IN recent past, President Goodluck Jonathan’s luck appears to be running out. He has come in for series of scathing verbal tirades and attacks from people due to the policies of the federal government. He is not the only one in this boat as many state governors and legislators at both state and federal level have also been seriously criticized. I see no reason why people should not pour out their minds and rain invectives on these people, I only see a need to redirect and re-channel our anger. It would be better if we daily pray for them, as my religious inclination says ‘prayer is the master key’.
I plead one thing however, please respect my position as prayer does no harm, it on the other hand does a lot of good. What I know is that in whatever we do, we can never over-emphasize the beauty of prayer and what good it does in our lives. There are countries whose leaders do not need any prayer before they do what must be done but what do we make of these ones who specifically ask for our prayers? I owe them, you owe them, we owe them; and I will pray for them.
Our leaders believe in the existence of God, that is the best thing about them. Do you want to know the worst? They do not act as if they have a God in their lives in most cases. They only do things they deem appropriate, they do things that please them without caring a hoot if they hurt their followers. They have given a new definition to leadership and followership in this part of the world. They have asked for prayers, they will receive it in tons. I only need a resounding “Amen” or its equivalent as we pray.
Many children have been sent to the great beyond in this country. Many avoidable deaths have occurred due to the bad nature of our hospitals and medical facilities. Many homes have been thrown into avoidable mourning. Dear Lord and God, we seek help for our leaders, we pray that you touch them and let them notice our medical plight. We ask that you touch the reasonable parts of their brains such that they will hear and feel our pains.
I remember King Pharaoh of Egypt. He was hard-hearted and his people paid for it. For every leader that has refused to heed his followers’ pains in Nigeria, we pray that their immediate families will pay for it with their lives. We ask that they experience the sorrow parents are made to go through when their children die avoidable deaths. We also seek for them, the total disappearance of their happiness in every sphere of life. Is someone saying an “Amen”?
We daily suffer rape in this country. Our daughters and daughters are being raped with no one doing anything to punish the wicked ones. I do not expect anything from them, are they not also rapists? Raping our heritage and commonwealth, draining the life out of our country. For every way in which we have been raped therefore, may the same bitter pill be forced down the throat of the evil men who have done that evil act. May they suffer the same calamity they have caused us in every aspect of their lives.
I have noticed one thing. Everyone who has stolen our money, looted our treasury and kept the stolen cash stashed in foreign countries have one thing or the other to spend the loot on. Yes, they build houses and use state of the art wonder on wheels. They however get to suffer a lot of terminal diseases. If it is not diabetes, it is either liver, lung, kidney disease or another kind of unexplainable infirmity that they suffer from.
As long as they keep stealing and leaving us poor, that will always be their lot. As they get healed from kidney failure, may they fall to heart diseases; as they get healed from diabetes, may chronic ulcer follow; as they get healed from lung cancer, may epilepsy seize their bodies from them. Anyone who steals from our common heritage will always have negativities to spend it on. May they never find rest or peace in every area of their lives, their bodies will rise and fight against their souls.
They have asked for prayers, they shall get it in abundance. Please start thinking of the prayers you will say for them as well. I am just starting. I just want a resounding Amen, Amin or whatever represents it. Our leaders daily ask for prayers, they are too busy to pray themselves; some others are dumb and cannot use their mouths to ask God. Some of us have the time and resources to ask God, and that we shall do for them. We shall give them the prayers they deserve.
The majority of the people they rule, the ones they trample on, are not able to eat one square meal not to talk of three. Yet they eat and drink aplenty, they live without recourse for tomorrow, not caring if the man on the street whose vote along with the rigged ones brought them to power. I therefore ask on behalf of others in my shoes, that bitterness shall be the end of the sweetness of the food they daily consume. It shall neither nourish nor add to them.
The food they eat while hard working people suffer shall serve as poison in their systems. It will even lead to some taking the quick route to the Almighty to answer for all their deeds while they held sway here. The lucky ones will suffer diarrhea and if they choose not to change their ways, they will easily go the way of the ones who will go on a journey of no return. Hear me Almighty God and see this as a prayer from the heart of a patriotic Nigerian, who wants the best for his ilk.
Whenever pensioners have to go for their screening, I feel pity for the old people. Senior Nigerians queue inside the sun for hours while they wait to collect peanuts to keep body and soul together. The ones saddled with the responsibility of taking care of them do not care enough if these senior citizens. For everyone who has played a part in making these people go through this much stress to collect the ‘coins’ being paid them, their latter ends shall not be peaceful.
The wicked ones who make majority of our senior citizens go through hard times in claiming their pensions shall suffer at the tail end of their lives. Their old ages shall be spent in darkness and illness. Every ill gotten wealth of theirs shall be spent on one condition or the other. They shall not enjoy the beauty of old age. They have denied these people the joy of old age, they shall reap the same thing. Their old ages shall be spent in that bit of suffering they have caused these ones.
Should I go on? For a few more lines I will. Peace has gradually given way to pockets of violence in different parts of the country. Government knows them they claim, but they cannot do anything. Talk of a toothless bull dog. Since the ones who lead us can do nothing about the ones who have sent peace on recess in our country, I will do well to raise a standard against them. They also deserve some prayers, or what do you think? Just give me the Amen as I declare their portions on them.
For every leader beside MEND, Boko Haram, the bombings and killings, the face of God will rise against them as in Psalms 34, “to cut off their remembrance from the earth”. For every life they have taken, they shall be reduced; In every way they have risen against peace in this country, their peace of mind shall be taken. For every instrument of the evil ones, the MEND and Boko Haram dumb fools, their lives shall have no bit of tranquility, shameful and ignoble deaths shall be theirs.
I have not finished, for every agent of destabilization in this country, their lives shall be turned upside down and they shall not have rest in every aspect of their lives. As for them and their sponsors, bloodshed will be a regular occurrence for them and they will never find rest till they exit the face of the earth. Their lives shall be turned upside down the way they have turned lives upside down. Evil shall slay them and their lives shall be made desolate (Psalms 34:21).
I have the urge to go on but I stand the risk of boring you with my kind of prayer. I also stand the risk of being selfish (of course I am not). It would not be bad if you will also keep praying for them in your own way. I have done mine, I want you to do yours as we get on the road and march against every evil one who has pushed our backs to the wall. I say these prayers with all available honesty and patriotism and if I have any other ulterior motive, then may all I have asked for these one be my portion.
I’m outta here…xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
INDEPENDENT THOUGHTS
INDEPENDENT THOUGHTS
With the reality that Nigeria’s independence anniversary was drawing nigh, my head was clouded with different thoughts at different times last week. My dear country was clocking 51 and there was a heavy cloud of gloom. Tension was as palpable as it was close. It was so close that one could feel it like rain droplets. What with the security challenges headed by the dreaded Boko Haram and other problems presently bedeviling the country?
I have known my country as one that has gone and is still going through thick and thin. Quite a lot has seemed right and wrong, or wrong and right, as the case may be. I have memories of different things in my twenty something years on earth, all of which have been spent as a Nigerian. I have tasted a little of the goodies that the generation which failed us have left behind for us. I have had a swallow of the suffering with which we have been drenched as we grew up.
I titled this as shown above because the thoughts have come to me independent of our independence as a nation. While I grew my mother used to give to myself and my then only brother, two biscuits each to take to school. I ate the popular Okin biscuit and the equally popular Nasco wafers. We had cartons of both in our house. How many people can afford to buy that again? If it would be well said, then may the labour of the leaders in our recent past ‘ever be in vain’.
I do not want to lament about the wrongs in my dear country, I will try as much as possible to focus on the goods, the positives. Isn’t that what our leaders want? I will for once try to please them. Back in the days, we had the luxury of TCTC luxury buses (in Ibadan); we would queue and wait with glee while the buses plied the routes. Today we have Call-A-Cab. Isn’t that an improvement on Trans City? At least we charter Call-A-Cab at N600 per hour.
Even if the old NEPA also cut power then, we still had light everyday to watch Wrestlemania. Our black and white television never lacked regular supply of electricity. We saw Yoruba drama like Omo Arayele (how do I translate that?), Feyikogbon and Arelu; we saw Koko Close and New Masquerade back then. Now we have stepped up, we have provided a source of income to generator manufacturers and dealers all over the world and that has contributed some more to the revenue they pay the government. Our electricity generating, distribution and transmission equipment can at least rest very well now due to the inability of the people in charge to replace or maintain them as the case may be.
The water taps were running at full capacity but government was paying too much in salaries and allowances. Therefore little by little, the water corporations went into coma and if not for the fact that some state water corporations now produce sachet water now, they would have gone into oblivion. Of course, we have pure water companies now. So where government has failed, they have given us another source of income by making it easy to produce well water in sachets to help hospitals make more money.
Thank God things have improved a lot better as we do not have to go to the river to fetch again. For people who can afford it, boreholes can be drilled; others who have no financial capability to drill can buy water and pay a token. That has actually reduced the rate of cholera and other water-borne diseases. I therefore see no reason why we should not celebrate 51 years of nationhood. It is not all doom and gloom; there are reasons to be positive.
Need I say that there are lots of schools that litter our areas now? The government schools have been replaced by lots of daycares, nursery and primary schools, as well as private high schools and tertiary institutions. I served in a nursery and primary school built from mud bricks. Each class had one arm, I mean nurseries 1 to 3 and then primaries 1 to 5, all had one arm. Is that not much better than government schools where there is equally no furniture. Students at least can make do with whatever is available while the nouveau riche send their children to other schools where they will not learn what it means to be Nigerian.
I also thought about the improvement in the way we have bred different categories of people. Nigeria has brought up the very gentle set of people, who have in turn become mumus. They refuse to stand for themselves even when their rights are being trampled. They only siddon look, waiting for God intervene while they are being taken for a ride.
My country has birthed first class hustlers, who can thrive and survive anywhere. Thanks to our leaders past, most of who are heroes the other way round (I never called them villains), we daily struggle to achieve everything. If you do not know, that is something to be proud of. You can stand up to an American, a Dane, a Briton or even a South African, and tell them confidently that all you have achieved is by pure human effort, not government support via social security or whatever it is.
We have consciously unconsciously (I know what I mean here) created people who have to fight to get everything. Check out Niger Delta militants, Boko Haram and other freedom fighters. The Niger Delta peeps did not get the attention of the people that mattered until they took up arms against their country of birth. Same with the Boko Haram peeps now. I am also thinking of starting mine if per chance, someone will notice me for bombing vegetable farms and other notables.
We keep saying there is nothing good about Nigeria but have we not booted out the very corrupt military? We asked for democracy and we have it already. Democracy and even some more craziness, Lootocracy has joined our democracy. We chased those ones who told us to our faces that they stole our money and effectively replaced them with those who daily feed us with different reasons why the treasury is being regularly devoured and the foreign reserve is being depleted.
Some people curse my country but I see no reason for them to do that. Some call me names for saying what is obvious. Why do you expect us to buy fuel and petroleum products on the cheap? Because we are producers? That is not enough reason. It gives us the opportunity to know how much our country daily makes from oil and tells us nobody cares for us; we are on our own in this beautiful country. Expect more from next year.
I am even baffled when people cry because government wants to remove the subsidy on petroleum products. It only goes to strengthen the point that no one cares the slightest hoot about us. That is about the only thing we gain from them and they still want to remove it. It is to tell us to buckle up and tighten our belts that they say better days are coming, but some see it as harder days. I however see it as just that, better dey come. We will buy fuel at N250 per litre when the better days come.
Independent thoughts… I could go on and on but God, someone else should also comment. I still have them in my head and that may necessitate part 2 of this writing. In the mean time, please read this and let me know the thoughts that have been ringing in your head (like my coconut head) as we remember our independence in Nigeria. The only thing I want is your own independent thoughts in form of comments.
The labour of our heroes past shall never be in vain; the labour of the leaders in our recent past shall always be in vain. Happy belated 51st birthday Nigeria; Happy independence to my family and friends; Happy independence anniversary to everyone. God bless Nigeria at 51 and beyond.
I’m outta here…xoxoxoxoxoxo
With the reality that Nigeria’s independence anniversary was drawing nigh, my head was clouded with different thoughts at different times last week. My dear country was clocking 51 and there was a heavy cloud of gloom. Tension was as palpable as it was close. It was so close that one could feel it like rain droplets. What with the security challenges headed by the dreaded Boko Haram and other problems presently bedeviling the country?
I have known my country as one that has gone and is still going through thick and thin. Quite a lot has seemed right and wrong, or wrong and right, as the case may be. I have memories of different things in my twenty something years on earth, all of which have been spent as a Nigerian. I have tasted a little of the goodies that the generation which failed us have left behind for us. I have had a swallow of the suffering with which we have been drenched as we grew up.
I titled this as shown above because the thoughts have come to me independent of our independence as a nation. While I grew my mother used to give to myself and my then only brother, two biscuits each to take to school. I ate the popular Okin biscuit and the equally popular Nasco wafers. We had cartons of both in our house. How many people can afford to buy that again? If it would be well said, then may the labour of the leaders in our recent past ‘ever be in vain’.
I do not want to lament about the wrongs in my dear country, I will try as much as possible to focus on the goods, the positives. Isn’t that what our leaders want? I will for once try to please them. Back in the days, we had the luxury of TCTC luxury buses (in Ibadan); we would queue and wait with glee while the buses plied the routes. Today we have Call-A-Cab. Isn’t that an improvement on Trans City? At least we charter Call-A-Cab at N600 per hour.
Even if the old NEPA also cut power then, we still had light everyday to watch Wrestlemania. Our black and white television never lacked regular supply of electricity. We saw Yoruba drama like Omo Arayele (how do I translate that?), Feyikogbon and Arelu; we saw Koko Close and New Masquerade back then. Now we have stepped up, we have provided a source of income to generator manufacturers and dealers all over the world and that has contributed some more to the revenue they pay the government. Our electricity generating, distribution and transmission equipment can at least rest very well now due to the inability of the people in charge to replace or maintain them as the case may be.
The water taps were running at full capacity but government was paying too much in salaries and allowances. Therefore little by little, the water corporations went into coma and if not for the fact that some state water corporations now produce sachet water now, they would have gone into oblivion. Of course, we have pure water companies now. So where government has failed, they have given us another source of income by making it easy to produce well water in sachets to help hospitals make more money.
Thank God things have improved a lot better as we do not have to go to the river to fetch again. For people who can afford it, boreholes can be drilled; others who have no financial capability to drill can buy water and pay a token. That has actually reduced the rate of cholera and other water-borne diseases. I therefore see no reason why we should not celebrate 51 years of nationhood. It is not all doom and gloom; there are reasons to be positive.
Need I say that there are lots of schools that litter our areas now? The government schools have been replaced by lots of daycares, nursery and primary schools, as well as private high schools and tertiary institutions. I served in a nursery and primary school built from mud bricks. Each class had one arm, I mean nurseries 1 to 3 and then primaries 1 to 5, all had one arm. Is that not much better than government schools where there is equally no furniture. Students at least can make do with whatever is available while the nouveau riche send their children to other schools where they will not learn what it means to be Nigerian.
I also thought about the improvement in the way we have bred different categories of people. Nigeria has brought up the very gentle set of people, who have in turn become mumus. They refuse to stand for themselves even when their rights are being trampled. They only siddon look, waiting for God intervene while they are being taken for a ride.
My country has birthed first class hustlers, who can thrive and survive anywhere. Thanks to our leaders past, most of who are heroes the other way round (I never called them villains), we daily struggle to achieve everything. If you do not know, that is something to be proud of. You can stand up to an American, a Dane, a Briton or even a South African, and tell them confidently that all you have achieved is by pure human effort, not government support via social security or whatever it is.
We have consciously unconsciously (I know what I mean here) created people who have to fight to get everything. Check out Niger Delta militants, Boko Haram and other freedom fighters. The Niger Delta peeps did not get the attention of the people that mattered until they took up arms against their country of birth. Same with the Boko Haram peeps now. I am also thinking of starting mine if per chance, someone will notice me for bombing vegetable farms and other notables.
We keep saying there is nothing good about Nigeria but have we not booted out the very corrupt military? We asked for democracy and we have it already. Democracy and even some more craziness, Lootocracy has joined our democracy. We chased those ones who told us to our faces that they stole our money and effectively replaced them with those who daily feed us with different reasons why the treasury is being regularly devoured and the foreign reserve is being depleted.
Some people curse my country but I see no reason for them to do that. Some call me names for saying what is obvious. Why do you expect us to buy fuel and petroleum products on the cheap? Because we are producers? That is not enough reason. It gives us the opportunity to know how much our country daily makes from oil and tells us nobody cares for us; we are on our own in this beautiful country. Expect more from next year.
I am even baffled when people cry because government wants to remove the subsidy on petroleum products. It only goes to strengthen the point that no one cares the slightest hoot about us. That is about the only thing we gain from them and they still want to remove it. It is to tell us to buckle up and tighten our belts that they say better days are coming, but some see it as harder days. I however see it as just that, better dey come. We will buy fuel at N250 per litre when the better days come.
Independent thoughts… I could go on and on but God, someone else should also comment. I still have them in my head and that may necessitate part 2 of this writing. In the mean time, please read this and let me know the thoughts that have been ringing in your head (like my coconut head) as we remember our independence in Nigeria. The only thing I want is your own independent thoughts in form of comments.
The labour of our heroes past shall never be in vain; the labour of the leaders in our recent past shall always be in vain. Happy belated 51st birthday Nigeria; Happy independence to my family and friends; Happy independence anniversary to everyone. God bless Nigeria at 51 and beyond.
I’m outta here…xoxoxoxoxoxo
BOREDOM
TO CHECK OR NOT TO CHECK
I sure am not the only one who gives myself a lot of mental tasks. I have this way of evaluating issues that get me doing a lot of reflecting, so much so I start having this guilty feeling about my feelings sometimes.
You know while we were growing up, there was this thing that discouraged one from thinking too deep. Stuff like “it is beyond human comprehension, don’t you ever bother your head about it”. I want to disobey that rule and get thinking. You heard me, I wanna think a little.
I have had the cause to critically examine some situations in the past few days. I want to share the thoughts that have made my head heavy for a few days now, I hope I get response and comments from those who take time to read.
In my part of the world, people have consciously or unconsciously started doing something that is funny to me. In choosing marriage partners, many folks now go to their spiritual leaders to see what the future holds for them both. Does that not seem a bit like divination to you? I ask because I am confused.
In recent times, this same thing has been happening across ethnic, religious, social and other divides. This practice used to happen among the hyper-religious and overtly spiritual but even all of us who are sinners now do it.
I have seen people who have decided to break up with their partners because “Pastor said our stars do not match”. They gave up love because someone heard from God for them, possibly because their ears are too filled with sin that they cannot hear from God directly. Whatever matching stars mean.
This thing is actually becoming the in-thing everywhere now. They have this funny way of saying it in my local language, it is translated as ‘checking’. The whole thing is even assuming a more terrible dimension these days because we now give the ‘checkers’ the authority to pick and choose for as many of us.
They do the sorting and arranging all in the name of “this one is better than that one”. They even end up forcing their clients on unsuspecting peeps in some cases. They peddle different tales about one to favour the other, the one who is their client in most cases.
I remember quite clearly the same thing as it happened to someone I know last year. He was seeing an industrious young woman before different revelations started saying she was possessed by marine spirit and stuff. The guy left her and started seeing someone else on the orders of his Pastor.
The funniest part of it is that even the person that took this young man to the Pastor later complained about the young lady. We have a way of gossiping in my part of the world and everyone says she is downright lazy, lacks the industry of the ‘marine’ lady.
I am not saying it is not right to ‘seek the face of God’ as we put it, I am saying we should not base everything on spirituality. Some people have lost the ability to seek God themselves, they base everything on human beings like them, those they see as God’s representatives. They actually have forgotten that they are themselves God’s representatives.
We end up forgetting that apart from being a child of God, there are other personal characteristics to look out for. There is the individuality. And who says there is a perfect person anywhere in the first place? I believe
I believe in God, I am a Pastor myself but I do not believe you should hand over your life to someone because you believe he can talk to God for you. What exactly is wrong with your own mouth that has made it impossible to talk to God yourself? I have this funny feeling that most of the men to whom we run have their own biases and may just deliver their verdicts based on those biases.
Some of us have passed love on the altar of ‘checking’; ‘trying to see if their stars match’ or ‘if he/she is the will of God for me’. I only pray some folks will not misunderstand my position or see me as totally carnal. What do you actually think of this controversial issue? Let me know, I’m outta here.
I sure am not the only one who gives myself a lot of mental tasks. I have this way of evaluating issues that get me doing a lot of reflecting, so much so I start having this guilty feeling about my feelings sometimes.
You know while we were growing up, there was this thing that discouraged one from thinking too deep. Stuff like “it is beyond human comprehension, don’t you ever bother your head about it”. I want to disobey that rule and get thinking. You heard me, I wanna think a little.
I have had the cause to critically examine some situations in the past few days. I want to share the thoughts that have made my head heavy for a few days now, I hope I get response and comments from those who take time to read.
In my part of the world, people have consciously or unconsciously started doing something that is funny to me. In choosing marriage partners, many folks now go to their spiritual leaders to see what the future holds for them both. Does that not seem a bit like divination to you? I ask because I am confused.
In recent times, this same thing has been happening across ethnic, religious, social and other divides. This practice used to happen among the hyper-religious and overtly spiritual but even all of us who are sinners now do it.
I have seen people who have decided to break up with their partners because “Pastor said our stars do not match”. They gave up love because someone heard from God for them, possibly because their ears are too filled with sin that they cannot hear from God directly. Whatever matching stars mean.
This thing is actually becoming the in-thing everywhere now. They have this funny way of saying it in my local language, it is translated as ‘checking’. The whole thing is even assuming a more terrible dimension these days because we now give the ‘checkers’ the authority to pick and choose for as many of us.
They do the sorting and arranging all in the name of “this one is better than that one”. They even end up forcing their clients on unsuspecting peeps in some cases. They peddle different tales about one to favour the other, the one who is their client in most cases.
I remember quite clearly the same thing as it happened to someone I know last year. He was seeing an industrious young woman before different revelations started saying she was possessed by marine spirit and stuff. The guy left her and started seeing someone else on the orders of his Pastor.
The funniest part of it is that even the person that took this young man to the Pastor later complained about the young lady. We have a way of gossiping in my part of the world and everyone says she is downright lazy, lacks the industry of the ‘marine’ lady.
I am not saying it is not right to ‘seek the face of God’ as we put it, I am saying we should not base everything on spirituality. Some people have lost the ability to seek God themselves, they base everything on human beings like them, those they see as God’s representatives. They actually have forgotten that they are themselves God’s representatives.
We end up forgetting that apart from being a child of God, there are other personal characteristics to look out for. There is the individuality. And who says there is a perfect person anywhere in the first place? I believe
I believe in God, I am a Pastor myself but I do not believe you should hand over your life to someone because you believe he can talk to God for you. What exactly is wrong with your own mouth that has made it impossible to talk to God yourself? I have this funny feeling that most of the men to whom we run have their own biases and may just deliver their verdicts based on those biases.
Some of us have passed love on the altar of ‘checking’; ‘trying to see if their stars match’ or ‘if he/she is the will of God for me’. I only pray some folks will not misunderstand my position or see me as totally carnal. What do you actually think of this controversial issue? Let me know, I’m outta here.
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