All people have the capacity to change their perspectives on their beliefs, their values, their tradition and their culture. The Chinese government in concert with several animal and civil rights activists and groups has embarked on a campaign which is aimed at discouraging people from consuming shark fins. Shark fins are essential items on the delightful and very exotic mandarin cuisine. For so many reasons Chinese and other nationals have grown to love shark fin soup. Trading in shark fin is a very lucrative business that has turned out several successful Chinese merchants. Obtaining fins off sharks involves hunting sharks, cutting off their fins and throwing the shark back into the sea to die a slow and most likely excruciatingly painful death.
As in every suggestion for change, there have been resistance and protests from consumers and traders in shark fin. Inspite of the protests and resistance, the campaign is gradually gaining ground and consumers and traders of shark fin are being converted as they are begin to see reason to buy into the vision to preserve sharks from early extinction. Such change would require a change of attitude in view of discovering another product that would be as exotic as or even more exciting to the palate than the shark fin.
One is not by any means suggesting that the decision to change would be an instant success or an easy fete; again nothing in human existence is really easy or simple. It is all in the mind. The power the mind wields over human Endeavour as a whole is so over-whelming that every action, speech or movement made by man emanated and still does emanate from some form of processing within the mind.
Most observers of society are less than pleased with the results that Nigeria as a society displays. The evidence before Nigerians shows that all areas of human Endeavour are approached with a half-hearted quest for success. It becomes even more disturbing when we look critically at the ‘desire for the good life’ while not putting in enough to earn what it takes to ‘live the good life.’ The result will invariably be a life of crime and maybe violence.
I am of the school that remembers and promotes the notion that Nigeria was much better than what it is today; so it is a predominantly false and misleading information when people class Nigeria as a lawless; violent and criminal nation. All nations at this time have challenges with issues of crime and violence so it is not as if Nigeria is the only country that records issues of safety of lives and property of people.
However, Nigerians are cautioned to watch the rate at which crime and violence are growing in the society. Nigerians are not he-goats that are rejected everywhere they show up and the call to change our ways of approaching and interacting with other human beings is by and large in favour of Nigerians as a whole.
The number of people actively practicing crime and violence has grown tremendously and people are cautioned to look around and see that too many people are opting for a life of crime. It is so bad that the descriptive written by Lord Fredrick Lugard on the nature and characteristics of West Africans as a basis for understanding Nigerians in his book “Dual Mandate” published in 1922 which many Nigerians find annoying is beginning to appear like a joke.
Nigerians are far better than this. Nigeria is a blessed country so much that a change of attitude towards Nigeria and her people, one man at a time and instituting workable structures in government, law and order will greatly help in retracing our steps to the days when Nigerians lived a dignifying and noble life.
GOD bless Nigeria.
By Matilda Edwards
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