The use of an interrogative sentence as the topic sentence here is intentional. In the long run you’ll find out why so.
In life, a good number of mistakes we make could have been avoided or averted if due diligence was employed in the scheme of things.
What then is due diligence? Characteristically, I would paint a picture rather than outrightly define it.
A man who wishes to buy a car must have ample information about the product he wishes to buy. Whether the car is fuel efficient, affordable, comfortable, family friendly, durable, parts availability, engine mechanism, and every tiny detail about the potential use of the car. This is due diligence! As compared to someone who is asked what kind of car he desires to buy and he says any car, provided it has four wheels.
One would label the first one a wise one and the latter ignorant, right?
Unfortunately, this is how many of us live our lives. We start off on a scale of robust ignorance and learn in the hard way.
Regrettably so! It is pertinent to state that not all mistakes can be remedied.
We either learn to live with some or watch the cookie crumble, while we bear the needless anguish.
As a landlord, you need to do due diligence on the tenants you rent your building to. Background checks are a must do. Know their work history, family backgrounds, antecedents, and useful information.
Social experiments have taught us that adults and habits are difficult to change.
For instance, landlords have gone to jail, because of abhorring criminals as tenants. Ignorance has no bearing in the court of law.
Business partnership is another sensitive area, where due diligence is imperative. Multiple Personality Syndrome (MPS) is a potential trait in humans.
The hood does not make a monk. We met in church or at the mosque, can not be an integrity checker. Friendship for the length of years isn’t also a criterion for business partnership. Dig deeper, and don’t stop until everything adds up.
Wrong business partnership has sent some to their early graves, prison, or total ruin. How well do you know your business partner?
Friendship is another area due diligence is needed. In fact, nowadays blind trust should not be pit to fall in.
Undergraduates should not accompany anyone anywhere. When you hear the phrase ‘my bestie’, please run. The stories we hear and read about are no ruse.
Siblings, brothers, sisters, friends, and parents are gullible enough to be enticed to follow a seemingly harmless friend. Only to be beheaded, dismembered, kidnapped, abused, or dispossessed.
We live in an era where everyone is a suspect. No roommate, flatmate, colleague, or buddy deserves to know your entire affairs. Don’t be vulnerable. Remember William Shakespeare’s Julius Ceaser? Brutus was a close ally of the king, yet he betrayed Ceaser. Refuse to let your guard down.
Young ladies, keep improving on yourself, your career, and other endeavours. Do not be pressured into a relationship. Increase in marital violence, depression, divorce, and spousal deaths are evidential claims of how women who became victims in marriage tried to let out. Do your due diligence.
A fiance who accidentally slaps his fiancee would escalate such abuse in marriage.
A lazy one before marriage does not get productive suddenly. Conduct your due diligence. Trust your instinct. Intuition is a God given gift to humanity. Once you smell a rat in any engagement in any business, social, human relationship, trust me, a rat is lurking by. Such rats are bush animals capable of biting one’s skin off.
Due diligence is a process of enquiry, inquiry, inquisition, solicitation and the quest of gathering robust knowledge in order to stay afloat.
Due diligence is a combination of insight and foresight. No one needs to drown in the sea of life’s viccitiudes.
The life jacket here is due diligence. Arm yourself with one!
Ebunoluwa Ibibo
@Golden muse
