I have observed a trend with Nigerians, yes a trend, not a fad. It has to do with success motivation and it has a lot of buyers and sellers. Books, seminars, talks, etc., sell with such hasty flourish that you sometimes wonder if this is what Nigerians live on. It isn't unusual to find hawkers in traffic brandishing books that naturally belong in libraries and on amazon.com. Of course, this is not to speak ill of them. But it leaves one wondering how much they have equated such books (and its charge for money!) to fried groundnuts, baked akara, rat poison, cold drinks, or wrapped chin-chin you find with the same guys. All of this with a consequence.
Humans have a natural capacity to look up to people above them. The intention is to encourage, to aspire, to not let their dreams die. Every society has got its requirements, mostly defined by the same society, and these people in whom they have vested hope they call role models. Yet societies are fallible, and there is no reason to believe the majority chooses right. Hitler's elevation to power by Germany's majority is a good example.

Nigeria has chosen a grotesque kind of role models and she appears to have failed. That craze for success motivation seems to have engendered a society that is wont to defining success in narrow terms and that has successfully put money and material gains on a godly pedestal. We find Nigerians hail rich possessions, sing praises of rich fellows and beg to hit the crumbs which fall from their table. It's amazing how many Nigerians glorify Microsoft founder and world's richest man, Bill Gates; it's much more stunning how many aspire to the shoes of a Dangote, an Otedola or an Adenuga. How has this come about?

Perhaps years of poverty, narrow definitions of success and unfounded confidence have provided reasons for this gory worship, perhaps it's simply the consequence of neglecting true education, condemning intelligent individuals and institution, or abandoning the strife for greater understanding of truth and of humanity. Personally, I would go with the latter. We are no longer an intelligent lot. We have put true education on the back seat and let materialism take a passenger ride. Has it never occurred to us that highly-praised Bill Gates started off as an intelligent innovator before becoming a rich man? I find it comforting that in a challenging environment like America, professors are almost household names, that government hardly undertakes project without consulting Nobel laureates, that universities are, firstly, homes of knowledge, before they are degree-churning institutions and that each year the country fights to get named by the Nobel committee. When Tai Solarin exclaimed, 'Knowledge is Power', he saw that Nigerians could each become powerful, if they embraced knowledge. Many decades on, this renowned educationist lies no more in our consciousness, and many of us have no idea what true knowledge is.
It's a pity materialism has torn us apart. Many of us no longer value the ideals of consciousness, of learning; or of estimating those who take the strength to. Even though they labour to bring us knowledge, to bring power to our doorstep, the Nigerian intelligentsia is pretty much unknown. . .and their products would rather press in search of that house or that car or that job, instead of that book, that truth or that uneducated boy.