By Morenike Folayan
I belong to a whatsapp group of significant large number of persons – about 50 girls who are old students of a Federal Government College. The products of the school are doing well in life. Most of us are 50 years old.
About 18 months ago, we started out on this whatsapp group with a main objective: to do something collectively as a class for our 40th anniversary. Socialization was a secondary objective. And did we socialize. We went to our parties, had jokes shared, laughed together, celebrated birthdays of ourselves and loved one. We did have fun. As we did this, we tried hard to plan for what to give the school for the 40th anniversary. The d-day came and after 18 months of ‘rocking’ the whatsapp group, we had nothing to present as a class.
For me personally, this caused me to reflect a lot on the events of the 18 months. One or two persons were upset that we had nothing to show on the day. Many felt we had done well and so we had lots to celebrate. The success with socialization was seem as the success story to be celebrated. Our failure of not achieving the primary goal was swept under the carpet. Anyone who made this an issue was seem as being unappreciative.
I personally felt sad with events but was not sure if I had a problem with being too objective. Maybe I had become psychopathic afterall. First, the group had a primary objective – to get something done for the school. This was the primary expected outcome for the group. Socializing was a secondary objective. Every social media groups are for socializing, networking, partnering. So this is not something that require too much to do. I agree it takes a lot for whatsapp group to stay active and I give kudos to this group for staying active for 18 months. It however beats me that we did not achieve expected outcome but celebrate the process and part ourselves on the back for conducting a process that led to socializing.
I felt that a sincere reflection of our failures could have been helpful. That we failed despite hard work (whatever we called that) is a first admission that only be made by humble people. For the leadership to admit they failed with achieving the expected outcome of this process is the highest grace of leadership. The leadership not only failed in not admitting we did not make our primary goal for this collective – none showed up for the anniversary either – but to turn failure to success beats me.
I think our group only reflects the life of mediocrity of the Nigerian populace. Where it is difficult facing up to the truth, picking up pieces and building better structures. Rather, we feel comfortable keeping quiet on failures, finding excuses to praise failures, and moving forward building on rumbles of failure and assume we are building solid structures.
I wept inside me for my class of 50 years olds just as I weep for my country Nigeria where the elites, the hope for a better future, embrace mediocrity with loud bangs of celebrations.