During the morning assembly in primary school, the Headteacher would regale the pupils with the cliche: Punctuality is the soul of business. Most days of the week, the pupils would gingerly stroll into the school very late, much to the chagrin of the Headteacher.
Some had carried into old age that bad habit of not keeping to the appointed meeting time. Lateness has become the norm in our way of life. Some call it AFRICAN TIME. Truth to tell, Africa doesn’t have its own time. The one Africa calls its own time has worked detrimentally to its users.
An example. Maximus Onyema assumed the name Stone in the US, where he resides. Stone decided when he visited home recently to uplift four of his peers in the village. He made a provision of 2500 dollars for each of the friends. He called them for a meeting at a fixed time. Stone could joke with anything, but not time.
Abednego had a different idea of time. The other three peers were there five minutes before the meeting started. Abednego delayed with the mindset that the four o’clock meeting would likely take off by four-thirty. This line of thinking costs Abednego the money Stone wanted to give him.
Stone, at four o’clock, briefly held his meeting. He gave the three their monetary gifts and shortly returned to the township to spend the night, from where he would return to his base the next day.
That’s how Abednego lost out. Unfortunately, he was the poorest of the four peers. In his days, Abednego never went to school early, even for one day.
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