By Emeka Anyanwu

How simple is the world? Yet 99% of people go astray. There is only one thing needed in the world, the rest is story. Our purpose is to serve our gifts to the world, no more no less. Jesus Christ said, ‘Seek you the kingdom of God and every other thing will be added unto you.’ This is how simple the world is. Moving further, Solomon advised, ‘A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before the great.’

Your gift is the kingdom of God if serve righteously and appropriately. Your gift is your purpose if you give it meaning. What you are passionate about eventually becomes your talent.

According to Brian Tracy, ‘Life is like a combination lock; your job is to find the right numbers, in the right order, so you can have anything you want.’ He says it all. Identify your gift, hone and strategically serve it to the world.

The irony is, talent is worth little without the hard graft that must go with it. Talent alone is not enough. The challenge now is not the right numbers but in right order. This obviously echoes what seems to be happening in African community in UK and perhaps other communities. Where people have talents but don’t know what to do with them. They lay the blame on others except themselves. They forget that great talent goes with rigour, technique and discipline. These three are what Brian Tracy said is the right order. Do we have talent? Yes we do. Hard work, discipline and strategy bring out the excellence and perfection required to serve our gift to the world.

We have two talented individuals selected to participate in a kind of sport, the result after weeks of conducting experiment revealed that persistence was required. The one that put in more hours of hard work was finally selected because the talent of the other that was not selected wasn’t growing. Commitment and hard work are what distinguish talents.

This is the root of our concerns over the Honorary Doctorate scandal spreading amongst African Community in UK. We can’t continue to spread the spirit of Slavery- hatred for work, laziness, timidity, poor self-concept, low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, instant gratification, instant cash, failure to plan, and earn and selfishness.

This means lack of leadership in our community, if we don’t encourage hard work we are installing mediocrity, farcical and lacklustre standards in community. No wonder our teenagers are finding it difficult to compete with others, making it possible for them to join gangs and stab themselves in the street of London. This is another way of letting our community down.

It is sorry ignominy for our community leaders to connive with fake agencies and be spreading honorary doctorate like virus when the recipients have not shown any credible work for it. This is a travesty. Many of the recipients don’t even know what they’re receiving in the first place. Huge amounts of money exchanging hands. How they manage to swindle this money off the vulnerable people remains a mystery. Do they think they can con these people without their action leaking to the public. What excuse do they have for making Honorary Doctorate a laughing stock.

The greatest evil is not the money exchanging hands, but sending message to our children that they don’t need to work hard, earn and plan for their lives is so embarrassing.

I know, not everyone in our community they approached bought into this hype. We listen to some of the people approached and other victims of this scandal, what they told us violates the conscience of every sensible human being. This goes to tell the mess that is going on in our community. It is high time we started to clean this mess. We should be more interested on the young people dreaming of success, make sure their talents are nurtured and noticed, instead of killing them off in the altar of fake Honorary Doctorate.

It is not difficult for the affected people to rescind their money, since the body chiselling the Honorary Doctorate is fake and the individual running this trash are traceable in our community. Talk to the individuals involved, speak to police as this perhaps is a criminal act, or get in touch with C. Hub Magazine with your story.