By Julie Sylvia, Onitsha
Rev. Father Augustine Echezona Obiagbaosogu, a Catholic priest has warned Nigerians, especially the youths to shun criminal activities, laziness, mediocrity and the belief that manner still falls from heaven without work. He described such belief as unrealizable.
Fielding questions from Newsmen in his Office at Catholic Diocesan secretariat, Okwuani, Nnewi, the Cleric, who is the Diocesan Health Coordinator and an Entrepreneur, stressed that he doesn’t “believe in miracle money”.
He said: “It is part of our mission why we set up ‘Nnewi Entrepreneurship Initiative’, to teach people on how to convert opportunities to wealth and help people to come to their natural born talent.
“We want to bridge the gap between faith and wealth. The wrong notion that, pray and money will come, go to mountain, that miracle can work. I don’t believe that.
According to the cleric, God is not a rewarder of mediocrity and laziness.
“There is no magic for wealth creation, you must work for it. If you like, book for masses, go to mountains for prayers, money cannot come without working for it.
“Life is about creativity, you must work for wealth. If you are a good man and you don’t work, you are not involved in any positive thing that will yield money, you will go hungry because your goodness will not translate to wealth.
“People have this faith that you pray and money comes, it doesn’t work. I always tell the Youths that whenever you have a credit alert in your account which you never worked for it, and you never had business with anybody that will give you money, don’t touch it, it is not your money.
“When someone folds his hands and legs, cannot manage his finance while others go to work, you belong to the good people and you are dull in mind, you can’t be rich. Life is about creativity, using your brain and mind”.
The priest listed three principles guiding life as deaf, dumb and light.
“These principles are emotionless,they have no sympathy and they don’t hear cries or tears. They say if you don’t get involve in work, you will go hungry whether you are a priest, lame, Bishop, wicked man, good man or that you don’t want to miss the evening mass or market.
“The three principles say also that the route of making money, creating wealth, is to work, follow it. It is one’s inability to follow these principles’ directives that make him to go hungry”, he warned.
