GOCHOM: A COMMUNITY TO BE HEARD IN THE ERA OF LEARNING (KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY) by Ayuba, Yilgak'ha.

GOCHOM: A COMMUNITY TO BE HEARD IN THE ERA OF LEARNING (KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY) 

by Ayuba, Yilgak'ha.

Protocol...

*INTRODUCTION*

Throughout history, the factors that drive human progress have continue to vary with time (era, age, epoch or generation). In the feudal age, land owners were respected as the richest; then, came the era where farmers were richest. This was followed by the industrial revolution where those who have or work in industries became richer. Those who were into merchandise and trade later took the lead. Today, attention is shifted towards knowledge economy as source of wealth and greatness. In other words, it takes knowledge asset or capital to be great in today's world. Therefore, this presentation is simply an attempt to appreciate how an individual, community or nation can be heard in the era knowledge economy.

This presentation will be guided by three (3) critical questions:

1. What does it mean to be heard?

2. How can a small community like Gochom be heard?

3. How important is learning in today's world?

*UNDERSTANDING THE ERA OF LEARNING*

Learning is as old as the history of man. However, the deepening of the process of learning (that is, education) through breakthroughs in Information Communication Technology (ICT) has become the defining features of the current era code named the 21st century. This era is knowledge based or knowledge driven. Therefore, education is regarded as the new currency of the 21st century. By implication, every individual, community or nation required to tap into boundless opportunities offered by the new information age to make progress or, at least, minimising social inequality!

*WHAT DOES IT MEAN 'TO BE HEARD?*

In a complex and dynamic world that is full of cacaphony of noise, it takes a someone's or nation's or community's capacity to curve a nitche for itself to to be heard or make a visible difference. To be heard means to distinguish or make a clear difference in an ecosystem (community). It is about creating great impact. There are two binary ways through which a community or people or a person can be heard. One can be heard through positive action(s) or negative action(s).

Positive actions manifest in the creation of or addition of value. It is about being, practically, useful to a community, nation or world). When someone becomes useful, his or her presence is positively felt and celebrated and, when absent, the absence immediately felt or noticed. On the other hand, negative actions are those actions that bring a system to disrepute or disadvantage. It is one that amounts to being a liability. The absence of a negative actionist brings relief but the presence of him or her raises concern or even worry.

Generating positive actions that makes our community members famous is the focus of our discussion today. The process of being positively famous, in any given circumstance, begins by curving a big dream (idea), nurturing the dream (developing it); pursuing the dream (executing it) as using feedback mechanisms to guage progress or failure (monitoring and evaluation). These are the processes! 

A dream is a mental picture of something great someone wants to achieve. It is a statement of hope or vision of things to be accomplished in ones life or community or nation. This implies that dreams can be personal or corporate. They are motivations for human action(s) which may be economic, political, social, etc. In other words, human passion in anything is generated by the value they attached to their dreams and the possibility of bringing them to reality. 

A typical example of political dream is the 'not too young to run' movement which was initiated in 2016 for Nigeria and Gambia, and championed by the coordinator, Youth Advocacy Initiative for Growth and Advancement (YAIGA) Africa, Samson Itodo, sponsored as legislative bill in House of representatives and Senate chambers of the National Assembly by Hon. Tony Nwulu and Sen. AbdulAziz respectively, pass into law and assented to by former Nigeria's president Buhari in 2019. This dream is work in progress vision and mission of ensuring that young people in their twenties could actively participate in the democratic process in Nigeria. Another example of economic dream was the historic "Chor manbi" initiative of our parents whose sole aim was to improve the economic base of its members to reduce poverty. It is unfortunate that the lofty initiative was not fully incubated and executed). The "Pusdung", festival of art and culture is an example of a socio-cultural dream which was initiated in 1989 and have grown into one of the biggest events in Plateau state. 

The dreams (ideas) of 'not too young to run' have become law but having many young people in position of power is yet another journey ahead that needs to be taken seriously and pursued with the energy it deserves. Pusdung has lasted decades but value can be added to it to make it even better. 'Chor manbi' has gone moribund but it can be reactivated to realise it goals since poverty is still a challenge. What this means that for a dream to be realised, it must run its full cause through diligent execution. In other words, a dream is just mere dream until it is fine tuned and, consciously, executed.

*OUR COMMUNITY*

Gochom community is located in Kabwir District of Kanke Local government. The community is neither rich human resources (population) nor abundant material resources. It has limited land mass featured by rocky terrain which makes commercial agriculture difficult. Plus or minus, our population is estimated to be a thousand people. In addition, the generational growth curve of the community, in terms of educational enrolment or attainment, has continued to rise and fall, that is, following andulating pattern. This is a situation where one generation has more people enrolling in school beyond primary school while others have more of their peers going beyond secondary school. However, from the lesson of history, the community has unique potential and opportunity for rapid and growth.

Currently, the community has produced one academic professor, doctors, an dean, heads of department in schools and government establishments. It has, also, produced two counselors, secretary of local government; a director and a deputy director in federal establishments, certified chattered accountants, barristers. In short, we have tried having representation in all fields of human endeavour, be it academic, health, sports, business security, engineering, etc (Science, technology and art)!

This is where we are but big is our dream for the community, going fowards? Where do we see GOCHOM in the next 10, 20 or 25 years? The community is one community that is targetted at hitting "the bull". The focus is on the big picture: How to optimise - geometrically increase our current gains and, drastically, reduce any disadvantege that constitutes 'clear and present danger' for us!

*HOW A COMMUNITY CAN BE HEARD

Communities are endowed differently. The potentials of every community or nation are three fold - it material resources, it's human capital and contacts. While some communities or nations are highly endowed with material resources (non-human factors of production) like land (forest, rivers, rocks and their associated blessing); capital equipments like machines, they are lacking in population (human resources) - labour and entrepreneurs and public administrators). Some are rich in population but lacking in material resources. Nations or communities hardly have both!

Nations that are rich in both human and material resources like Nigeria are rare - very few. It is important to note that human resources is the most important resources of every nation. However, having plenty human beings alone is not enough but improving the quality of the human being to produce using the material resources that are available is even more important.

Countries like Isreal and Taiwan are good examples of countries that are lacking in material resources but becomes great. Isreal with an estimatedly population of 7 million (far less populated than Lagos State) and surrounded by seven (7) nations that are hostile to it but, yet, has the gut and temerity (chutzpah) to break-through. The nation possibly has more companies than industrialised countries like Japan, India, Korea and Canada. And country that can be referenced is Taiwan. Taiwan is so poor in natural resources that they have to be importing sand from neighbouring countries if they want to use it. However, these two countries managed to excel in all ramifications.

William Shakespeare, one of the world's renowned literary icons, once said, "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." This profound statement talks about three ways of becoming great: The first is individuals, communities and nations can be great by birth; the second is to be great by personal achievements and, the third, through accident or imposition. Which of these ways is the surest and sustainable way of becoming great for you?

The main thesis of this presentation is that it will take educationally empowered human resource to drive the process of holistic, sustainable and inclusive development in any community or nation. In my estimation, the most reliable way of attaining greatness is to climb the ladder of greatness through personal achievement sustained learning through the art and virtues of hardwork, smart work (skill work) and networking (consultancy, partnership and/or teamwork). To make this submission explicit, the following are critical enablers for great development in the world, generally, and Gochom community in particular:

1. Education: Maximising the limited human resource through education and training towards the acquisition of requisite cognitive (not general) knowledge or technical skills in relevant areas of human endeavour which can be bought a good price. Education is the process of learning which means to acquiring new knowledge and understanding in important ventures (things) in life. It is one of the most effective Channels through which the gap between the rich and the poor can be bridged. In other words, education is a universal leveller. Even democracy numbers (population) rules, education matters even more. With education, least, populated communities like ours could measure up with bigger ones. With education, gender inequality will be bridged in the community but without it, the community will be completely finished or continue to battle these contradiction.

2. Personal discipline: Discipline is the quality of being lawful, ethical, moral and self-controlled. The disciple to wait when the returns on investments are not immediate matters. Lasting success in great processes does not come immediately. In other words, attaining great success is a relay not a hundred metres race. If your dream is big enough, the maturity period might delay.

It is important to not that in the journey of life, delay is not necessarily a denial. It could just be an incubation period. Hence, the submission that: "Everything comes in time to those who can wait" (Francois Rabelais). To wait doesn't mean doing nothing but, instead, doing something worthwhile with your time.

3. Cultivating positive mindset: Nothing good, they say, comes easy. A person who lives with a defeatist mindset will hardly achieve anything. It takes a positive mindset to dare great things.  In other words, a positive mindset is one that dares to try great things. The account of Caleb & Joshua who brought encouraging report to isreal in Numbers 13:26; 14:1-12, especially, 6-12, is a classical example of positive mindset.

There is no winning way than having the courage to try something great even when the atmosphere looks gloomy. No wonder, stoic philosophers held that 'courage is the virtue that can champion the cause of right'!

4. Persistency: Persistency is another enabler. It is a virtue or frequency that enables a person or persons to pursue a dream to a logical conclusion. A persistent person or community goes the extra. He leverages the power of 'extra' to make a huge difference in the world of the living.

5. Networking: Networking means to relate or build productive relationship with others, especially, those who share your vision or could add value to it. To achieve greatness requires functional network with destiny helpers. Nobody has it all and nobody does it all alone. You are better off when you tap from the expertise and contact of others. "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together?"!

6. Think global and acting local. You cannot live with local mentality and expect to make global impact. In order to make global impact as a community and, as individuals, we must think and behave like global citizens not local champions.

*CONCLUSION*

We have seen that ducation is the lunch path to greatness in the 21st century. Cognitive knowledge helps a person or community to have a niche in specific areas of speciality. As a corollary, note that, no individual, community or nation can breakthrough without cultivation strategic value systems that are in tandem with the kind of dream the want to achieve.

Please, allow me to, brieftly, share with you the story of a dog and an elephant which I got on a social media platform. The dog and elephant became pregnant at the same. However, the dog gave birth to puppies; took in again, the second time, and deliver while the elephant was still carrying its old pregnancy. Concerned by the condition of the elephant, the dog approached it with a question. You and I got pregnant together at the same time, I gave birth  to my puppies and, I have given birth to the second set but you are still pregnant, are you sure you are, actually, pregnancy? The elephant responded: You gave birth to puppies but the pregnancy I am carrying is of an elephants. I  give birth once in two years and, when the baby elephant is born, people will rally round to watch with great admiration!

The moral of this story is that achieving a great feat might take time but not impossible. In other words, achieving greatness is nota 100 meters race but a relay which requires persistency and endurance. For a community to be great, also, all hands must be on deck because every micro-action has macro-implication. It takes consistent, collective and cumulative actions of past, present and future generations make great things happen. In the words of Frank Fanon, 'every generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission and fulfill it or betray it.' The effort and contributions of succeeding generation is expected to add value to the one handed to her by preceding ones. This means that the failure of any generation in the value chain will spell doom for the growth progression of the whole. This implies that, for a community to grow into global reckoning, it must be consciously transgenerational and inclusive in it strategic development planning. 

We can make our 'Nhicnyi' (the elephant rock) that we have a symbolic hall of fame where the names of past, present and future legends who have achieved or will be achieving great things for the community could be written as a mark of honour or encouragement for present and future generations to strive to do more for us. From this initiative, we can even make that rock a tourist site visitors who might want to know how far we have gone in time. 

The challenged is for us to learn to be part of something bigger than us. Nick Vujicic, author of the book, "Life without limit" puts it this wasy: "The greatest rewards come when you give of yourself. It is about bettering the lives of others, being part of something bigger than yourself, and making a positive difference." With education and learning, no one is too small to contribute to the vision of making the world and, particularly, Gochom community great!

Have a dream as big as the elephant, nurture and, diligently, pursue it. There could be difficulties on the way but, if we courageously persist, we shall succeed in making great things happen and the world will have no option but to hear us!

Gochom ching!

God bless Gochom community!

God bless Ngas nation!

God bless Plateau State!

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

God bless humanity!

Thank you all for listening.

*Being text of the paper presented at Gochom Youth Connect Event Held at the Community's Primary School on December 26, 2023)*