Adding Value, Changing Lives

RELATIONSHIP HARD TALK ... Engage Your Mind; Guard Your Heart

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:34:00 +0000

PREVIEW OF THE BOOK "RELATIONSHIP HARD TALK" - Engage Your Mind; Guard Your Heart

PREPARATION

Preparation is very critical to success in every area of life. Romantic relationship is not an exception. How prepared are you to succeed in your relationship and partnership with the opposite sex? How many relationship books have you read this year? If you are 20 or 25, you must read at least 20 or 25 good relationship books you are ready to apply to your life to guarantee good preparation and success in your relationship. There is no short-cut to success.

ATTITUDE FOR RELATIONSHIP

If you are not a happy person, no relationship can make you happy. If your attitude is negative, you will attract a negative minded partner. You attract who you are. It is critically important that we strive to be the kind of person we want to attract. If you do otherwise, and enter a relationship with a mind-set of having it solve all your problems, you will frustrate yourself and the innocent undiscerning partner. Be guided.

LOVE AND RESPECT

Love and Respect are two critical issues in relationship. On the one hand, this two factors apply this way: a lady wants the guy who claims he wants her to show her love - this cuts across checking up on her, calling her and meeting her needs as may arise from time to time; a guy wants to be respected. He wants to know that this lady who says "I love you too" respects his person and what he holds dear. When these elements are absent in a relationship - it is just a matter of time, it will crash like a pack of cards.

On the other hand, Love and Respect has higher ideals: Love is expected to flow from both parties recourse to how bad or good a partner is. This is God element in Love which is without conditionalities. Before you agree to date or be in a relationship with someone, you must know afore-hand that you will be held accountable to this requirement. So be guided in making your choice. Respect here demands that if you don't show that virtue to your partner, do not expect love. You cannot eat your cake and have it.

REALITY CHECK

Do a reality-check now... if all that you are on the inside of you is exposed, as a guy, would you marry the person if you were a lady? Apply the same thought-line as a lady... if the reality of who you are on the inside is exposed to a guy, would you marry the lady if you were a guy? Many times, we refuse to develop ourselves and be made ready for relationship and marriage, yet we pray so hard asking God to send us prepared people! How audacious!!! If you were in God's shoes, would you send any of your children to someone who is not ready? Give this a serious thought and work on yourself today!

SOLID FOUNDATION

Don't start your relationship on a faulty and shaky note by building falsehood around it. If you do so, you will be building a house on a sandy ground - once turbulence comes (and they will surely come), only those built on rocky foundations will stand through the storm. Be truthful and even if it hurts, let it be said that you were real.

LOVE AND COMMITMENT

Many times in a relationship, only one partner is 100% committed; the other partner is always still trying to make up his or her mind even after saying "YES" to the partnership. With such level of half-hearted commitment, there is no way the relationship will work. Until you learn how to be 100% committed to a relationship per time, no other relationship you enter with that kind of mindset will work. The sad part of it is the deceit that you make the serious partner to tolerate or endure without knowing. You really don't love that person and possibly don't even understand what love really means. Grow up!

ENGAGE YOUR MIND; GUARD YOUR HEART

When you are in a relationship, let your head and your heart work together. In this case, your heart represents your conviction that the other person is the real deal and must be trusted with your life; again your head is the logical power that equates the same person with the environment in which you both operate knowing that he or she can switch allegiance based on extraneous challenges. While you hold the person dear and can be emotionally carried away, let your common sense use the things you see to guide your every step. Love is not BLIND!

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This up-coming book - RELATIONSHIP HARD TALK will be published first as an ebook in the first week of June, 2013. The first 100 persons to book for a copy ahead of time will receive 10 additional ebooks including the author's lastest published book FREE. To book for this all-important relationship ebook, please go to this link (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Creslead-Center/212427208892506) and drop your name and email in the message box after paying N750 into GTBank account No. 0116419658 (Creslead Nigeria Enterprises). Please quote the Teller Number in the inbox message which should be sent to above link.

Upon confirmation of your payment, the FREE ebooks will be sent to you immediately while you will be queued for the release of RELATIONSHIP HARD TALK.

It is time to increase your relationship knowledge and be the best that you can be.

THE THREE STAGES OF SUCCESSFUL RELATIONSHIPS

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 18:52:00 +0000

One of the most critical area of every life is the relationship realm. This is speaking primarily for every kind of relationship. However, this note is specifically addressing romantic relationships. Every one of us have got what trips him or her in a woman or a man. At the point of starting out in the relationship, those things must have been spotted in our man or woman and that would have influenced our decision to give the union a go. It is very important that you never make the first move if you don't like the person. You don't consider starting if there is nothing in that person that you believe fits into your idea of an ideal partner. But that is just the first stage. There is a second stage and a third stage in every relationship that succeeds. What makes it a success is when you get to the third stage and move really on to greater good. Your relationship is not a success if it stops in stage one or two. Let us consider the three stages.

The Honeymoon Stage

You meet the guy or the lady, you interact for a while and you are 100% convinced you are meant for each other. Then the dating becomes more meaningful. You start addressing each other by special names; your friends know about you. You talk, talk and talk. Both of you see no evil, feel, no evil and believe nothing negative about each other. But this is a foundation laying stage. Serious partners will use this to build trust, speak about their past in phases, discuss family matters and talk about their future. Serious people will speak about their vision and how their relationship can affect it. They discuss and explore ways and means of surmounting challenges. At the background of all that is happening at this point is a high level of romantic feeling for each other. For couples who have agreed to the principle of NO SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE, they go through a constant period of fighting back feelings of holding each other and touching and all of that. That may altogether not be avoided but they will ensure that there is no sex in spite of the huge amount of desire they feel. Feeling is a major part of this period. They want to see each other, send loving text messages, talk through the night and attend events together. One day without speaking or seeing each other is boring. This is the Honeymoon Stage. It does not last forever. After a while, the next stage opens up...

The Reality Stage

Was the first stage not real? Oh yes, it was. But at this second stage, whatever is felt at the first stage is going to be tested by fire, flood and storm at this point. If the love was superficial, this stage will reveal that identity. If it was built on truth and genuine love, it will be tested here. This is the stage where each of you begin to notice what you don't like about the other person. The way she speaks to you without "respect", the way he does not "care" about you... you begin see that your man or woman is always "thinking about herself" or "himself"... you get angry at each other, and walk out of each other's presence at times. But in your different private moments, you hate the fact that you tear at each other the way you do. You reason that you shouldn't have reacted the way you did. That is correct. It is not strange. The person who hurt you most the closest person to you.

You have these conflicts because the real person is getting close and you are seeing things you never saw from away. You were not supposed to see them from a distance in the first place, anyway. The Honeymoon Stage is designed for attraction; this stage is for re-alignment and proper positioning. This is the time you work on your mindset to come to terms with the real person. The first things you experienced in the Honeymoon Stage is not a fluke... it is not a lie - it is only one aspect of the person. A man or woman is not a one-season human being. We are known in part in different seasons. Don't define a person just because you met him in a happy season. Wait for the unhappy season and see another part of him. That is what brings about total knowledge. And in life, we keep learning about ourselves.

This Reality Stage is critical. It tests your conviction. It tests your resolve and when all is said and done; if you cross this stage, then you can fly into Stage Three. We are not done with Stage Two yet.

Stage Two is the stage that reveals maturity or tasks you to become matured. As Christians, it tests your ability to keep promises you made in the euphoria of feelings and excitement. When you said, "I will love you forever", Stage Two demands that you put that into action even when you feel nothing like you felt when you uttered those words. At this point, it is important to state that true love is not just about feelings, romance and sex. IT IS ABOUT RESPONSIBILITY, COMMITMENT and TRUST. You will hurt each other so much you would sometimes regret ever meeting the person but while Stage 1 makes you feel good about the person, stage 2 brings about another kind of feeling - you feel bad sometimes.

Look back into the initial attraction when you have the crisis of Stage 2. What attracted you? Is it still there? Who he is, has it changed? Has the crisis of Stage 2 made her totally a different person? What fighting spirit do the two of you have to fight for what you both believed in? IT IS A MAKE OR MAR STAGE. At this stage, Lilly levered lovers quit on each other. They see no further than the challenges. Some of the challenges can be so daunting that if third parties who do not know the person in Stage 1 are allowed to make input, they will make a decision for you to crash it. That is why third party advisers and observers must be kept at bay in relationships that must succeed. It does not matter how close you are to them; be careful not to discuss certain matters of your relationship with them.

How to cross Stage 2: Stay true to your initial love for that person. See the challenges as a job you must do to help the person overcome. See it as your task. Don't walk away. That is failure. Don't quit. Quitting is only permitted or allowed when Stage 2 reveals a totally fake individual and if he or she was never sincere in the first place. That also is the advantage of stage 2. Besides that, stay true to the love you still feel for that person. The reason you hurt so much when your relationship is challenged at this stage is because your spirit does not want to lose the prospect of having the Honeymoon of Stage 1 back in play again.

80% of relationships today do not cross Stage 2: Why? Because we lack the tenacity, the patience and the endurance to work on our emotions. Relationships that succeeds has got feelings, romance and excitement on one hand and has got patience, commitment and dedication to the person on the other hand. The first one is easy and the second one is hard. The interplay of the two will produce amazing results for the future of the two of you.

Stage Three

When you cross stage 2, it will take only God Himself to stop the two of you. You have weathered the storm; you have endured the pains and struggled through the valleys and climbed the mountains. You are on the verge of the Promised Land. Wedding dates are now fixed, plans are in full force and the Marriage Life is in view. The couples who go through Stage 2 and succeed are those who will have a blissful marriage. So many marriages skipped stage 2 because in the heat of their passion, they jumped to Stage Three. Don't worry. Stage Two cannot be skipped really. You will have it inside the marriage and God have mercy on the two of you... you might crash the flight in the first or second year.

Take a critical look at your relationship now and use your tongue to count your teeth. I hope this helps a lot of people. I love you all.

Taking Another Look at Love

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 01:37:00 +0000

Its been a while since I blogged. A lot of factors has been responsible. A lot of travels and a lot of work too. Now, lets take another view at love, that vexed four letter word that has caused a lot of ripples in the lives of both the young and the old over the ages.

I do not have the time to speak about the different meanings of the word "love". Suffice it to say however that love can be classified in three different categories of "agape", "phileo" and "eros". All are important depending upon which angle you are positioned. Agape, as the Greeks explain is God's unconditional love. Phileo is the kindred feeling for brother and sister, mother and father, friends and acquaintances. Eros is the animal love that lovers and married persons express in sex.

I want to focus on love as can be expressed in romantic situations. This is the hottest subject of the times. Every woman needs a man and vice versa. This need creates equally high amount of crisis that if not properly managed can cause a huge emotional turmoil of gigantic proportion. You see a lady, you feel strongly for her to be friends with her and when you speak to her, both of you seem to have the same chemistry and the next thing on your minds is how you can make that mutual feeling last for a long time. But this always does not last as long as we expect it to be. They are short-lived by many factors. Some of these factors are what really true love should help ameliorate.

When you tell someone you love him or her, I believe what that should mean is this: I like you as a person; I want to always be with you and if possible, I want you to spend the rest of our lives together. It also means: I care a lot about you - I want to be part of your issues, your challenges and your needs. I want to stand by you and help you through the vicissitudes of life. Love and romance fails to achieve its ultimate peak because we want to enjoy only the good part of the person we claim to love and allow them to deal with their peculiar challenges alone. If it is possible, and this happens often; when we discover some issues about the person we claim to love and it is going to inconvenience us, we find ways and means to break away from that person. Is that love? Nope!

Love is when in spite of the weaknesses and challenges someone is facing, you can stand up and say: "Yes, I see these issues; but I have made a commitment to be in love with you - I will stay here with you and together we can fix this problem". Love says, I am in pain because of what you have caused but I know you are a good person; your challenge or weakness is not what defines the entirety of your life. Brace up, I am right here with you.

As human beings, we are basically selfish being. Love seeks to banish selfishness and enthrone selflessness and sacrifice for the good of your love object. Relationships, marriages and friendship across all romantic and emotional levels will do well and better if true love is given a chance.

True love does not tolerate evil, but finds a way to deal with the evil. True love hates deceit and unfaithfulness but is able to stand up to them and defeat them.

Love and Friendship

I have always believed that two people desiring to become emotional and romantic lovers must first of all be friends. What really is love without being friends? Its a contradiction in terms. Friendship is the central point of what holds true love together. Friends don't relate on the basis of feelings but on the grounds of commitment to look out for each other's interests. Therefore, when the sweet feelings of love wanes, the power of friendship holds the two together. When issues make the two lovers temporarily alienates their romantic partnership, friendship makes them look at the issues objectively and they find a way around it.

Don't marry someone who is not a friend. Marriage can throw some hard punches at the two of you; the best way to weather the storm of these challenges is when the two of you as friends can step aside, look at the issue as a mountain that must be overcome and synergize your friendship powers to overthrow the troubles.

Let us do this again another time.

Undressing Issues That Makes Relationship & Marriage Sour

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 15:07:00 +0000

A lot of people in relationships and marriage have no business being in it at all. My impatience reached fever pitch recently when a lady told me she had been in a relationship for twelve (12) years only to discover that the guy had just married someone else behind her back. I tried to brace myself up to encourage her to take heart and move on but I couldn’t resist the feeling of anger knowing that she too was culpable – by allowing someone to hold her life down for 12 whole years.

There is a huge difference between casual dating that result in intimate relationship and a serious commitment to each other for life. The former is engaged in by people with fleeting or no purpose for life in a holistic way while the latter is entered into by people who have an idea of what they want out of life and what donation they are here on earth to make. For the second group of people, even though they are few, they are the ones who turn out to be real world changers.

When two people are drawn to each other only on the basis of how they feel in their genitals, they will eventually fall apart and lose the feelings the way the sex act itself plays out from foreplay to climax and eventual limpness! There has to be a more serious reason to be romantically linked to someone beyond the “oohs” and “aahs” of romance and sex. If you are presently in a relationship that you hope may end up in marriage and the binding force is the power of sex between you and your partner, then you must begin to scratch your head and seek the exit door. It is better to quit now that you still have your sense intact.

The life of an average individual is made up of four major areas. There is the spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional set-up. If you must be in a relationship with someone, wouldn’t it be reasonable to first of all seat down and count the cost? Find out if you are on the same spiritual wavelength with the person. What is your understanding of material well-being and how does the other person view it? Can the two of you carry on an intellectual discussion without misunderstanding each other? Can you balance your emotional life with that person? This is the most primary level of test. If at this level, there is a disconnect in any of these area, you must raise the red flag and put a break to your feelings no matter how strong they are. You cannot trust your feelings alone! You have to balance your feelings for each other with the other three major areas which are critical aspects of your lives. Like I have always said, there are 24 hours in a day. The highest amount of time any couple can devote to the passion of sex is only about 1 hour! If you have not figured out what the two of you will be doing with the remaining 23 hours, then you will be creating a monumental frustration lifestyle ahead of you.

Having dealt with the foundation issues, I want to critically address some of the challenges people in purpose-driven relationships face from time to time. There is the danger of feeling that they are coasting home since their partners have some high level of understanding about relationship at a generic level as they possess and therefore do not expect any bumps along the way; this is a breeding ground for taking each other for granted.

For the relationship to continue to flourish there has to be constant watering and tending. The inability to continue to work on themselves and the relationship itself is the bane of many unions. Let us nail the head on this subject by looking at three critical issues of watering and tending.

1. Understand Your Roles

Any time people abandon God’s ways, pain will become their portion. God ordained that the man to be the leader and the head. The woman was created to support the man as a helper. This has nothing to do with who is better of the two. The confusion people have is the fact that they believe because the woman is a helper, she is automatically inferior. No! The man on the other hand is not better than the woman; he just got a role to be a leader. Look at it critically; a true leader is also a very serious servant! God made them equal but with different roles. Play your part. Play your role.

2. Be truly sincere

Don’t tolerate anything in courtship that you will not allow in marriage. If you can’t take it now, deal with it now. If you find anything antithetical to your belief system or values, discuss it now! If you can’t agree at the courtship period, don’t be deceived that being married will make things sort themselves out. Things don’t always sort themselves out – people have to do it!

If you don’t like the guy or the lady now; watch your steps. Understanding about each other develops with time. That is the reason why I advocate for a fairly reasonably long relationship to allow for time to test the attitudes and orientation of each partner. The relationship shouldn’t be too long beyond necessary – that too can make the two of you weary yourselves out. If the two of you use to enjoy discussions just for the sake of mutual fellowship and one of you starts getting irritated unnecessarily about it, then you must watch it. Two things could be possible – someone else might be tickling his or her fancy or the feelings for you are waning and there is nothing else that looks interesting to sustain your friendship.

3. Make sacrifices

Relationships or marriages that work are the results of sacrifices. But I am not asking that people should commit suicide! There is a world of difference between tolerating someone for a weakness the person is owning up to and is willing to change than someone who justifies every wrong action and says “that’s me – deal with it!” There is no character trait that cannot be changed especially if it runs contrary to Biblical standards. It must be noted that I am discussing from a faith-based point of view. That is the center of my life and if you have no faith in Christ, you are reading the wrong piece.

We must learn to trade-off some of our requirements for a lady or a guy who should be our relationship partner or spouse. You cannot have a perfect partner – you are not perfect. So if you have a partner that meets the generality of your requirement based on some of the criteria we have enunciated above, then other things can be worked on with time. But, you must make sure they are things that are not central to your values and belief system. Those are the things you cannot afford to trade-off!

A discussion on building value-adding relationship cannot be exhaustive. At best, I have just scratched the surface, but I believe that in this piece, there is enough stuff here to lay a solid foundation upon which purpose driven people can build their relationship on. Enjoy a sweet day wherever you are.

I am 40 and the foundation is set!

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 14:28:00 +0000

In the beginning...

I was born 40 years ago... precisely 14th August, 1972. My birth was not accident. It was predetermined by God and it was meant to fulfill a purpose. I didn't know what that purpose was until I was in my early 20s. Even then, it was vague but the activities I engaged it gave credence to it later.

I have had a heck of a journey for 40 years! I have had bumps, de-tours, distractions, obstructions, obstacles, mountain climbing times and valley walking seasons. Through it all, it has been with the God-factor in it. I have also had some very joyful moments. That is how journeys are. They are not always straight in nature. The most important thing is the fact that I have my destination in focus.

The days of naivety and ignorance

There was a time in my life when I lived in ignorance but I was a curious and inquisitive person. I have always been a nice person; trusting everybody hook, line and sinker! Believing any body and just trusting that everybody meant well. I have learnt hard lessons in the course of my life that not many people actually care about me. But my days of naivety and ignorance were not excuses for the penalties I had to concede. The penalties were huge but I survived them.

I am a better person for the lessons I have learnt from the stress that came from making bad decisions which was as a result of poor information.

Godwin the Determined Person

I read somewhere recently that persistence and determination are equal to omnipotence. Today, on my facebook page, a friend, in extending his congratulations said he wonders where I get the strength to keep pushing forward inspite of all odds. In my 40 years of life, I have had to suffer all kinds of set-backs, set-ups and all. As a pastor and a minister of the Gospel, besides being a management/leadership trainer, a media consultant, a professional writer/author and a life coach, I run a family and had the good fortune of being a leader in at a very tender age. These did not come without its very devastating challenges. But today, I speak as a victor.

I want to encourage those who are passing through challenges to know that you fail when you give up. I don't give up once I believe in a cause. Things may get mad, but I don't go with them. In 40 years of being alive, I have been married and divorced; lost 3 children with 2 alive; have had to go through 2 devastating job losses one of which took place 2 weeks after my wedding. I have had my fair share of crisis. I have had time when I have been misunderstood, misconstrued, misquoted, and mis-everything. But I am here today because God loves me!

I don't beat myself up. I don't blame myself too much and don't take myself too serious. But I work hard, I go for goals that I pursue and I wake up everyday speaking to myself that I am a victor because of Christ.

God blessed me with early...

I didn't go to a conventional university. I went to the University of Hard Knocks! I did most of my higher education through correspondence and part time basis. I started working at 15 after secondary school. I had to pay my way through school pushing truck in Wurukum Market, in Makurdi, Benue State. In spite of what you might call a faulty start, at 22 I was a senior officer in a multi-national company, went on to work at Access and Zenith Bank for a combined period of 8 years and garnered enough experience to now begin to run my business today. I have been recently blessed with a national award on entrepreneurship. God has indeed blessed me.

I got saved at the age of 17 in Murtala Square, Kaduna, North West Nigeria on October 20, 1990 during the Reinhard Bonnke Gospel Crusade in that city. That is the best foundation of my life. I went on to become a very active Christian till date. I served in virtually all arms of the Church in The Open Christian Assembly leading to my ordination as an Elder at the age of 30. By the time I was 33, I was ordained a Pastor. I spent 16 years in that Church. I cut my ministerial teeth there. Today, I run LoveHouse International Gospel Center. At 40, I am a blessed man.

My future is bright

Don't ever allow your present circumstances to define who you are. You are not the situation you find yourself in. The situation and circumstances should be treated as an event. Your life is happening in process. If you have God in your life, then He is the anchor of your life. He orchestrates what you call the bad, the good and the ugly to achieve His Divine purpose. Don't scream out too loud because of pain and offend God. Trust Him through the dark. There were times my life didn't mean much to me or people around me. Some people gave up on me; but there was no reason in doing that because my success or failure wasn't going to affect their own lives. People get mad at you for no just cause, therefore do not be too careful to please any man. Your life is entirely up to the decision you make and how you go about implementing your decisions.

I will marry again; I will have children too! I will be great and everything will be fine. I will be a reference point and people will come to me for help and I will help them! I have a good life in spite of everything. Be encouraged if you have my kind of story... you too are going to be a success!

You don't need a perfect life; you must live your life to the full:

Don't surrender the driving seat of your life to people who think you ought to do whatever they say. Live based on God's principles and the peculiarity He has packaged you to be. You are special; you are unique and you are different. It is not wrong to be different as long as you are in line with God. People will not like you much at the beginning, but if you keep your cause in front of you and pursue your purpose with determination, you will become a star and an inventor of a concept that becomes a style for the future.

I am so thankful to God that He allowed me to see this day and allowed me to share this information of encouragement with you, my friends. Let me know if this has helped you...

God bless you richly.

Nigeria: An Evolving Giant

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Wed, 30 May 2012 22:16:00 +0000

Nigeria just marked its 13 years of unbroken civilian rule after the military held on to power between 31st December, 1983 to 29th May, 1999. Before then, we had a civilian rule that was interrupted after it had been in the saddle for just four years (when President Shehu Shagari held forth between 1979 to 1983). Before 1979, the military had held power between 1966 to that time. At independence, we had a civilian regime under the leadership of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa that was overthrown by the first coup which was however unsuccessful but gave birth to the reign of military rule in Nigeria.

In total, Nigeria had been subjected to military rulership for a whole period of 25 years of 51 + years of our existence as a nation. This is the first time we are enjoying an uninterrupted period of 13 years without any military incursion in our political affairs. While this calls for some measure of celebration, the civilian leadership have not lived up to the expectations of the potentials that Nigeria is known for.

Our leadership and by extension our nation is bedeviled by corruption both in low and high places; self-centered leadership; lack of vision and purpose in the political system and a serious misplacement of priorities by successive governments. Patriotism is therefore not a culture that is common with us; it is actually alien. Government is then seen as "Father Christmas" that must be patronized and lobbied to get your own share of the national cake. Politicians therefore garner for votes from their constituencies so they can be represented at the center to ensure "development" comes to the community so represented. While this in itself is not a bad idea, the voters do not vote with the big picture in their mind - they do not see the fact that the elected representatives must first of all work on ensuring there is a stable institution that they can call a nation before it can be strong enough to provide a platform for the actualization of the aspiration of its different constituent parts. The politicians in campaigning for votes, using the sentiments of going to represent the "people" have other agendas up their sleeves.

Nigeria, 51 years and counting, 13 years of democratic rule and running is a sleeping giant. The current regime appears to have been fired up by the huge expectations the electorates placed on its shoulders and appears to be working its way up the ladder of positioning Nigeria as a nation to be reckoned with. I am aware that there are motley of issues that it has to deal with. The strange issue of Boko Haram, which is gradually become a political tool in the hand of the opposition to rubbish the government; the incessant epileptic power supply or a non-existent power system; the huge unemployment especially among the youths and the total near absence of basic infrastructure like roads, housing and potable water.

A close look at the Jonathan administration reveals that it is dealing with a myriad of issues all at the same time. Even the best opposition candidates would not have performed better in the circumstance. The sincerity of the government, to me, is not in doubt. But that they have perfectly worked to ensure a total deliverance of Nigeria from the woods is what remains debatable. Governance is a process and even the corruption we talk about cannot be eradicated in one day; same with poverty. The question we should seek to answer is whether the government is doing its best to tackle the many problems.

The last one year has been interesting. The President and his team have fared well in the circumstance and we should be magnanimous in our criticism. I know there is anger in the land about corruption, mis-governance and all that but violence and unmitigated protests will not solve any problem. It aggravates issues. As a people, we must learn to sit down to articulate our problems and issues and see how to proffer solutions to them. That is the meaning of democracy. There is no room for jungle response to issues.

Nigeria will survive the storm and we will come out a better and bigger nation. A giant is emerging from the West Coast of Afroca that would become a world leader in virtually every sphere of things. God is counting on you and I to make that a reality.

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria... Naija for life!

NIGERIA: A difficult jigsaw puzzle?

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:05:00 +0000

It beats my thoughts how everything negative is possible in Nigeria save progressive activities. Yet this is one nation on the face of the earth that has the capacity to rule the world. On paper, in the 1960s, we were compared to Brazil, China and India. Today, we are struggling for relevance with Lilliputians like Ghana, Benin Republic & at the worst case, Somalia!

Reflect a little on our economic potentials: With oil reserve to last for more than 30 years, we are currently earning not less than 20 million US dollars daily from crude oil sale. Our solid mineral potentials is virtually limitless. From Plateau through Benue to the Western and Southern region, our soil is filled with literal gold in terms of solid minerals. We have one of the best agricultural land mass in the world. We can produce millions of tonnes of groundnuts annual in the north. Same with rice. Benue is home to yam and cassava and annual production at mechanized level can peak at a level that we can feed the entire West Coast of Africa.

Our human capital is enormous. Our people are all over the world making monumental impact on different economies. Barring our educational standards that has miserably fallen, we boost of one of the best crop of endowed people in terms of the capacity to learn and reach the peak of every profession. Unfortunately, it is with the same propensity that we can learn to do wrong!

Our population is another plus. China and other big nations have used their population to their advantage. We are blessed with two of the biggest rivers on the continent. Our culture is rich and our landscape is vast and imposing. From the north to the south, all year round, our climate is clement and we are so blessed not to have any kind seasonal natural disaster. How much more can a nation ask for?
YET...

We remain at a crossroads over 50 years after we gained nationhood in terms of political independence from the British. Ours has been a case of a massive successful failure... bedeviled by ethnic bigotry, corruption, distrust and religious intolerance. Besides the misfortune of military incursion into our body polity, we have had to deal with very unacceptable level of clueless leadership.

HOWEVER, I believe that we can change the tide. The time to do that is now... We can reverse the trend and build a BETTER NIGERIA.

Those who believe that Nigeria's leadership is their birthright must give up such a fight of making the country ungovernable before they wake up one day and discover that they have got gravel in their mouths... their kids may not have a place to call their own eventually because no single person has the monopoly of violence.

Those who think that they can line their pockets with every government money they control should watch it lest they remain behind bars for life because the coming silent revolution will swallow every corruption person.

Ethnic bigots, religious fanatics and tribal champions should quit their dreams. It will simply not work.

It is time for the government to redouble its efforts in youth empowerment, power generation and distribution to achieve a zero point of power cut, build more refineries to cut cost and shift government revenue base more to other IGR than the oil fields that may dry up in about 35 years. Build more roads, connect the hinterland with the waterways, link up villages to cities and educate our kids with the best curriculum.

THE TIME TO BUILD NIGERIA IS HERE... all those who do things they can't explain in line with purposeful living should repent and come to terms with reality. Nigeria is living in the 21st century, we cannot operate with the tools and mindset of the 20th century or the dark ages.

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Naija for life!

Does Leadership Mean Something Else in Nigeria?

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 17:12:00 +0000

It hurts to know that in Nigeria, we are taught one theory in school about how a responsible person, citizen or Nigerian should live his life yet in practical terms, we see a totally different thing on display right before our eyes even at the leadership level. We are promised all sorts during electioneering campaigns but we are left to survive on our own whenever the elections are over and public officials or the politicians are in office. That has prompted me to ask this question "Does Leadership Mean Something Else in Nigeria?".

Let me attempt to describe what leadership mean in Nigeria:

1. It is a time to make money:

People who are in elective or appointed offices in Nigeria are there only for the sake of what is in it for them. Otherwise, how do we explain the uproar and the kind of threats the National Assembly issue whoever cares to listen anytime there is a discussion that relates to the pruning down of their jumbo pay and allowances. What work are they doing that is different from the guys in the Federal Ministry of Finance or those in the Ministry of Environment? The Directors who work in other ministries are more of bureaucrats than the politicians who fill up the National Assembly who mostly got their position because of the amount of money they were able to throw around during the elections.

It is about money making... The House of Representative Committee investigating the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) have become immersed in controversies of bribe giving and bribe taking. Even the SEC Director General is not innocent. How do we explain a meal of N85,000 per time? Where was she living before taking up the appointment? How come she could not get a "befitting" accommodation all of a sudden in the Federal Capital after working there for almost 3 months? N30,000,000.00 (N30 million) is a lot of money and this can pay the salaries of over 30 Nigerians in one whole year... but some woman is wasting it on hotel bills when an accommodation (no matter how palatial) can be rented in the highbrow places in Abuja for just N3 million per annum? What kind of leaders do we have here?

2. It is about exploiting innocent people

I want to speak about the Pension Fund here. These are other people's sweat and an official would take the money (not just to use and return - which in itself is a game of bad faith) and pocket it! The Military Pensions Fund is the worst. Living and dead retired service men queue up in the sun and in the rain, sleep on street corners and in some extreme cases die in the process and they never get their Pensions paid or regularized. My father served in the Nigerian Army between 1968 to 1980. He retired on medical grounds having taken gun-shot wounds from the Civil War. As I write, the Army Authorities have not paid him a dime since 1980. He has considered that entitlement a write-off; yet some people are feeding fat on his benefits and driving around in gleaming cars yet the long arm of the law cannot catch them because as it seems, they are above the law. That is the meaning of leadership in Nigeria.

3. It is about playing to the gallery

I have lived in the North for the past 22 years. More than half of my life-time to date has been spent with my fellow Hausa/Fulani countrymen. These are some of the simplest people to live with on the face of the earth but because they are denied education by the same people who are supposed to be their leaders, they are brain-washed en mass to the point that they carry up arms against fellow countrymen without knowing why. These same politicians then go to the TV houses and radio stations to speak out "for our people who are marginalized!" Who is marginalizing who? The people are used in Nigeria rather than empowered. Most regional leaders are champions today because they are able to shout at those in Abuja more than others. For their efforts, those in Abuja, in a bid to quench their so-called "fire-brand activism" give them millions of naira in cash or in contract awards for projects that are never executed. They buy cars, marry more wives, build mansions and impoverish the people the more.

We can go on and on....

Leadership is about making a difference in the lives of people. But here, we have in the majority, oligarchies, semi-monarchs who parade them as democrats and in the process filter the country's resources away. Many years, a young man in Malaysia decided to lead with a vision. Today, Malaysia stands tall as a developed nation just a little over 30 years down the line. We know that in the late 1970s, the same Malaysia came to collect palm kernel samples from us. Today, they are the world's largest exporter of vegetable oil. Yet, Nigeria is a giant on its kneel as a result of rudderless leadership enmeshed in corruption and thievery.

We earn so much and yet are so poor. This country has no reason to be poor except that we have a different definition of leadership. There is yet, hope for Nigeria because I know people are out there who are concerned as I am... our time is coming and may God give us the wisdom to lead our people to the Promised Land. Amen.

I escaped Boko Haram's Daring Bomb

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:05:00 +0000

Dateline was Sunday, 29th January, 2012. The place was Naibawa Quarters, South Eastern part of the City of Kano. I had gone to Church in the morning and returned home to sleep after lunch. Against the run of my initial plan, I decided to stay home. I had wanted to take a bicycle ride across the office but I changed my mind. That was a saving grace for me.

By 5pm, I walked across with my son to a relative's house in the neighbourhood. At exactly 6.41 pm, we heard sporadic gun shots in the neighbourhood. We all shut down everything in house - TV, generating sets and put out all lights. We were flat down on our faces. The gun fire raged and was followed by heavy sounds of bombs detonating.

The gun shots kept coming close to the house and the entire neighbourhood was in a dead silent mood. After about 45 minutes of sporadic gun shots with the attackers having a free reign, everything went quiet. We had escaped a major attack from the dreaded Boko Haram. And so the reign of terror was unleashed on the Naibawa area of Kano. By the next morning when we were counting our losses in the area, the Police Divisional Office on the Naibawa Park road was a major target. It was bombed and what was left was just mere ashes and rubbles. Three residents were killed in the cross fire as the Police tried to defend their station. Fear was palpable and the residents didn't feel like staying in the neighbourhood anymore. Security was gone and the bombing of the Police Station effectively rendered the entire axis of Anguwar Uku, Naibawa and Zaria road without any police outpost after the Yar'Akwa Police Division was bombed on the first day of the attacks on 20th January, 2012.

A lady who had dragged her boyfriend to the station to report him for some domestic issues barely left the station after reporting the guy and leaving him in the station before the attack happened. Her boyfriend was dead by the time the attacks retreated. What a way to end one's life.

Kano, Nigeria's second biggest commercial city has been under siege for nearly two weeks. In spite of the huge deployment of troops to the streets, Boko Haram kept pace with their terrorizing attacks in various parts of the city after the coordinated attacks of Friday, January 20, 2012. That speaks volume of how unintelligent our fight against terror is. In the heat of all these, I have seen mobile policemen posted at road-blocks around the city which have become a major menace still collecting or exhorting money from motorists and do not hide this at all. The way these security guys are positioned, they cannot stand any surprise attack at all.

The morning of the attack on Naibawa, while I was walking across to Church in the neighbourhood, I saw surveillance helicopters flying overhead and then wondered why they could not pick out the attackers in the evening.

The truth is that these attackers are way ahead of our security intelligence. It is high time the Nigerian authorities deploy more sophisticated methods of nipping in the bud the spate of terrorists attacks that leaves innocent citizens victims all the time. If we keep applying the same methods for a new problem, we will never get anywhere.

The economic impact of these attacks is monumental. Kano is gradually becoming a ghost city with the massive exodus of non-natives from the area. People who have made Kano a home of sort are now leaving in droves. Why would they stay? They can no longer be guaranteed safety.

What does these all portend for the corporate existence of Nigeria? Some politicians are still playing politics of sentiments with this inflammable problem. The northern politicians are saying government should negotiate with Boko Haram and grant them amnesty like the Niger Delta militants were treated. The question is: How do you discuss with a faceless group whose agenda is more treacherous than advocacy? They want to overthrow the government of Nigeria and enthrone an Islamic Republic. They insist they want all Christians to leave northern Nigeria and then confuse matters by saying they are revenging the killings of Moslems in some conflict areas in Nigeria.

Whoever is behind these group should know one thing for sure: Whatever has a beginning has an end. Osama bin Ladin didn't last forever. He was picked out. So will Boko Haram end ingloriously. At the end of the day, Nigeria will stand either as a one indivisible entity or a group of nation-states with the destinies of the people of the different nations still making progress.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

NIGERIA: The mistake of 1914...

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:56:00 +0000

In 1914, the British colonial masters in their bid to control the administration of the Northern and Southern Protectorates of their colonies decided to amalgamate the two of them. In doing this, the British did not take into consideration the fact that these two different nation-states were not compatible. However, because of their ultimate motive of mere administrative convenience and to advance their purpose of mastering the mass of people, they did not care one bit about the compatibility of the two different people. They went ahead to name the two nations Nigeria and insisted they were one. In spite of the forced marriage, the two nation-states remain till this day but only now fragmented into different nationalities and today Nigeria is about 6 countries forced into one confused nation.

By 1960 when the British handed over power to us at Independence, we had dissolved into three different nations and they handed over power to an abstract entity called Nigeria but the real power was in the hands of the Northern Protectorate under the guidance of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. He was a mere paper leader but the real leader of Nigeria was the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello. The other nations in the arrangement were the Oduduwa led by Sir Michael Akintola with an emissary in the person of Obafemi Awolowo. Biafra was another nation which was led by Sir Michael Okpala but had a paper tiger at the center in the person of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. This arrangement subsisted with many crisis for only six years. Obviously, these nations pretending to be Nigeria could not co-exist very well. At the dawn of independence, there were crisis in the West which we now refer to as the "Wild Wild West". The Tiv riots in the early 60s was also an evidence of a forced marriage between people of different destinies.

In 1966, a set of military boys staged a coup and what happened was like an ethnic cleansing. They wiped out the leaders of the North and the West and left their own leaders in the East. Can you now see what I mean? Three nations co-existing as one. One decided to overturn the table and left their own leaders alive. There was nothing nationalistic and patriotic about the 1966 coup. It was just one of the nations trying to outwit the others after it felt there was an imbalance in the sharing of power between the North, West and East of the contraption called Nigeria.

What followed the 1966 coup was not funny. The Igbo leader who took over after his kinsmen had eliminated politicians from the North and some from the West could not hold the country together. He formed a unitary government which broke down in six months as he had no serious command in the Army. The northern military elements staged a come-back and wrestled power and handed it over to a so-called neutral person in General Yakubu Gowon. Another disgruntled group in the military led by Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu disagreed with this arrangement and gradually a revolt resulted and what we had was a 30 month Civil War that claimed the lives of more than 1 million people with the Igbos who decided to secede suffering the highest casualty.

In 1970 when Biafra surrendered to the Federal military might led by General Gowon, he declared "no victor, vanguish" and since then it has been a ding dong affair. The North held on to power for the next 9 years through Gowon; Murtala extended it for 6 months and their stooge - General Olusegun Obasanjo held it in trust for 3 and half years and handed it back to them in 1979 with Alhaji Shehu Shagari becoming a civilian President. Buhari stepped in - 1983 and General Ibrahim Babangida held on from 1985 to 1993. When it looked like the Federation was going to get better with Chief MKO Abiola heading for victory after the June 12, 1993 Presidential Elections, acclaimed to be the freest and the fairest elections in our history, the elements in the North stepped up their game and helped to annul the election and General Sani Abacha came in with huge brutality. He died 5 years later and it was again a northern leader in the person of General Abdulsalami Abubakar that stepped in even though for a short-lived period of 11 months.

The civilian administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was a creation of the North through General Ibrahim Babangida who felt there was a need to right the wrong of the June 12 election failure. But as it turned out, Olusegun Obasanjo of 1979 was no longer the same man in 1999. He had wizened up and he was determined to balance things out. But the North would have none of it! That was where trouble started. He was opposed at every point and when he eventually bowed out in 2007, the nation was already at its tittered edge. His nomination of Yar'Adua for presidency did not pacify the North because they felt he was a sick man and that Goodluck Jonathan was positioned naturally to step in. Fine, Goodluck eventually became the President but not after there was hell on all fronts about the Presidency being the turn of the North.

Many of the politicians who felt the North was cheated even went as far as saying they will make the country ungovernable. Is that not what is happening via the Boko Haram bombings now?

THE VERDICT:

For nearly a hundred years, we have tried to force ourselves to live together. The mistake is way back to 1914. Can we now see why we can't seem to work well as a nation? This faulty foundation gave birth to the unbridled corruption in the system. The reason is this: we are not citizens but indigenes of regions. Citizens contribute but indigenes claim rights. We see ourselves as Igbo, Idoma, Igala, Yoruba and Hausa before we are Nigerians. Distrust is deep within our fiber. As a Christian, its simple to add that two cannot walk together except they agree... Amos 3:3.

Where are we in agreement as a people? I can't see any from the North to the South.

Refer to my last blog of December, 2012. It is time to gradually get this region called Nigeria into its proper place. In my subsequent blog, I will begin to discuss the variables that will help us navigate into our different nation-states within the Nigerian landscape and foster more purposeful development. Enough to the mindless wastes of precious human lives. People should die for a reasonable purpose and not for NOTHING.

Keep in touch with me.

Let Nigeria Dissolve into 6 Countries

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:45:00 +0000

Nigeria is Africa's most population nation and by extension the most population black nation on the planet. About 50 years ago, it was projected that we were going to be one of the most advanced nations along with Brazil and India. These two have gone ahead and we are worse than the smallest nations around us. Today, the leader of Africa's economy is South Africa. What advantage do we have for our population? Our huge population is suffering while a few are getting richer. Our leaders do not have the capacity to lead a huge population. They don't think well enough to plan and lead a great nation. So our first problem is a leadership challenge.

The next is our polarized ethnic diversity that is so loose to form a nation-state. We regionalize everything. Indigene or this state or indigene of the other state. These are divisive tendencies. Next to tribal regimentation is our sharply divided regions on religious basis.

During the Constituent Assembly of 1995, the people came up with six (6) geo-political zones of North West, North East, North Central, South West, South South and South East. These regional groupings have served the nation well in the case of proper delineation and identification.

Over the years, there has been tension in the land over where a leader should come from. The issue of rotational presidency came up but only parties talked about it. It wasn't embedded in the constitution. But because of the lopsided educational divide where the South is more educationally aware than the North, it is difficult to interact without creating conflict because there seem to be no proper communication. The North appears to have a fixed position and the majority of its people are not educated. So, they are at the whims and caprices of their leaders who use them to their advantage. They are used to the political advantage of the leaders' since they do not have the capacity to reason out stuff by themselves. The average southern citizen queries everything and does not follow leaders hook, line and sinker. The same cannot be said of the northerner.

The leaders of the states up north have not done much to fast track the education of its people. They have used religion to cause the people to remain ignorant. Islam is good as a religion, but its adherent must live in a multi-religious society where they must engage in commerce and do general business. Life is not about staying up all day reciting the Quran. If you must eat and be able to mix well with people, then you must learn how to relate by getting knowledge in schools where the world's most acceptable language for transactions are taught. It is that education that Boko Haram says is sin...

Before Boko Haram, there is this intolerant attitude of the average northern moslem. Then they feel they cannot be ruled by a Christian President. I saw how they reacted when President Goodluck Jonathan won the election. They were deluded to believe that General Buhari, a Moslem Northerner won. It ignited protests in violent formats and the targets were Churches and Christians...

Now as I write, Boko Haram has gone totally wild and I believe it would have been different if we had a Moslem Northerner in the Aso Rock Presidential Villa. So besides the bombing across the country, Boko Haram says they want to install an Islamic Style Government. They don't seem to have visible support from Moslem leaders but it is not a hidden that they have the sympathy of the big guys in the North. Recently, a Senator was implicated by one of their spokesperson. He is in court. The evidence against him is daunting. So we cannot rule out fifth columnist in the corridors of power who share the sentiment of the north that a Moslem President should have been our leader.

The bombings have been incessant and sustained. Targets have been more of Churches. They seem faceless but they really are not. They have succeeded in making the country ungovernable. If indeed they operate a guerilla style warfare, then the security agencies will find it difficult nipping them in the bud especially if they have insiders in the security agencies and I guess that is what it seems.

This is my honest proposal before the entire country goes up in flames. I had suggested this in a subtle way during the post election violence earlier in the year and I did intimate that Goodluck Jonathan may be the last President of a United Nigeria. This is what all these may come down to. It is better to have peace and have people's lives safe in a restructured-nation-states than to have a bogus country without security of lives and properties. I deliberately didn't talk about the economic problems insecurity can cause because I assume we all know that.

Let us not kill ourselves in a bid to live together by force. We have different ways of life, different destinies, different belief systems. We can't simply live as a nation... we may fight until we finish ourselves. Politicians who profit from this arrangement may not like it but we can't carry on for too long. I therefore call on the National Assembly to summon a summit of the different nationalities... let every region take their destinies in their hands and my proposal for the nations to come of Nigeria is as follows:

North West Region (Kano, Jigawa, Katsina, Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara &

Northern Kaduna) COUNTRY NAME: Bahauria CAPITAL: Katsina

North East Region (Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Adamawa & Bauchi States)

COUNTRY NAME: Gombiana CAPITAL: Gombe

North Central Region (Southern Kaduna, Niger, Kogi, Abuja, Nassarawa,

Plateau Benue & Taraba) COUNTRY NAME: Nigeria CAPITAL: Abuja

South West Region (Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti & Ondo States)

COUNTRY NAME: Oduduwa CAPITAL: Lagos

South South Region (Rivers, Cross River, Delta, Edo & Akwa Ibom)

COUNTRY NAME: Niger Delta CAPITAL: Oghara

South East Region (Enugu, Abia, Imo, Ebonyi & Anambra)

COUNTRY NAME: Biafra CAPITAL: Awka

This is my humble submission. The time to start is now. The lives and the economy of the people is dependent on this.

The Vexed Issue of Oil Subsidy Removal in Nigeria...

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:10:00 +0000

The Nigerian political landscape has been awash with the huge debate on whether or not the government should remove the Oil Subsidy for the past couple of months. The debate was sparked principally by the desire expressed by the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) in the wake of its outcry that the N18,000 National Minimum Wage was unsustainable by most of its members in their respective states because they do not have the funds to pay their workers. The Governors had argued that, for them to pay the minimum wage and still have money left in their coffers to run their governments as well as provide basic infrastructures, the Federal Government should increase the allocation to States from the Federation Account either by dissolving the National Sovereign Fund (NSF) or an outright removal of Oil Subsidy. This writer believes that the Presidency was caught in the middle of the road and had to choose between two undesirable options. The Oil Subsidy removal was chosen as its best bet out of the situation. This seemingly politically convenient position has its very far reaching consequences.

The subsidy on petroleum has been there for as long as the nation has been an oil producing nation. It has been there even when all our refineries were producing at 100% capacity and there was no need for importation of refined products. Therefore, the oil subsidy in a nutshell was a benefit of the masses of Nigeria from its government for the blessing of crude oil. That appears to be the only means by which the ordinary Nigerians were supposed to feel the impact of being an oil exploring nation.

What really is the subsidy? What is the government subsidizing? A little check-up of this reveals that government is paying for the extra cost of producing a litter of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), otherwise known as petrol and Kerosene less the real pump price amount being paid as a retail price to the ordinary consumer. That is, if it costs the country N10 to produce a litter of fuel, it is selling it at say, N4 to the consumers and bearing the burden of N6. In this case, N6 is the subsidy.

During the military regime of President Ibrahim Babangida, a phased removal of the subsidy began as part of the government’s economic blueprint in order to release needed funds to the system as the international price of oil dropped in the mid-1980s coupled with the desire to fulfill conditionality for the implementation of the IMF-backed Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). However, in spite of the removal of subsidies in those days, as at 1999 when the current political dispensation took root, the pump price of PMS (petrol) was still at N11.00 per litter.

The President Olusegun Obasanjo administration constantly adjusted the pump price until it came to N65.00 per liter which the Yar’Adua/Jonathan administration inherited.

What really has been the reason for this constant removal of subsidy over time? The truth really is this: government has neglected the oil and gas sector of the economy systematically to the point that all our four major refineries today are either half dead or producing at an embarrassingly low capacity. This ushered in the massive importation regime of petroleum products. What has therefore sustained the retention of the N65 pump price over the years is the subsidy that the government has had to pay. According to a recent statistics as presented by the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the landing cost of PMS per liter is about N145.00. The government pays a subsidy of almost N90/liter to ensure that the pump price remains at N65/liter.

The basic idea is to ensure that the subsidy will ensure that life is bearable for most Nigerians. However, the paradox which the government has hinged the removal of oil subsidy on is the fact that it is paying a fortune for subsidy while a certain cartel enjoys the benefit and the effect is not telling on the consuming public. The Senate during the first week of December, 2011 reeled out the names of organizations that have continued to feed fat on the subsidy which government says for 2011 stands at about N1.4 trillion. This it claims is almost above the budget for capital projects in the 2011 budget. The purpose of the subsidy it claims, is not achieved while a few rich organizations in the oil and gas sector are enjoying the proceeds. The subsidy removal therefore is to meant to pull the carpet off the feet of the cartel or cabal while the proceeds are channeled to providing basic necessities for the Nigerian public.

While the argument sounds logical and populist, a closer scrutiny reveals that with the subsidy gone, the pump price of petrol will naturally increase to about N120/per litter. This will immediately have a spiral effect on every aspect of the economy as transportation cost will skyrocket and costs of goods and service will increase geometrically. It will effectively put paid to the relief the so-called N18,000 minimum wage was supposed to provide and further impoverished the already over-stretched Nigerian masses.

This disadvantage of the removal of oil subsidy therefore is huge and the effect on the personal economy of the common man will be disastrous. The opinion of this writer is that the subsidy SHOULD STAY but government should look for other creative means to source for funds to do its business while ensuring that the subsidy benefits are properly enjoyed by the Nigerian masses. The remaining part of this write-up is devoted to suggesting how this can be done.

Covering the Subsidy Hole

The major concern of government is the fact that it spends a colossal amount of money funding the subsidy. Let us look at this critically. This money is this much because there are so many holes that monies are emptied into in the process of importing petroleum products. One major job the government should do immediately is to fix all our refineries and build new ones to totally stop the importation of fuel. This is the best way to checkmate the cartel or cabal and destroy their back-bone. How long really does it take to build a refinery? In the last three years, our northern neighbours, Niger built a world-class refinery. They are in the process of joining the large number of petroleum exporters to Nigeria! Is it not funny that we transport crude to Niamey from the creeks in the Niger Delta by trucks through inland roads across the country to Niger and then they in turn return these trucks in reverse to us with refined fuel? What is really difficult in building a refinery if the old ones cannot be fixed? The government must be proactive and think creatively in solving a problem that looks like it has defied all solutions.

Secondly, while it is working on getting the refineries fixed, while supporting the subsidy, the government must look inwards to source for funds to cover up the hole that the subsidy creates.

There are so many other sectors of our economy that continue to consume funds without a commensurate contribution to its growth. These sectors and institutions have merely become drain-pipes. The idea is to re-channel funds from there for redistribution to critical areas needing urgent resources. The list here is not exhaustive as there could be more:

a) Cost of Governance at all levels: We have reached a point where the cost of maintaining government officials and their respective agencies is becoming unsustainable. Starting from the executive arm of government, we can free a whole lot of money by rationalizing some offices and cutting down on the expenditure of many. There is absolutely no reason why we should continue to engage the services of so many Special Advisers & Special Assistants whose duties are merely a repetition of what most ministries and agencies are already doing. The President should start by cutting down on some of its expenditure profile. For all intents and purposes, the Presidential Aircraft Fleet should be reduced to at least 5 from the present number of 11. If a holistic audit is carried out with a view to maintaining only very NECESSARY offices in each sector of government, then billions of naira will be saved and the hole created by the subsidy will be adequately covered.

The National Assembly recently came under fire by the Nigerian public because of CBN Governor’s outcry that it consumes about 25% of the national budget. Whether the figure being bandied was 25% of recurrent expenditure or it’s a percentage of the total budget is not really relevant. What has become important to the public is the fact that the cost of maintaining members of the National Assembly is too expensive. There should be a bold step taken between the Executive and the Legislature to drastically cut their pay and allowances. If indeed they are serious about making necessary sacrifices for the survival of the nation’s economy, then they should show examples by taking a pay-cut of at least 50% and cutting down on the pecks of their offices. They should not expect Nigerians who are already over-stretched to continue to pay high for fuel while they continue to drive around in gleaming cars and feed fat by attending plenary sessions for just screaming “nay” and “yea”.

b) Checkmating Corruption

The government is paying a steep price by funding corruption at the highest places. Contracts are inflated; awarded contracts are poorly executed while state officials just line their pockets with money for no just cause. It must take urgent steps to institutionalize the nabbing of corrupt officials to avoid the leakages that presently pervade the system. If this singular step is taken and corruption is brought to a minimal level, a huge sum will be freed to enable government have what it takes to fund infrastructural development across the length and breadth of Nigeria. If the government does not develop the will to exemplify sacrifice by cutting down the cost of governance and take further steps to stamp out corruption, it should not expect cooperation from the masses to further impoverish them by taking away the subsidy which promises to bring them to further poverty.

There is palpable anger in the air amongst Nigerians. The youths are in their most dangerous restive mood across the land. Unemployment is higher than admitted figures in the media. There are millions of families who cannot afford a square meal a day. There are many whose hopes of surviving is so deem that the only rational thing they think about is how to hurt others to get to survive. This is not the kind of population the government should be thinking of dropping another burden upon with a subsidy removal. They should look somewhere else to cover up the gap. If they look very well enough, they will find enough leakages to cover up and we can be on track to economic emancipation. Leadership is not about dumping responsibilities on others but by taking the bull by the horns and finding creative solutions to intractable difficulties. I agree with someone who said a while ago that the office of the Nigerian President is the most powerful in the black world. Why should the most powerful black President shirk from the responsibility of confronting a cabal that seeks to sink the ship of state? Except that high office is collaborating with the cabal, it is time to show how powerful it is. God bless Nigeria.

Competition and Customer Loyalty

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:36:00 +0000

Introduction

It takes about 20 times more energy to get a new customer as you will need to keep one you already have. To keep a customer is to treat him with a measure of quality and excellence. Whether the customer is an individual or organizational buyer, they all have expectations of the firm they deal with. The basic determinant of whether they will become loyal to that firm or to a competitor is premised on whether those expectations are met or not. This discourse is targeted at helping the participating firms to meet and exceed their customers/clients’ expectations.

The Effect of Competition

Who is a competitor? Someone who produces and/or sells similar products to yours is your competitor. All such companies involved in similar trade are in competition. You are all in competition for the customers’ money; striving, trying to outperform one another, etc; but the choice of who to stay with, is the call of the customers to make, but you can help them. Never let your competition shows your customer a better product than yours! Do you want to avoid losing your clients to your competitors? Then help them avoid seeing a better product in your competitor’s. How? Make your product the best in the market. The same principle applies to both new and existing products/sellers in the market. There are key areas you must focus on to keep your customers. These will be examined shortly.

Why Customers Quit

1% die

3% move away

5% other friendships

9% competitive reasons (price)

14% product dissatisfaction, but

68% quit because of an attitude of indifference towards them by some employee.

A research conducted by Stanford University revealed that, money made in any endeavour is only 12.5% by knowledge, and 87.5% by your ability to deal with people. John D. Rockefeller said, “I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than any other ability under the sun”. Besides several other factors that could take your customers away and give them cheaply to your competitors, the attitude of your employee, or people who relate with customers matter the most. Customers consider themselves your most priced assets, and they want to be treated as such. Anything short of this, meets with a beckoning from competitors.

The single most important ingredient to the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people. Always realize that, any activity you engage in is capable of being a benchmark with which customers evaluate you, particularly in the earliest stages of their contact with you. That is the customer’s privilege, not yours.

Do you want to have an edge over your competitors with regards to the battle for customers, then have an edge first, with your company attitude. The customer has no business differentiating one person from another in your firm, every singular misbehavior by any one is seen as company misbehavior. Customers don’t even see their own wrong, the company must just have a perfect attitude.

How to gain customers’ confidence and keep them

1. Establishing contact with customers is a vital part of any company’s success. The ability to maintain a welcoming environment involves a combination of the physical environment and the way the staff members communicate with the customers.

2. Make sure you acknowledge and greet your customers within 3-4 seconds, as this is how long it takes for them to make a first impression on you and your business.

3. Greet your customers with a smile and a ‘hello’; this will make a huge impact on the rest of your service. If a customer is not acknowledged and does not feel welcome, they will leave the business and go elsewhere.

4. Keep in mind the quality of customer service can never outweigh the quality of the people who provide it. By making sure you keep those who work for you happy will ultimately improve the quality of service and experience your customers have.

5. Treat your customers how you would like to be treated; its an easy principle.

6. Management should lead by example, and set the standard. If the management leads in excellent customer service, the customers will notice it every time.

7. Try to remember your regular customers; welcome them back; make small talk of how they are; what have they been up to? This builds rapport and makes them special; use their name. Their regular attendance pays your wages. Treat them with the respect they deserve. You will keep them happy and returning to your business.

8. Go out of your way for your customer, if they are after something specific, do everything you can to get their needs met. For example, if a customer wants a specific product and you don’t have any left, make the effort to track one down from the warehouse or another store. They will be really impressed and happy with the excellent service they have received and will return to your business again.

9. Train your staff in proper customer handling procedures so everyone in the business is consistently providing the same high standard of service. All staff needs to be trained how to handle difficult situations as this will add an overall good impression of the customer service your business provides.

10. When you are hiring staff for your business, you want to make sure you are employing people who can fit in with your customer service standards. Someone who can is not afraid to talk openly, smile, and be approachable. The mistake some companies make is hiring people because they are desperate. In turn, employ people who are not suited for the customer service industry, which in turn will hurt your business and reputation.

How to Sell Yourself to the Top

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:19:00 +0000

Mastering Your Products: The Salesman Talisman

Introduction

Good sales actually begin with a good knowledge of the product to sell, and with good presentation, everything sells. A terrific salesman is adept at both knowledge and presentation of his products and services.

By the way, let us establish first that a product is anything that is offered to the market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption that might satisfy a want. That implies that, even you are a product. Second, a product is the consumer’s solution. The market is anywhere the product is presented for sales. This includes the office where you go to submit your CV for a job opening.

Third, everyone is a salesperson. The world we live in is altogether a marketplace. Your demeanour, vocal-ability, etc. are all part of the presentation process.

Mastering Your Products: To have a magic wand by which you can achieve exceptional sales level, the following keys are essential.

a) Know Your Product

The first statement in this discourse already gives impetus to this point. A man cannot give what he does not have; you cannot sell what you don’t know about. Every salesperson must first take time out to understand the products that he is expected to sell. Your knowledge must be convincingly deep. If you are supposed to sell a variety of products, you have to pick the ones that appeal best to you, and study them deeply, knowing all that their functional dimensions.

b) Be convinced about your product and constantly increase your confidence level:

Your customers can no more be confident about what you sell than you are yourself. Do not try to talk anyone into buying anything that you are not sure of yourself, except you are ready to make a tool of yourself. The confidence you have in the product will give you some measure of pride about it, and then influence the way you talk about it.

c) Be versatile, understand your competition

A major highlight in any salesman’s presentation is when he (she) has to compare what he/she has to sell with the competitors’ products. You must know about your competitors have to offer and be sincere enough to examine whether they are better than yours. Whatever information or knowledge you get from this is a major point for you.

d) Be enthusiastic about your product

No matter what your competitors think about your product, it still has the potential to succeed in the market. The onus is on you to love, cherish and be proud to present that product. Your own enthusiasm will go a long way to help sell that product to the most important customer. Note: Your most important customer is the one sitting or standing before you at the moment.

e) Understand what is unique about your product

To make good sales, to start with, your product must have a unique identifiable feature. There must be something that distinguishes your product from your competitors’. One of your sales pitches should be competitive advantage of that product compared to the competitors’ product. Whenever you sell, emphasize the competitive advantage your product has, however, DO NOT bad-mouth your competition. De-marketing your competition does not improve your own product or services. Another sales pitch should be the benefit of that product to the customers, in other words, the solution that product offers for their problems.

In using uniqueness of your product as a tool, examine these two things:

- How that uniqueness will appeal to your target consumers.

What particular problems that uniqueness will help solve for your customers.

We will continue this discussion next time. Keep a date with me.

Nigeria: Are we on the brink?

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:25:00 +0000

These are not ordinary times in Nigeria. We are on the brink, to put it mildly. Yet some people who claim to be our leaders are carrying on like we have no emergency in our hands. I never really stuck my head out for anyone during the last elections but I had a soft spot for President Goodluck Jonathan and I don't know why. I didn't like him that much but I felt for the sake of continuity, we didn't need a fresh person in Aso Rock. Besides, he cut a picture of a person who somehow knew what he wanted to do and was ready to run Nigeria with a paradigm shift mentality. But I was wrong obviously. Nothing seems to suggest to me right now that Mr. President is different from our previous leaders.

I had expected by now that he would have sent an Executive Bill to the National Assembly to do a death blow on extravagant expenditure in government. He didn't... The cost of running government is much higher today than it was 5 years ago.

I had expected that the President would be very proactive with security matters by picking highly skilled security people and not follow the traditional pattern of appointing service chiefs on the basis of "next in line". We have chiefs in our security services who are all confessing that the Boko Haram phenomenon caught them "unawares". Security people using the word "unawares"? It can only happen in Nigeria. In saner societies, that statement alone can earn them an immediate sack. That is why I like President Babangida for his security proactivity. I was a mere teenager when a one-time Governor of Benue State (for 3 days) made a careless statement to the press. The man was fired the next day and retired from the Nigerian Army. You don't make statements like that in security circles in public! Not even when you entertain the thoughts and entertaining such defeatist thoughts are even uncalled for!

The other day, the President told the nation that he was not a "general" nor was he "Pharoah of Egypt" and that we should not expect him to confront the challenges we have with a military mentality. My question is? Who then is the Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces? If the president cannot think and act as a Commander in Chief, who does he expect to think? If we have a President who speaks in this manner, why would Boko Haram not become more audacious with their attacks? Why should we have Damaturu turn into a killing field last week? If the security services were on top of their jobs, wouldn't it be good security sense for them to become proactive in neighbouring states to Borno where the sect is operating from as its headquarters?

When the nation is reeling under heavy economic challenges, we have a government that should be protecting the defenseless citizens even thinking of taking away from them what they have as a cushioning effect. Petrol at N65 is even expensive for a nation living on generators which is powered by fuel! If we take the price above N100 per litre through subsidy removal, now that there no electricity, are we saying the ordinary Nigerian should not even fuel their generators again? Are our leaders thinking? If you are removing subsidy, can you correctly account for the funds that have been entrusted to you in the past?

In my facebook page today, I have been advocating that the President and his team should take a pay cut by 50% and the National Assembly members should forgo 50% of their allowances and lead by example by engaging in deliberate sacrifices. The truth is this: these leaders do not really care about what happens to the ordinary Nigerian.

Ordinary citizens who try to galvanize others to protest the injustice and misgovernance are now being hounded by the State Security Service (SSS) wasting valuable man-hours that should have been spent working on the real criminals who are ravaging our streets with bombs. Poor managers always major on the minor. That is what is happening.

Without sounding so pessemistic, I want to state clearly that we are heading for the status of a failed state without even taking a closer look to confirm this. We must not forget that the average Nigerian is becoming restive daily through consistent frustration. When a government fails to live up to its name and responsibility, it may end up bearing the brunt of the consequences from a population pushed too far to the wall. A word is enough for the wise.

Things Won't Get Better; You Must Get Better

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:30:00 +0000

We are constantly living with the hope that the economy will improve - the reality is that the economy the world over has grown worse than it was 10 years ago. The recent economic melt-down in the Western world is not ebbing. There appears to be a respite but check out what is happening in the entire European bloc - Greek is about to pull the rest of Europe to its kneel. The American nation is experiencing arguably its worse economic problems in all of its national history. Unemployment is at its worst. Their credit rating has nose-dived. If these things are happening in so-called Developed World, what hope then is there for Third World or Developing nations like those in Africa?

Things are not getting better. Nigeria is sliding fast towards a failed state. Insecurity is as its worst. We have just joined the league of nations experiencing suicide bombing by its citizens. This was never contemplated even five years ago. Our roads are death-traps. Recent alarm raised by the Corp Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Commission reveals that of the 192 nations with bad roads, Nigeria ranks second to the last on number 191! This is inspite of the government's huge funds deployment to the building and rehabilitation of our roads. Corruption is at its worst. A minister in the cabinet was recently caught red-handed exchanging text messages with a private citizen and insulting him yet boasting that the citizen was poor because he refused to cooperate to get the minister to line his pockets with some government funds. Our public officials are public thieves. Their prosecution is like a show. They now take pride to be docked and released as they continue to enjoy their loot. Things are certainly not getting better.

It is no longer correct and right in our clime to count on the government. Nigeria and most Africans are citizens on their own. Its a survival of the fittest. Our schools are poor and overwhelmed with malpractices as they are now certificate awarding centers. Any wonder then that we should not expect better leaders tomorrow?

Is everything about doom?

Much as there is no hope in the horizon from civil authorities, the individual can rise above the dispair and make a mark. In nations like America where the economy is on its kneel, private citizens who have discovered their God-given gifts and talents, developed them through sheer determination and created platforms for their deployment are making money daily and living large, oblivious of the storm around them.

I am a Christian, and I know there are many Christians reading this right now. We were told that darkness, even gross darkness will cover the earth but we must arise and shine in the midst of the darkness. If you wait for anyone to lift you, you will wait in vain. It is time to dust ourselves from the shackles of discouragement and dispair - seek out what God put inside you and connect with Him for necessary wisdom to be the best you can be.

I have made up my mind not to cave in to any storm because I am an eagle! The eagle is immuned to the storms.

Can we meet and sharpen our minds?

If you in the Kano area of North West Nigeria, I will be huddling together with a group of friends under the auspices of the LoveHouse International Gospel Center to host a series of teaching/discussions on CHILLING OUT IN THE STORMS every Sunday evening throughout the month of November. The event will feature practical discussion sessions on how to remain afloat in the storms and flood of economic depression and challenges. The Royal Tropicana Motel on Zungeru Road, Sabon Gari, Kano is the venue and time is 4.30 pm every Sunday.

I am looking forward to meeting you this Sunday, 6th November, 2011. If you miss out this Sunday, there remains 3 more weekends and the dates are 13th, 20th and 27th November, 2011. Mark your calendar, adjust your schedules and come with your friends.

Its time to chill out in the storms!

In Search of Nigeria's Purpose-Driven Leadership

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:09:00 +0000

Nigeria is at a very critical crossroads as a nation. And the nation is in dire need of a pragmatic leadership to stir it out of troubled waters. For over 50 years, we have tettered along as a nation which drifts along without a clearly defined path. Every successive government has tried to carry out "sweeping reforms" that practically erases whatever little gain its predecessors in office had garnered while it was in office. This is partly due to the incessant military incursions in the polity of the country and coupled with the lack of leadership foresight and pragmatism by their civilian counterparts while in charge.

This is the 21st century and the whole world is grappling with unprecedented economic challenges. While a purpose-driven economic agenda is the immediate desire of a sane nation, Nigeria is contending with more other fundamental challenges that deserves critical attention if any economic theory is to have a lasting effect on its soil.

Multi-cultural/religious crisis

Our nation is sharply divided between the North and South, Christianity and Islam, Tribes and Ethnic groupings and all these interests are seeking very selfish portion of the soul of the country. The question really is this: Are we ready to dwell together as one people, one nation with one destiny? This is not about some politicians forcing us through laws made by a few people in the National Assembly or some 1914 forced coallition made by Lord Lugard's British Colonial masters. Can we sincerely ask ourselves from Sokoto to Calabar, Maiduguri to Lagos and from Kano to Port Harcourt if we are ready to dwell together as one nation and place other considerations like religion, tribe and regional groups aside as secondary? Can we sincerely first and foremost be Nigerians before we break into our tribes and religions? If we cannot get a leadership to resolve this seeming and intractable jig-saw puzzle for us as a nation, no medicine can possibly cure the many other social vices that confront us as a nation.

President Goodluck Jonathan does not look like that kind of leader who can confront these questions and ask Nigerians to debate on it. He seems to have towed the line of other leaders who just pay lip service to the cliche "unity in diversity" without addressing the fundamental questions. Are we really ready to be Nigerians indeed? We need a leader who can confront this question and get answers and go for the jogular! There is no point being afraid of breaking our nation down into nation-states for the sake of sustainable development. There is no point being a giant with no direction in focus.

This may be the most audacious blog post I have written on the Nigerian state.

The Current Debate on Oil Subsidy Removal

The oil subsidy appears to be the only thing the impoverished Nigerian enjoys from its clueless governments over the years. I have had issues in the last couple of years lambasting the late Colonel Gaddafi who ruled over Libya with iron fists for 42 years before going down to a popular revolution that started early this year. Gaddafi was a maximum ruler but he provided infrastructure for his people. He gave the Libyans water, gave them good roads and the average Libyans never really complained of extreme poverty the kind we have in Nigeria. They just wanted a better society than what they had. They wanted freedom in the political space, a democracy where they can be free to choose their own leaders. That is what really caused the frustration which resulted in the revolution which has been carried out now.

Nigerian leaders talk about freedom of speech and a democracy which is actually meaningless to the ordinary Nigerian. The other day, I took a trip to nearby Jigawa State in North West Nigeria from my base in Kano. What I saw on my way (pictures of which I posted on my facebook page) really shocked me. A little less than 20 kilometers outside the sprawling commercial city of Kano, mud houses littered everywhere on the route to Dutse, the Jigawa State capital. These people who live in these mud houses were completely cut off from civilization without electricity and water. They live in houses that were good only in the first decade of the last century! Yet they live in a Nigeria where leaders steal billions of dollars which were allocated to their states for the development of the country! Are they not worst than Colonel Gaddafi? Shouldn't they be executed publicly for corruption? Didn't Gaddafi deserve a better treatment compared to his Nigerian counterparts?

What really is the Nigerian enjoying from its government? How does the billions of naira realized from the sale of crude oil trickle down to the Nigerian? Only about 20 million Nigerians actually work for the government agencies, Organized Private Sector and quasi-governmental agencies. Of a population of 160 million people, does the government create any conducive environment for the entrepreneurship of the remaining 140 million people? The rest of us who survive by any means are simply lost and have no consciousness of government. We are not secured - the police is just a relic of whatever it was meant to be - even milking the citizens who are trying to eke out a life by collecting N20 naira bribes from them on the street. The entire country is wallowing in a huge darkness that is a huge embarassment to our size and resources as a nation. The entire country in urban centers now run on generators. We are emitting more gasious substance than the entire industries in the world - causing unprecedented global warming. Why are we complaining of the spate of flooding in our cities this last raining season? Check out the gas emission from our generators. Someone should take the measurement and the shock we will find from the revelations will be awesome.

Has the government of Goodluck Jonathan considered these issues before contemplating the removal of the subsidy? Whatever is draining the purse of the government is not the subsidy they give to the Nigerian people. They should do a massive pay cut for all legislators for starters! Lately I heard of the House of Representative members asking for money to buy N2.5m cars for each of them! Imagine how much that will amount to. Does anyone consider how much impact that can do on the lives of the people who are unemployed if they were given soft loans to start their own small businesses with just N500,000 each? Now the legislators are going to spend that money on cars! Don't they have cars before becoming representatives of their people? They should use their old cars and SERVE the people! That is the subsidy that should be removed!

The furniture allowances that Senators are paid every session is needless. Remove that subsidy. They already have houses. Most of them are not poor people. If they really want to serve and they know the condition of the nation's finance, they should give up their furniture allowance which runs into hundreds of millions of naira per Senator. That sum can be channelled to build infrastructures through which employment can be generated for the suffering Nigerians. That is where the subsidy should be removed.

No governor should enjoy any more security votes! Their states are not secured. They can't secure it. Remove those votes and rechannel it! Please the people's subsidy and cut your allowances and the excesses in the maintenance of government officials.

I will come back and write further on the need to avoid the meaningless desire by the government to remove oil subsidy. That will finally muzzle the common man out of existence. Any palliative measures they want to use to cushion the effect will make no difference. It will end up within the circle of officialdom.

President Jonathan, please seat up and protect the Nigerians you swore to serve on May 29, 2011. Stop running 250 kilometers in the wrong direction. Make a U-turn for the sake of the common man in Kotangora, the farmer in Ojigo, Benue State and the fisherman in Takum, Taraba State. If you fail in this duty, the goodwill you garnered during your campaign will be washed away and you will join the rest of Nigeria's leaders who bore the name but had no impact on the lives of the people. Is that the legacy you want to leave behind for your own children, and kins men in Otuoke? I think not.

Now that Gaddafi is Dead...

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:55:00 +0000

Its funny how tables can turn overnight. The once strongman of Libya was captured like a chicken early today when he was trying to flee from the overwhelmed city of Sirte, his birthplace which has been his hiding place since he was deposed in August this year. This once reverred messianic persona who throd over the landscape of Libya like a collosus is now killed and has left the realms of the living.

There are lessons that we should learn from the mistakes and mishaps of others but most often than not, we do not get down to learn these lessons. Gaddafi was alive when Liberia's Samuel Doe was captured and butchered like a goat in the 1990s when Prince Yommie Johnson and longtime Liberian war-lord turned President, Charles Ghankey Taylor led a splinter of rebellion against his regime. Even the Ecowas Monitoring Group co-sponsored by the Nigerian government under the leadership of President Ibrahim Babangida could not save the then famous Sergeant Samuel Doe.

In the wake of the Arab Spring which spread across the Arab Magreb in Africa, Gaddafi saw how Ben Ali of Tunisia and his old friend, Hosni Mubarack were swept by the whirlwind. He never took notice to quietly stand down and take a deserved rest. When the youths in his country began the uprising which led to his eventual removal and now death, he called them mad dogs and insisted that Al Qaeda was leading the "rebellion" and went as far as saying that the youths had taken some drugs which has led them into some kind of delusion. Now we know who was being deluded.

There are other sit-tight leaders still hanging around the African continent and in the Arab bloc. In Africa, Cameroon's Paul Biya is approaching the 30 year mark, Eduardo dos Santos in Angola is been there about the same time. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is in his 31st year as the only President to have led the republic since independence. A dynasty of succession of leadership of sort is taking root in Togo with Eyadema Jr now in the saddle after his father passed away after over 30 years. I believe that Gaddafi was also not unaware of the pranks that Ivorien former President Laurent Gbagbo tried to play after losing the election to Allasan Quattara late last year. He was eventually captured after some months of dilly-dallying. Despots and autocratic leadership will always end up in shambles. If you always want to be a leader by hook or by crook, you will be hooked by a crook as well.

Gaddafi's demise should sound a clear signal once again to all undemocratic and authoritarian leadership across the African continent and the world at large that in today's world, there is no hiding place for the wicked.

A word is indeed enough for the wise.

NIGERIA: What manner of governance?

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:51:00 +0000

It is with pain in my heart that I write this post on Nigeria's leadership crisis. It is a crisis because Nigeria has had issues with leadership since its advent as a nation that sought to lead itself since 1960 when it was handed an independence on a platter of gold by the British colonial masters. We have had the misfortune of having leaders who were mostly rudderless and having no clue where to lead the nation. As a matter of fact, some of our leaders needed to be properly led first before stepping into such positions of authority. A whole lot of them had no personal leadership in their own lives - little wonder then that they could not lead at the political or national levels.

Leadership from the concept I seek to address here which is a scarce commodity in Nigeria is strange to many people in positions of authority in the country today. While real leadership is about adding value to the lives of the people one is expected to lead, in Nigerian parlance based on the way politics is played, leadership is about a personal ambition to get a position of authority and command respect from people and at the same time use the position to amass wealth and display such wealth stupendously amongst the poor and disadvantaged Nigerians. The former concept of leadership changes the society and adds value to the citizenry while the latter leaves the people more impoverished and the nation more sapped.

To my thinking, very few Nigerian leaders from 1960 were actually prepared to lead this vast nation. My readers may chose to agree or disagree with me but we have had only two people who were actually ready to tackle Nigeria's leadership issues from the day they took over the reigns of leadership. These two individuals knew from day one what their mission was and they set about doing it. One of them started out and was cut down by the bullets of fellow soldiers in a bloody military coup. The other came on board with grand plans but was sabotaged by the kind of people he surrounded himself with. They are General Murtala Ramat Mohammed and General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida respectively. All other leaders apart from the first set of leaders from 1960 to 1966 were all circumstantial leaders who got into leadership by chance and therefore had to try finding their feet while already in the saddle. By the time they get an idea of what to really do having spent and wasted time trying to understand the complexity of the Nigerian situation, their tenure would have expired or they would be busy trying to enlongate their stay that they end up losing focus on the main business of governance and leadership.

The same is the case for the Goodluck Jonathan administration which is presently enmessed in a lot of problems it is finding difficult to grapple with. Goodluck Jonathan was a circumstantial governor of Bayelsa State with no ambition or eye for Aso Rock until President Olusegun Obasanjo drafted him to run on a ticket with late Alhaji Umaru Yar'Adua in the 2007 Presidential Elections. He was still trying to get used to being thrust in the center when Yar'Adua took ill and he had to be saddled with the responsibility of becoming an Acting President. While at that, his boss died and he became a substantive President. Amidst all kinds of confusion, he announced his intention to run for the President and riding on the crest of popular acclaim for having a minority candidate and being so "innocent", he won the Presidential Election. Now is time to lead the nation and he is being found wanting.

Communication as a leadership tool

The Nigerian people are becoming enlightened by the day. They can tell when a leader is confused. The best way to douse such insinuations (if they really are) is to speak directly to them. There is a place for press statements through the Special Adviser on Media and Communcations, there is also the role of the Minister of Information and all the Cabinet Ministers responsible for specific job functions but the real leader of the nation is the President. The buck eventually stops at his desk. If he has a major policy thrust that he wants to carry out in the nation like the current issue of the State Governor's opposition to the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and their insistence on the removal of the petroleum subsidy, as a President, is expected that he takes to the airwaves and address the Nigerian people directly on the issue. He could also call a Presidential Press Conference and address the nation through that avenue and take questions off the hook from the members of the Aso Rock Press Corp. That way, Nigerians can be properly informed. But the reverse is the case. The President of Nigeria is silent and many of the other leaders are busy engaged in a cacaphony of noise thereby confusing the Nigerian people and leaving a picture of a confused leadership.

When the British nation was under attack by Nazi Germany during the World War II, the Prime Minister of the British, Sir Winston Churchill spoke to the heart of the nation and charged them to be strong. His voice represented the English nation's resolve not to be cowered to submission by the madness of Germany's Hitler. On the strength of his powerful communication, he galvanized the English troop even though weak compared to the Germany machines to victory.

Every remarkable American President had changed the tide of the mood of the nation at adverse times through direct and powerful use of words to communicate to the American public. Besides the prepared speech and the paraphenalia of state protocols, powerful leaders have been known to speak off the hook from their heart to convince their citizens that as leaders, they were on top of the situation.

Why would President Jonathan play the ostrich at this time of our national emergency and by not communicating directly with the Nigerian people? It is time to speak your mind about the critical issues and if you think we oppose government's position, try your best to convince us and if we are not, do a rethink. You are there to serve us and not the other way round. Be courageous and be bold. Take the reins of leadership and give the Presidential job your best job. A whole generation of people is counting on you and the destinies of millions is hinged on your decision today. We are waiting.

My Headache Over Nigeria...

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:18:00 +0000

Dateline was Saturday, October 8, 2011: The place was the National Stadium in the heart of Abuja, Nigeria's sprawling capital city. The occasion was the make or mar African Nations Cup qualifier between Nigeria's Super Eagles and the Syli Stars of Guinea. The stakes were high and much was expected from the Nigerian team. They needed a slim win of 1 goal to nothing and they would be through to the Nations Cup starting in Equitorial Guinea/Gabon on January 12, 2012.

As expected, Nigerian fans came out in their numbers to support their home team. The world outside was watching on cable TV as the event was being beamed live to every Nigerian home and those in the Diaspora. At the end of 90 minutes, the result was Nigeria 2, Guinea 2. Verdict: Guinea has qualified ahead of Nigeria to play at the bi-annual soccer fiesta. For records: This is the first time in 25 years that the National Team of Nigeria has failed to qualify for the Nations Cup.

The Nigerian fans who went into the stadium expecting to come out celebrating were so frustrated some of them who could not stomach the defeat had to resort to damaging some of the stadium facilities. As much as such venting of anger is unnecessary, one can understand the frustration in the land not just only in the area of football but also in every sphere of our national life.

After a thoughtful reflection time on the ouster of Nigeria from the Nations Cup, I got out of my angry mood and suddenly I was no longer surprised that Nigeria would not be at the soccer fiesta. Why should we single out football administration and artistry from the many troubles we are having as a country. Is the country not one? Are the players and soccer administrators not part of the corporate entity called Nigeria? The rot we have in the nation is inclusive of the sports realm.

Our national institutions are collapsing right before our eyes and our so-called leaders are busy speaking English and giving press statements. The reality on the street is a far cry from the "reality" in the laptops they carry out in the different state houses and Aso Rock proclaiming a drop in inflation. There are more people out of jobs than those in any gainful employment. Our educational institutions are bereft of any standards. Many Nigerians who can now afford it are sending their kids by road through the Lagos axis to Accra where the standard of education in Ghana surpasses all of ours here. Our children who get out of secondary schools number over a million every year yet our Universities can only support the admission of a little over 150,000. No provision exists for the remaining 850,000 even if they are qualified. While we struggle with that, the rate of failure in the secondary school WAEC examinations is a national embarrassment. To worsen the situation, they are not issuing conflicting results on the internet and in hard papers!

Are we this daft as a nation not to be able to produce a leadership that can fix things in record time? We have been giving President Goodluck Jonathan a benefit of the doubt for the past 2 years. Yes, he won a fresh mandate in April, but he has been in the saddle for nearly 2 years. Where is the impact of his being there? The power situation improves only on the pages of newspapers and our hospitals are national morgues of repute! Recently, I took a personal war with Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano where patients are treated worse than animals. No wonder, the rate of deaths in that hospital is alarming. I have lost two kids to the lacklustre attitude of their personnel and consultants. A family friend who was about to be delivered of her first baby was so delayed because there was "no bed" for two straight days and when she went in for a CS, she could not come around neither was the baby alive! Yet she undertook all her ante-natal sessions in that same hospital.

The other madness that has entered the head of the leaders is the issue of the quarrelling over the Sovereign Wealth Fund which was set up to inculcate into the consciousness of the nation the culture of savings. The State Governors who have refused to think up other revenue generating activities within their respective states are clamouring for the scrapping of the fund to enable them continue their looting spree. The immediate past Governors now being queezed by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) were all part of the ones who opposed former President Obasanjo for starting the Excess Crude Oil Fund back in 2003. We now know why they wanted the money. They claimed the wanted to alleviate poverty but the poverty was actually in their pockets. How can a single individual loot over 20 billion Naira? Can you imagine what that amount can do in alleviating poverty and providing gainful employments to our teeming youths?

If the situation continues this way, like many people have alluded to which I do not have the evidence to prove otherwise, we are headed for the precipice and a failed state stares us all in the face.

That is my headache about Nigeria and it is getting me really worried.

You Can Survive Anything Thrown @ You!

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:43:00 +0000

I have not been too faithful to postings and updating my blog of late, but it is not unconnected with the huge demands on my time in the last couple of weeks. In some random thought processes which I tried to streamline over the last couple of days, I want to share a few thoughts on the significance of your remaining steadfast in the midst of the storms you might be going through right now because inside you is a capacity to survive anything thrown at you.

It is critical to know that nature and even the devil (for the spiritually conscious) will always try to prevent any change that is set to produce better results in your life. Take the life of a corn sown in a soil for instance. The first reaction of the earth is to squeeze and muzzle the corn by killing it. But in the killing of the seed of corn is its life for replication! What the earth was trying to kill springs up with a stronger force from inside the seed itself and defies the earth and grows to be a blessing - fulfilling its original purpose!

In the same vein, whenever you as an individual try your hand on anything new that has the tendency to change the course of your life, nature and the devil (even using human beings and those close to you) will conspire and gang up against you to stop you. But I have good news for you: any time you come against a very strong opposition whenever you set your heart to do what is right, you must immediately realize that whatever it is you activated yourself to do is a good thing and will bless you and the society around you.

Having a mindset of a victor from the outset of any venture is very critical to your winning. If you believe you can win, then you will win. If you think you are not up to the task and will not win, then the situation will respond with an appropriate reaction of defeat. You must remember that the law of attraction is always at play. You attract whatever you constantly dwell and think about.

There are so many things that will distract you from moving ahead in whatever you have your hand upon. They include people who speak down on your dreams - stating that you do not have to it takes to succeed, or that your time is past or you are too young; situations that will prevent you from taking necessary steps because of public opinion - by all means die to public opinion and develop a person opinion by which to live. As long as that opinion is unique to you and not inimical to sound godly principles, you are on track.

I just feel like encouraging you today. Stay focused, don't fret over the mountains you see - if you get closer and walk towards it, it will reduce to a size you can overcome. If you stay afar off, you will never overcome the obstacles you see. Some of these obstacles are mere mirages that do not really exist - when you move towards them, they disappear. You are equipped to be a consistent and natural winner. Live with that mentality today!

Of the Nigerian Cross-roads, Libya's Fugitive Dictator & Myself...

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:30:00 +0000

Nigeria is obviously at a crossroads... besides the alarming security situation which has further degenerated over the last couple of weeks, the economy is barely holding together in spite of Government's claim of reduction in inflation figures. I believe that is the workings of some paper and computer calculations which is not having a direct bearing on the man on the street. Our government has continued to reel out the thousands of megawatts of electricity it has continued to generate on paper too. In the house where I live, I have not seen electricity for nearly one year... we have had to depend on generators. Transformers are bad and we are left to our fate. Yet, how do you want me to believe that the megawatts of electricity has increased?

At state government levels, our workers have been going on strike on account of fully legislated minimum wage amount. State Governors are prevaricating on payment of the wage benchmark which has already been signed into law. In Kano State for instance, throughout last week, as the State Government Civil Servants downed tools, banks in the commercial city also joined in the fray to stop depositors and customers from depositing funds or withdrawing money. Corporate organizations who have no access to ATM cards are left to suffer. What is the relationship between privately run banks and the State Government employees? Is this some form of solidarity? Businesses in states involved are suffering huge losses.

Security situation in Jos and on our highways are begging for serious attention. Jos is almost heading for a Somalia-like brigade where no real government can be felt because as it were in the days of old in Israel, there was no king and every one did what was right in his own eyes. That anarchy level must not be allowed to prevail on the Plateau.

While all these and many more happening, we need an active, responsive and proactive government to proffer solutions to the myriads of problems. We must be careful to note that we have a huge population of educated youths who are roaming the streets without jobs. We should not allow their frustrations to become filled to overflowing level. The Arab Spring is still fresh in our consciousness and we must not make the mistake of thinking "it can never happen in Nigeria". Nobody ever contemplated suicide bombing in Nigeria in the last 2 years; but today, we have joined the league of nations that have groomed within its territory internal terrorists ready to die for a cause (even if such causes are ironically not right - at least by our rationale judgement).

Col. Gaddafi in Northern Nigeria?

For weeks now, I have been shouting myself hoarse about the possibility of the Libyan crisis spilling over our borders because of the proximity of our northern neighbours to Libya and the fact that Niger as it were is a vast expanse of empty desert land that can be traversed by any group of people with less than noble ambitions. In the wake of the NATO bombings over Libya to help the rebels opposed to Gaddafi topple the dictator, I remember sounding a note of warning via my facebook page that the Nigerian authorities should watch her northern borders for possible infiltrations. Obviously, these warnings were ignored. Gaddafi was toppled and he is on the run. Latest reports indicate that his sons were among the convey of his military people who entered Niger, specifically spotted in the desert town of Agadez. I again warned through facebook that we should take note of these happenings. Just yesterday, I discovered the Nigerian authorities, through some media reports are putting security on high alert across the Northern cities of Kano and Kaduna as rumours filled the air of the possibility of Gaddafi being in the area! What a shame! How long are we going to continue to be taken for a ride?

Myself

I have not updated this blogspot for weeks now. I have been busy with a lot. LoveHouse International Gospel Center, my Church has been helping Singles in the North Western city of Kano to understand purpose of relationship and marriage. We have had 3 sessions already and heading for Week 4 meetings. Its been an incisive time all through and its joyful for me to see singles rejoice on account of receiving new information and correct one at that to help them make informed and result-oriented decisions in respect of their relationships.

I have been on the road a lot of late. Having some work to do at Gwagwalada in Abuja and making new friends in the process. Attended to issues in Zaria and Kaduna on media purposes. I have discovered that in the midst of great personal conflicts, if you engage your mind on purposes issues, light will shine through and keep you through to the top.

Final Note

I am a passionate Nigerian and a patriot. I make these statements on our situation as above based on true patriotism. Our leaders must not lead like in the 1990s and early 2000s. This is a new era with changing tides across the world. We must be up and about. Leadership is about seizing the initiative. That we lack in quantum and we must cover lost grounds in good time before we are left behind by the rest of the world. This is our moment, it is our time, we cannot fail this generation and the generations yet unborn. Nigerian Leaders Arise! I REST MY CASE...

An Attempt to Define True Love

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:11:00 +0000

The word love is about the most misunderstood word the world over today. From the perspective of Hollywood, love is presented to the world in movies as a sexual relationship between a male and a female. They do not have the perception that these movies project the female gender as basically a sex symbol and that the real motive of the male in these movies portend an exploitative attitude. Most of the story lines present run contrary to the concept of what true love is. This is a skewed presentation of what love is. Hollywood therefore presents sex to the world and calls it love.

Many of us today have accepted this narrow-minded definition of love and the mere mention of this four-letter word immediately evokes sexual thoughts and inclinations in our minds. Generally, we have allowed a lot of things to be explained and defined for us from the wrong source and perspective. In the same manner, we have consigned the understanding of a concept as deep as love to the warped and immoral mind-set of Hollywood movie-makers.

You may not be among those with the kind of tunnel-vision understanding of love and might even be a Christian with a good standing in the Church and with God. What difference does that really make? Many Church folks are as guilty as those who have the understanding of love from corrupt-minded movie-makers. Once you talk about love in the midst of the believers, they immediately raise their holy antennas and question the rationale for love relationship between the brethren especially if they are of the opposite sex! They have also bought into the Hollywood concept that consign love to mean immorality and sex! “God is love”, we affirm. But what is the result of this belief and affirmation if the people for which Christ died are alienated and not shown the love in practice? They attest to love in mere words and deny the power that it brings when put into action.

The object of God’s love is people. If people cease to matter when love is concerned, even if God’s name were to be dragged in, it will amount to nothing. Today’s religious people have erroneously overshadowed the purpose of God’s love for mankind with so many meaningless activities that only feeds our over-bloated egos. We are more willing to testify of being on our kneels praying for ten hours rather than seek for opportunities to be able to testify that we spent a whole day with a friend who needed our company to overcome a serious fear or emotional stress in his or her life.

The question we should ask ourselves often is: what is the result of our prayers in the lives of people? Does God delight in activities that just satisfy our half-alive consciences on what we believe to be God’s heartbeat? I have heard a lot of well meaning Christians say that God’s heartbeat is to be shut up with Him in prayers. Prayers, yes! We possibly cannot do anything without it. But what does prayer mean when it is not focused on what lines up with God’s ultimate purpose for mankind? Prayers as God’s heartbeat must be carried out in conjunction with actions that results in the fulfillment of the overall objective of God on earth. This objective is basically reconciliation of mankind to God. Imagine a scenario where our Lord Jesus Christ came and performed all the miracles and wonders we see in recorded scriptures and yet never went to the cross to die for us? As a friend once said, that would have been “half-bread being worse than none”.

In defining true love, I do not intend to take you through some new or strange path or to propound a new theory, but I believe that as you come along again in the unveiling of this subject with another author, your understanding will be enlightened and God’s Grace will cause you to live a meaningful life according to His purpose for mankind.

... to be continued.

Living Free

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:20:00 +0000

I want to address you here on a personal level. It is from my heart to yours. There is such a thing as Personal Liberty. That is my own coinage of how you can live free on the basis of your personal convictions.

Many of us do not have personal convictions. We do what we do not because we understand it but because of so many other considerations. Friends, if you are not living your life based on personal liberty, you are not really living.

This personal liberty stems from your personal knowledge. It derives energy from the totality of who you are as a person. This is the combination of what you know and understand and believe. What you believe most times also stems from your background as a person and the various experiences you have garnered while growing up. After becoming a grown up, what other things have formed your current set of values?

Just in case you do not have any values that determine how you live, then you need an overhaul as a person. You need to seat down, get an understanding of the characteristics of the purpose driven life and what it is specifically you are supposed to be doing. Are you already getting confused? A lot of people reading this right now will understand what I mean but perhaps you are not getting the idea of what I am saying. Check out my mailing address (goba_ogwuche@yahoo.com) and phone number (+234 (0) 816 573 5746) and I can engage you in a coaching time that will enable you understand purpose for living in a matter of days. It will be right for you to get Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life from any bookstore in your city to help you get started as well.

Having located your vision and goal for living, and armed with a road-map to lead you down the road, you must be determined to stay on track until you hit your target. While you are at it, you will be visited with a lot of distractions. This is where your personal convictions will be tested and come into the fore. People, I mean, well-meaning individuals, friends and family members will question your rationale for settling for a particular way of life; they will question your vision. Those probing and questions are meant to test your convictions as you stay connected to your life-goal. On many occasions, they may even think you have gone crazy, which is a normal reaction.

Let me tell you why you must remain focused. You are totally responsible for your destiny in life. No one will stand guard on your behalf if you don’t hit target. Never allow another man’s convictions to sidetrack you. They may mean well for you, but they can never be you. They may be older than you are, but they do not have your convictions. They may have more than enough experience but they are not surely seeing what you see.

Many times, it bothers me why people want me to behave like them. Some others want me to think the way they do. It’s practically impossible. That is too limiting. I was created to be unique and different and something more. That is why my thumb print is different from yours and is not identical with any other single person on the face of the earth peopled by over 6 billion people. If by God’s divine design and mandate, I am supposed to be different, who is man to think I am wrong?

We owe ourselves individual responsibilities to respect the uniqueness of one another as a people created by God. Do all that is in your power to accept people the way they are – I am not advocating a radical position where you accept people’s unwarranted morale misdemeanor. For those of us in leadership positions, it’s always difficult to accept people for who they are especially if they are different from our own perceived “correct” way of doing certain things. With all our good intentions, we fail when we want people to think like us, act like us, dress the way we dress and even talk the way we talk. God through nature has decided people should be different, unique and yet able to agree on common grounds of principle and this should be done in such a way that no one is seen to be forced to agree but by total personal convictions. Disagreement is legitimate and opinion is free.

In my personal experience over the years, both in my capacity as a leader in the Church and as a Church growth student, I have discovered that the Church and its leaders are occasionally guilty of not appreciating or accepting people who are different from their cultural mainstream. This results from a number of things including people’s style of worship, the way they dress, their specific doctrines and theological beliefs, etc. I heard of someone who was asked to leave a church service because he raised his hands in worship. In another Church, everyone dressed very nicely for church service and those who didn’t weren’t welcome. We must learn to understand that we cannot all be the same.

... to be continued...

Fight For Your Freedom (II)

noreply@blogger.com (Ogwuche G) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 16:56:00 +0000

There was yet another man who stood up to fight for freedom. In the sixties, Martin Luther King Jr. bestrode the American landscape like a colossus as he led the Civil Rights Movement which campaigned for the abrogation of laws in the US that relegated the blacks (Negroes) to the status of second class citizens. King was born in Atlanta, Georgia. His father was pastor of a Baptist Church, his mother a school teacher. Originally named Michael, he was renamed Martin when he was about six years old.

He entered Morehouse College in 1944 and there he met Dr. Benjamin Mays, a scholar who encouraged him to enter the ministry. After graduating in 1948, King went to Crozer Religious Seminary to undertake post-graduate study. He received his doctorate in 1955. Returning to the South of the US, he became a pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. King first achieved national renown when he helped mobilize the black boycott of the Montgomery bus system in 1955. The boycott was organized after Rosa Parks, who passed away in 2006 at over 85 years old, a black woman, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, as local custom dictated – in the segregated South, black people were only permitted to sit at the back of the bus. The 382-day boycott led the bus company to change its regulations, and the Supreme Court of the United States declared such segregation unconstitutional.

In 1957, King was active in the organization of the Southern Leadership Christian Conference (SCLC), formed to coordinate civil rights protests against discrimination, and he was elected President. He advocated non-violent direct action modeled on the methods of Mahatma Gandhi, who led the protests against British rule in India that culminated in India’s independence in 1947.

In 1963, King led mass protests against discriminatory practices in Birmingham, Alabama, a city with a dubious reputation because of the violent resistance of its white population to desegregation. The city was dubbed “Bombingham” as attacks against civil rights protesters increased, and King was arrested and jailed for his part in the protests. Upon his release, he participated in the enormous civil rights march in Washington of August 1963.

It was here, at this huge demonstration, that King delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech, where he foresaw a day that the promise of freedom and equality for all would become a reality in America. In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1965, he led a campaign to register blacks to vote, which culminated in a march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama, the state capital. In 1965, the US Congress passed the Voting Rights Act that outlawed the discriminatory practices that had barred blacks from voting in the South.

As the black movement for civil rights became increasingly radicalized, King found that the message of peaceful protest was not shared by the younger generation, particularly in northern and West Coast cities. King began to protest against American involvement in the Vietnam War and the depth of poverty in the US, as well as black civil rights. However, his crusade on behalf of the poor had only begun when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.

In 1969, his wife, Corretta Scott King, opened the Martin Luther King Jr Center for non-violent Social Change. Despite being investigated and bugged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his career as a civil rights leader, King is now acknowledged as an American hero, and in 1983, Congress made his birthday, January 15, a national holiday in his honour. He paid the price for freedom for the blacks in the US and became a beacon of hope for all blacks and freedom fighters around the world.

You must pay a price to be free. That is why freedom is not cheap. Those who got political independence on a platter of gold are wont to squander their golden chances. Because they never fought to get it, they take it for granted. Adam and Eve were never children and therefore never grew up through the normal process. They didn’t understand what it meant to have experiences and challenges of growing up, therefore, someone reasoned that was why they took the glory of God they had for granted and then easily disobeyed him! That may not be far from the truth.

Nigeria as a nation never really fought the British to gain political independence. Any wonder then that today, we are still struggling to find our bearing in all spheres of our national life. South Africa is different. They are today very stable and have transited from one government to the other without any incident. Namibia (formerly Rhodesia) fought for independence. I still remember the struggles led by their foremost nationalist leader and later first President, Sam Nujoma and his fellow comrades in SWAPO who fought the Boars to a standstill. In 1990, their courage was saluted as they joined the rest of Africa as an independent nation.

For nearly half a century, South Sudan were in conflict with their Arab northern countrymen. The late John Garang led the South black Sudanese to resist the repression of the Arab north. As I write this chapter, the Republic of South Sudan was born on July 9, 2011 as thousands gathered in the Southern Capital of Juba to receive Africa’s 55^th nation. John Garang was not on ground to experience the freedom his fought and died for, his countrymen will never forget his sacrifice for their independence.

When you fight for freedom, you face challenges and these challenges releases your potentials that you thought never existed. You discover you could plan, strategize and the realities of your organizational abilities come into the full glare of the world. In adversity, your best becomes obvious. Therefore, be thankful for every adversity you face in your march towards freedom because if well utilized, they can stand you in good stead to manage your life well.

What are your dreams and aspirations in life? Where do you see yourself headed in life? Those are your visions and they are a part of the freedom your soul longs for. What are you ready to give up to get there? There is going to be a fight and you must fight it. The truth of the matter is this: you will have few choices in the future if you do not make the necessary sacrifices and pay the needed price today. Are you looking forward to financial freedom? What are you doing to increase your streams of income in the nearest future? Do you want to rest and be at peace as a parent in the future seeing your children established and standing firm in their various vocations? Then you must brace up to purposeful parenting. Do you want a virtual queen for a wife? Then you are not going to just look well but be a king in your character and attitude. Besides knowledge and understanding in the issue of marriage, you must prepare yourself from within and be a real man.

I am appalled by the rate of purposelessness in today’s young men. Many young men at 26 – 30 years of age do not have a single clue as to where they are headed in life. Without a purpose, you are a finished person. What are you called to accomplish in life? You are not just here to complete the number of over 6.6 billion people on this planet. You are significant and important. You were crafted for a reason and a cause. Have you located it? Time ticks away every second and every day.

It is very easy to blame the government, institutions and others. But, let me assure you today that what you become is what you make of your life by yourself! What do you think about? Until your thoughts line up to a particular purpose, there will never be any accomplishment in your life. James Allen says “a man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it”. You are supposed to be a creative force. You are supposed to be somebody higher than where you are now; stronger than a bundle of wavering thoughts and fluctuating sensations.

You may just be realizing this enormous potential that lies dormant within you which has not been tapped all the while and may be asking “Please help me!” I have a word for you. A strong man cannot help a weaker unless the weaker one is willing to be helped. You must by your own deliberate and conscious efforts develop the strength which you admire in others. Only you can alter your condition and navigate your way through life for great accomplishments. That is where Barack Obama emerged from as the first Black President of the United States, overcoming personal obstacles and institutional barriers. You too can overcome your challenges and get to the topmost place in your life.

Your way of thinking must change. If you have to become free, you must first of all be free in your mind. Your mind is the clearing house where thoughts (both base and high in nature) fight to take residence. Do you remember the statement that says “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he?” When you look at your life, who do you see? As you stand before a full length mirror, who do you see reflected back to you? Do you see a weak and a discouraged person? Do you see someone worth nothing and who will not amount to anything in life? Is that who you see? If these represent who you see, then you must change your mind-set. You must change your thought patterns.

Do you really love yourself? If you do, then you will fight to be a free man in the real sense of the word. You must have what Reverend Martin Luther King Jr called rationale and healthy self-interest. A great Jewish Rabbi, the late Joshua Leibman, wrote a book some years ago entitled Peace of Mind. In that book, there is a chapter that had a title called “Love Thyself Properly”. What he says in that chapter, in substance, is that before you can love other people adequately, you have to love your own self properly. You do not need to go through life with a deep and haunting emotional conflict. Part of loving yourself very well is accepting yourself and that will set you really free.

Your rationale and healthy self-interest will drive you to focus on something in life and look forward to a period of freedom in your life when you can chose where to live, where to go for holidays with your family without restrictions placed on you for lack of finance and the means. You must not be bound to a shylock of a landlord five to ten years from today. You should be a landlord yourself. You shouldn’t be hopping from one bus or taxi to the other in five years’ time. If you are driving a sloppy, swaging and staggering car now, you should aspire for a sleek car in two to three years from today. That is possible when you set your face like a flint and do the needful to earn enough money to acquire that pleasure toy you seek.

I am not suggesting that material acquisition is the definition of success and freedom but they are legitimate and should be a necessary part of your life for comfort. It should be part of your freedom package but not the ultimate. There are lots of people today who ride in the best of cars and live in mansions but have turmoil in and around their lives. You must understand that your life must have the necessary balance between the spiritual, emotional, physical and material realms. Aspire to be a free person in all ramifications and these do not come cheap. There are things you must do to get that balance. If you keep doing what you have been doing, you will remain where you are. Do you want to get what you’ve never got? Then you must do what you’ve never done. Remember the song in Sister Act:

If you want to go somewhere

If you want to be somebody

You better wake up

And pay attention