SUCCESS AND EXCELLENCE- PROFILE OF CHINEDU ECHERUO

I was excited when I heard the news of Apple Inc.'s acquisition of Hopstop.com- an emergent dot com company specializing in directory hosting online with headquarters in New York City.   This trail blazing event for an African lays a good precedent in Africa's drive to modernize; founded on innovation, technology and fiscal independence. 

The recipient of this singular honor, Chinedu Echeruo, 38, who has become another sterling example of a Young African Pioneer with leadership qualities worth emulating, created Hopstop.com from his ingenious imagination in 2005, as an online city transit guide offering map apps of over 300 cities around the world. Over a span of 8 years , the company has grown with numerous awards in tow to become a Fortune 500 company with prospect for phenomenal growth in the future.

But while we celebrate this exemplary young African with the foresight for success, it is important to appreciate some variables that worked together to make him 'blow up' in time, enough to be recognized and affiliated to Apple Incorporated. He first invested a bulk of his resources on getting quality education which gave him the edge to compete globally. Coupled with his sterling education, he was strong and creative enough to innovate an online resource today indispensable to tourists and commuters in advanced cities of the world. With commitment, development and research, Chinedu Echeruo built Hopstop.com from scratch to become the multi million dollars enterprise we all celebrate today.

The lesson for Young African Pioneers in the making to learn from the life and success of this young man is that globalism has opened frontiers formerly closed to blacks by reason of race or country of origin to excel in life. With a keen drive for excellence and leadership cultivated in young and virile minds of Africans in various fields like science, technology, fashion, art, music, movie , research and innovation, like that of Chinedu Echeruo of Hopstop.com, it is my fervent belief that Africa is on the way to a complete modern renaissance that will guarantee her total emancipation and set her on the path to greatness. If you believe in this ideal like I do, please say amen.

Aluta continua,

Wale Owoeye Esq.

Of leaders and visions

"Leaders make a country". This was the answer given by an Indian thinker on the problems of Africa and I wholly believe he is on point. Indeed, African continent is in acute need of visionary leadership to drive her dream for total emancipation and make her economically and politically sovereign. From the North,the East, the South and all to the West of Africa, the teeming 300 million population of motherland prays and waits for the miracle of leadership to happen, which will turn the fate of the black world around for good.

Take China for example; fifteen years ago many would doubt the feat this giant nation has achieved for herself today in terms of power and prestige. Strong and buoyant in economy, focused and principled in vision, dedicated and committed in drive for excellence, and principled in the pursuant of its vision; this nation started her climb to stardom with one leader in Mao Tse Dong, whose example of visionary leadership inspired fifty other leaders in succession that kept alive his dream of greatness for China. It was these crop of honorable men that sustained the vision the whole world celebrates today; it was they who mid-wived today's ultra modern China with power and prestige among the comity of nations and with a phenomenal growth rate, even in global economic recession. Malaysia, Indonesia, India…all had leaders at the center that coordinated their drive for advancement and made them achieve a giant leap from an under developed nation to a confident one within a minimal time.

The question is: can't we replicate these examples of resounding success in our homeland Africa, today replete with men and women of great resources and industry either unfertilized or under utilized. Can't we produce leaders that will inspire leadership in others and continue a legacy of greatness that will turn our continent into a respectable player in world politics and not beggars and misfits we presently represent. Is there hope for change in the makeup of today's African leaders, who prize the welfare of their pockets more than the welfare of their people and have no inkling of vision except to perpetuate themselves in office and live forever? The answers to these salient questions pose far reaching significance to Africa's drive for full emancipation.

On my part, knowing to lead others well, one must first lead himself right; I have taken a stand for change and I will urge all my readers with a vision for change in our continent, especially the young African pioneers to bestir themselves and start cultivating the regime of their mental and spiritual magnitudes for our commonwealth's advancement. Let's learn positivity everyday to better ourselves and try, with a committed will, to eschew such vices like corruption, dishonesty, wastage, brigandage, injustice and insincerity that forms the hallmark of today's African leaders and which continues to hold us down as a people from advancing and flowering. CHANGE MUST HAPPEN IN AFRICA and it begins with you and me. To those like me who believes in leaders with vision, agents of change, committed to enacting change for the overall good of Africa, I say our day is coming. If you believe like I do , please say a loud AMEN!

Aluta continua,

Wale Owoeye

PS: I will like to celebrate Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State on the launching of the suspension bridge in Lagos that put Nigeria on the world map and on other welfarist and modern initiatives of his government . More power and vision to your drive to make Lagos a place of dreams. 

         

33 Years of Barbarism

33 Years!

 In 2013, that would make the number of years that Robert Mugabe has spent in office, as the de facto Head of State in Zimbabwe, should he be "elected" again in the ongoing election in the country. The questions goes on end…Why should this be possible in an office that is supposed to be an elective one? Is he really the "only messiah" with divine mandate to rule over Zimbabwe? How truly democratic is this country presently conducting a sham of an election vilified by the whole world?

Robert Mugabe,89 , saucy and rude, is a maverick statesman with an unhealthy tenacity for power in Zimbabwe- a country with a long history of degradation, economic retrogression, cultural despondency, national  dependency and human rights abuse. If the world will only ask this old man to state the merits on which he is campaigning to continue in office-whether the people want or not, I'm sure he will only stutter for lack of what to say; for the evidence of his long rule is there to see in Zimbabwe, rated lowest on the world economic list with inflation rate never before seen in modern times; a country in a perfect state of anomie.

Will the youths of Zimbabwe just sit and watch as their future is mortgaged even before they get there? The answer lies in whether the country possesses the critical mass with dream for emancipation, who will take a stand through politics to wrest their country from continued imposed oligarchy on their political mandate.

Perhaps, fate would lend a hand and make a martyr of this oldest living African President at this decisive year of his rule, the 33rd year, when the fate of the world was once sealed with the death of Jesus Christ at 33 years old. If you believe as I do, say amen!

Aluta continua,

Wale Owoeye  

PS: By the way, lovers of poetry can download my new book titled THIRTY-THREE TREES about the way to the Divine through Nature. It was written for Bimbola, who lost her life three years ago in trying to have her first child. May her gentle soul continue to rest in peace.

Available on Smashwords.com Store and Amazon Kindle Store.   

Imagine Lagos like Las Vegas

This is the lofty dream captured in Damien Marley's verse in the track "Promise Land" of Distant Relatives Album and it is the dream I wish to articulate in this blog I call Africa!. 

Africa- homeland for all the black people of the world is a long way from the dream conceived by our forbears in truthfulness and struggle when they got independence more than five decades ago. This dream, centuries long assailed with prejudice, slavery, corruption and mis-education continues to be a fantasy. We still find African countries riddled with debt, living on foreign aids, enmeshed in crisis and war and immobilized by retrogression in the midst of plenty.But for how long? Year 3000???

The journey of a millennium begins with a day and I am a willing traveler on that journey to see Africa fully modernize. From Lagos to Accra to Cotonou to Kinsasha to Freetown...all the way down. Livable homes, constant electricity, thriving economies, motor-able highways, modern hospitals, super trains, justice, fairness, respect ....  If you believe like me say amen!

Keep the hope alive.

Aluta continua,

Wale Owoeye