It’s normal to make New Year resolutions. To be fair, it’s not late yet. But more serious people should have settled that as 2018 was coming to an end. Since we are here already, if you haven’t please do.
Just remove the cliché “new year resolutions” it could be tiring at times. Just call it “goals”, it could be “personal goals” or “organisational goals”. It could also be family goals, state or national goals. Sure, state and national goals are captured in the budget proposals of those levels of government. I’m not satisfied with how our goals are captured in our budgets. Somehow, they make them not to look like goals. Goals should be beautiful and inspiring. But I’m not sure that’s what our budgets look like. I will return to that another time.
Personal goals are pretty important at this time. Please take it seriously. As we age, especially for those of us 35 years and above, unintended health issues begin to emerge. Sometimes we are lucky not to be faced by any of those situations. However, even if you are ok, and your doctor reported so, yet you are expected to be a lot more careful with everything you do. I assume you are married, has a job or business. Have kids, about to have or hoping to have. The New Year is a good time to set new goals. Make your goals beautiful. But make it simple, achievable and get stubborn about it. Your goal may be simply to lose weight. Weight is a big issue now. Weight has a correlation with high blood pressure which comes with varying challenges. Set a simple goal of eating less, eating early and cutting out clutters from your meal. Set goal that will return veggies to your meal, fruits to your plates and less and less of beef. Learn to walk instead of biking, if you can start a routine of 30 minutes walk everyday. Try it. Try more water instead of alcohol and see if you will not feel better, think better and produce better at work.
You see, from the above we can point to how your personal goals will affect your work environment. Truth is if you are not healthy, you can’t work to the optimum. If you don’t do your work well, your organisation will suffer. When your organisation suffers, it will be difficult to be rewarded. You cannot say, what you did last year is the best there’s. You can still add value to what you did last year.
It could be in thinking up new ideas, storylines, business trip, sales idea and stuff like that. If you eat well, rest well, sleep well, you will do well at work. You can take that to the bank. The same way you can think up new ideas that can propel a new company that will help remove more Nigerians from the job market. That can be a New Year resolution.
But of course, this is a new year. This topic is not exhaustive. We will continue it. However, this brings me to the New Year. The year of election- 2019! First, I will like to congratulate all Nigerians who made it possible for us to be celebrating our 20th democracy anniversary. This is the first time we will practice democracy without any break for this long since our independence. Ironically, a General who botched our second attempt (second republic 1979-83) is the elected president of today. Things happen in cycles it will seem. As expected, because of this election, the country is tensed up. People are making predictions, including pastors. Politicians are busy with promises, canvassing votes and throwing lies into the bargain.
One thing I beg is that as part of our civic responsibilities, folks should get their PVCs so they get ready to vote. It is our right. The more you vote the more it is possible for you to be voted for. As our elections get better, more and more good people will show up to seek to do the job at different levels. One area you will use to understand that our electoral process is getting better is the loud allegations and accusations by politically exposed persons on the phenomenon called “votes buying”. Although we didn’t invent it, yet it appears to have found its way into our electoral system. We have had inducements in the past, but nothing prepared us for the open purchase of votes in the glare of even law enforcement agents as reports have suggested.
We can determine to do better. INEC keeps doing its utmost to make our voting system more regal. We can help by stopping politicians in their tracks. They must not buy our votes and we should not be among the group that sells votes. It’s not the reward that matters, it is the self worth we are set to let go for filthy lucre. We just don’t care about the country if we collect money to vote a candidate that will mess us up. There has to be a resolution about that too. The INEC official who doesn’t mind to manipulate the process in favour of cash inducement is partly why we keep complaining about our country. We can’t pretend to love the country when we are not prepared to serve it with all our might.
In the end, this year will go in a flash, like others before it. Thus, it is better to make hay while the sun shines. To be sure, there won’t be post election crisis. Things will go smoothly with regard to the election. A winner will emerge in the first ballot. Nevertheless, to resolve to do better this year should always take the front seat.
