too. In that case, one cannot but situate democracy within the context of a society so that they can achieve greatness and accomplish their desires as and when due. Although such debates and topics are controversial, one cannot accept that the message in them is golden. I can confidently say this because I am aware that this intellectual has used every available opportunity he grabs to educate people about the affairs of their society and how they can become models and an icon of transformation that the world would look up to. Of course, he has always acknowledged that people’s desire for change and progress is universal, and for that reason, there should be some universal traits to a democratic system. The fact remains, however, that he prioritizes the safety of the people over whom democracy would be used, and this remains a valid argument.

Meanwhile, Badejo has never compromised his callings, serving as the conscience and the consciousness of the masses, for he understands the basic reasons for the perpetual decline of Nigeria’s political and economic value. Badejo has never failed to educate anyone who cares to listen that Nigeria’s democracy’s inability to challenge its contemporaries across the globe is that its custodians are enmeshed in corruption controversies that ordinarily make things difficult to improve in their ordinary national life.

Badejo has educated everyone that corruption thrives in Nigeria because there is a deliberate incarceration of the legal frameworks that would have been the right checks and balances to the system available. He laments the pervasiveness of corruption and how it continually threatens the possibility of genuine transformation in the country.

When Badejo preaches through his work, one cannot particularly conclude who his intended audience is, even when he spells it out. The reason for this is that it is always common that he uses his message in ways that would reveal ideas in his determination to capture everything or everyone that is found wanting in a particular allegation. Africa, for example, has been consistently described in very negative terms, especially in relation to its courtship with corruption, and it is no surprise that Badejo addresses the issue in his works.

Despite his dedication to his professional responsibilities to social and political affairs, Professor Badejo has never failed to contribute to human and community development. He has become so instrumental to the growth of the human world that he is recognized for being relentless in helping people regardless of personal cost. In his capacity as a lawyer, he has offered his skills to save people who are wrongly persecuted and used his capacity to bring light to their world. It is particularly enticing that he has offered many of these services pro bono. Apart from offering professional advice and services to people, Badejo has also been very effective in helping to shed light on international issues for people who cannot afford his services and need them.

There is hardly any aspect of life to which he has not had his tentacle of influence spread. As a matter of fact, he has seen the avoidance of conflicts in many African countries by being a mediator, using his experience and expertise to convince parties of the need to embrace dialogue and inclusivity. His ideas have been able to foster peace in many places where he gets to. A man of peace deserves peace.

PS: This is a preliminary piece to celebrate Badejo’s forthcoming 70th birthday in March 2025.

Continue Reading

Opinion

As The Old Year Dies, New Hopes Arise!

Published

on

By Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

The old year dies. An old year dies. New hopes arise. Twenty-twenty-four will die in days. Never to return. It will go into the abyss. We shall not miss it. Or, most of us will not miss it. It will be remembered as the year of infinite hardship in Nigeria. A year of hardship in which, in his first media chat, the President, father of the nation said that he doesn’t regret his hard policies. The people are suffering. So be it. They will enjoy the fruits later. No words of comfort. So insensitive. So uncaring. In 1983, then governor of Bendel State, the late Professor Ambrose Alli asked hungry, striking teachers whether they wanted him to produce money from his blood! That question sealed his fate. He was voted out at the next election, and the compassionate Samuel Ogbemudia became governor.

2024! It is the year we will never forget. It is the year of the triumph of the captors of the State. The year that some mothers sold off their children in order to feed. Or to raise capital and trade. Or just to survive. It is a year of full subsidy removal. It is the year when dozens died while queueing for the so-called palliatives. The year gas explosions killed many. The year in which bandits took control of parts of a state, while soldiers were busy killing innocent citizens in Okuama, Delta State. It is the year when bandits seized whole families. It is the year of slander, of defamation, and near-violent reprisals. It is the year of sudden deaths because of life’s pressures. The ebullient Onyeka Onwenu died while entertaining guests. What pains did she bear? It is the year where psychiatric wards were filled with patients. Victims of depression. It is the year the price of rice killed the appetite. It is the year of silence from the House of Men of God. The priests have elected to stay with their chattels in brothels of dishonour while the Feast of death reigns over the land!

A year lasts three hundred and sixty-five days. Or three hundred and sixty-six days, when it bears the burden of a leap year. Why is a leap year the brother of drowning compatriots? Yet, sometimes a year could seem like forever. A year with slow feet drags us back. Or keeps us still. And we cannot afford to stay motionless on account of a slow year. So, the year must die. It is true that even a sweet year will die.

What gives life to a year? Things said? Things done? Things undone? A year is potpourri of events. What is not done is part of the spirit of the year. Some years are more powerful than others. They carry with them the power of change. Of fortune. Of failure. Of disaster. Of death. Of life. Of escape. Of exclusion and inclusion. The force of a passing year hits us in different ways. How it comes and from what direction, we are not prophets to tell. So, we grope. We hope. We plod on in hope that the new year will grow vegetables for us even in our dark days. What audacity! What presumptuousness!

Sometimes we are in a hurry to push the year away. A year that is bad, needs to go away. No one wants to live a permanent nightmare. A bad year kills the spirit. Only the strong ones or the ones favoured by heaven will survive. Those who arrive at their last bus stop will go no further. They will pass away with the spirit and temper of the year. Whose fault is it? The year? The managers of the people, that is, the government? Just providence? In times of an epidemic, it is bad for everybody, even if not all carry the virus. The fear of the virus is enough prison, as it happened during COVId-19.

A good man can die in a bad year. Just as a bad man can die too with the year. When a year opens its belly to receive your body into the abyss, your hands will be hanging from your sides. And the carriers of the carcass will proclaim how heavy the carcass has become. It is the way of life. It is the road which mankind has travelled on in aeons. Yet, we do not live in humility. We live as if we own life, as if it was not given to us, and that it can be taken away at short notice.

Yet, how dreadful would it be if we were to live in constant dread of disaster, of disease, and of death! Physical trepidation could injure the heart. Could traumatise one and lead to mental health challenges. The joy of living would disappear. So, we are wired to forget so that we may enjoy the little pleasures of this life. The tragedy or death of a loved one – family, friend, colleague, neighbour – reminds us with a jolt of our mortality, our frail being, our smallness in the mighty scheme of things. We are not different from animals in this sense. There was this Anglican bishop who used to urge politicians to visit the morgue once every year. In his view, that would sober them up for a while. Have you been to the morgue recently to view a loved one? Have you ever been to a morgue? How did you feel even in the most sophisticated and ‘poshest’ morgue? This call to forget and remember at the same time is one of the conundrums of humanity. How we walk the tight rope makes or mars us. Every man his fate, every man his cross, every man his sadness, everyman his death.

From the sobering morgue experience, we move to the burial site and immediately walt off to the party venue and dance away with zest and gusto, forgetting the dead, remembering only the living. And we have no apology for that. It is the way of life. It is the way of the living. To remember is to cry. To forget is to live on! Contradictory? Yes. The world is filled with contradictions.

Except we record the events of the year, no one remembers the year. No one can forget 2019/2020, the year of COVID-19! So, the year must give birth. Give birth to etches. Things to remember. Memories are the library of a dead or dying year. What memories do we hold about a year? The dying year 2024 took my closest sibling away. Wish 2024 never came. True that our paths bifurcated on account of social and religious frictions. Yet the bond of eternal brotherhood remains. It is the way of memories. It is the way of life. Regrets often come later, after the event, after the facts.

Reading this essay is no guarantee that the reader will survive 2024 and enter the belly of 2025. Those who left the earth on 25th December had high hopes. But providence had other plans. January 1st 2025 is coming. But will this coming be the going away of some? We are no prophets to tell! Only time will tell!

HAPPY 2025!

Continue Reading

Top Stories