My 2010 Testament

All too soon this year is coming to a close. 2010 no doubt has been a great year for most of us and thus there is no better way to begin this note than to first say a very big thank you to God Almighty whose grace has sustained us up to this moment.

I know most of us at the beginning of the year made resolutions and did set targets for ourselves. Some of it we might have achieved or maybe even all of it. Whatever the case, God has brought us this far.

2010 has been an exceptional year for me and my family. God did so much and He is still doing even more.

The year has been filled with the good times, the not too good times and of course the bad times too. There were times when it was though, hard and dry.

Some people had it better than others but overall, nobody had it worst off (at least none that I know of) we’ve all somehow PREVAILED.

To those that wedded this year congratulations. Do have a blissful marriage and let the kids start coming in…

To those hoping to get married the next year, keep praying and believing God. I know He can and will do it for you.

To those who found love this year, stick and stay with it because love is hard to find but true love is one of a kind.

To anyone that graduated this year; congratulations. I pray and hope you land your dream job in no distance time.

To those who got admission this year, make sure you take time to study very hard as no amount of knowledge no matter how small is ever wasted.

To those who tried to get admission but somehow couldn’t get it, don’t lose hope and don’t be too bitter. Your break will surely come perhaps this coming year.

To anyone that lost a loved one, I know it’s not a pleasant experience but don’t grieve for long. God knows best.

To anyone that got saved this year, wow! It is the best thing that can happen to you so hold on to God and bet you; you won’t regret it.

To anyone I might have hurt or wronged; from the depth of my heart, I apologize… since I can’t take back what I must have done, I can only say I will do better next time.

To anyone I promised to be there for and wasn’t, I apologize. I have too many wives and kids too.

To anyone I gave my word and didn’t live up to it, I say I’m sorry. To anyone I let down when they needed me the most, I apologize. To anyone I promised to call and did not, apologizes.

To anyone that affected my life this year and made me a better person, thank you, God bless you endlessly.

To the woman in my life; mom, I love you endlessly. Thanks for being a pillar in my life and for always believing in me. God bless you.

To any new friend I made this year, thanks for the gift of friendship and again it was really nice meeting you.

To my friends on Face Book, My Space, hi5, Urban Chat, Buddie, Yahoo Pulse, Badoo and all those following me Twitter and Blogger, thanks for staying true to friendship. I hope I haven’t been a bad friend though…

Thanks for liking my status, thanks for writing on my wall, thanks for viewing my pictures, thanks for the live chats, thanks for the messages, thanks for following my twits amongst other things.

In this yuletide season, show love to someone and also show your loved ones how much they mean to you… Go out, have fun but not too much fun. If you must DO IT please PROTECT YOURSELF.

If you must drink, don’t drive and if you must drive don’t drink. In whatever you do, make sure you stay safe.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. God bless us all and may He keep us all till 2011 and beyond…
CIAO…

Be Yourself

In our human society and today's competitive world, one can never be good enough, right? Wrong!

Everyone is as good as they want to be. The more you believe in it, the better you will keep getting. You cannot be happy with yourself, if you keep wondering whether or not you're good enough. However, we shouldn’t stop working towards self improvement.

Our biggest problem is often our minds. Most times we are too concerned about what others think of us.

The thing is, people will always think whatever it is they want to think about you so let whomever think whatever… If you allow, people will wrap you up and tie you to a corner.

The life you have is all you have. You have to take charge of it and make it count. You cannot live for everybody so it is better you start living for you. Nobody is absolutely useless or insignificant; everybody is significant.

We are most times given the thought that we aren’t “good looking enough”, “intelligent enough”, “articulate or smart enough” and too top it up, “good enough”.

We sometimes find ourselves imitating some other person(s) just to impress somebody in order for us to enjoy certain favors from them. We go out of our way to accept certain things that we aren’t comfortable with just so that we can be accepted by certain class of people and the society at large.

Truth is, we cannot succeed in life by living another person’s life. We’re not them. We shouldn’t sabotage our destiny through fake pretences. God in His wisdom created us unique from everyone else. We must not live as a cheap imitation.

Here is the twist! In life, not everyone will like you, want you, understand you, appreciate you, share in your vision or lend a helping hand when you need it the most.

A lot of ladies go as far as toning their skins just so they can look attractive. Even guys these days do it. Who said we aren’t attractive the way we are?

Dark skin, white skin or red skin; everyone is beautiful or handsome because God makes no mistakes. It is up to the other individual(s) and the society at large to accept us the way we are but first, we must appreciate ourselves or nobody will appreciate us.

If certain people cannot handle you being yourself, then they should as well look elsewhere for companionship.

Be original! Imitation ruins originality. Being you creates uniqueness in your personality.

Try everyday to be the best person you can be, that way you won’t be mad at yourself if some other person(s) can’t deal with you being you.

No one ever said life was going to be easy, but with the right attitude, hard work and dedication, you can turn your world upside down and start living the kind of life you thought was only possible in your wildest dreams.

There is only one BARACK OBAMA, one BILL GATE, one NELSON MANDELA, one KOFI ANNAN, one ROMAN ABRAHMOVICH, one MIKE ADENUGA JNR one WOLE SOYINKA, one ME and of course only one YOU so be the best YOU.

Be original, be, authentic, be you…

Just sharing my thought…

What's wrong with being Black

The late Dr Kwame Nkrumah made this profound statement; “The black man is capable of managing his own affairs”.

53years on after his profound statement, I dare ask; does the statement still hold water? Is the black man really capable of managing his own affairs?

Poverty in the midst of abundance is a paradox that characterizes Africa. Africa is a continent blessed with abundant human and natural resourses yet her citizens suffer from wide spread poverty, low economic output due to corruption, inefficiency, inflation, unemployment erratic power supply, poor infrastructure, unrealistic policies etc.

Africa is one continent that is said to be growing ever poorer. About 95 percent of the world's "one-dollar poor" live in Africa, and in many countries they make up the vast majority of the population.

Africa imports almost about everything; Butter from Ireland, Milk from Holland, Shoes from Italy, Vegetable oil from Malaysia, Rice from Thailand to even ordinary toothpicks from China.

Though there isn’t any African country still under colonization; is there any truly independent African country?

I hear civilization began in Africa yet today, we are the least civilized set of people? History has it that writing began in ancient Egypt yet African has the highest percentage of uneducated people.

How come we pay so much to get education yet when we graduate, we have to practically struggle to land a job… seriously, how long are grads expected to litter the street before they get something to do – 2years?

We claim divorce is not part of our culture here but sincerely, how many of our parent marriage last long? They may live together yeah; but do they stay married? We even have leaders that promote polygamy (Jacob Zuma).

Getting access to a little capital from the bank to start up something is almost impossible. All you hear is “do you have COLLATERAL?”

Meanwhile, the “Lebanese” come here with nothing, get all the loans they need and make themselves rich in our countries. They manage the biggest shopping malls, event centers, night clubs etc.

African Union (AU) advocates for a united Africa yet is it difficult traveling freely within the continent because African is no where near been united.

I know it’s not so rosy at other places (Continents) but believe you me that it isn’t as hard as it is here either.

Should one make mention of traveling out to Europe or America, all you would hear is “DON’T TRAVEL… “It not easy out there” there are plenty of opportunities here. Opportunities where? If there were opportunities here, how come our leaders have almost all their family abroad?

Our education system is in disarray yet it is left unattended to. Our leaders and the elite in the society send their wards abroad to the best schools.

A 2 bedroom apartment sells for $30,000 so the common man cannot afford it… you go to rent an apartment and all you hear is “pay 2years in advance”…

Its get harder everyday; transportation cost are ridiculous and food is expensive (have you tried buying tomatoes lately?). How can someone even afford basic survival? O motherland…



2010 marked history for Africa as the World Cup for the first time was held on African soil. We all said “ke nako” meaning, Was it really Africa's time? Where have we been all this while? Apart from South Africa, how many other African Countries can host such a magnificent World Cup?

There is no such thing as Africa’s time. African is always doing catching ups…

The only area where Africa tops others is in Poverty, HIV/AIDS, Highest Mortality rate, Malaria death rate, Corruption, and what have you.

Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo in his book “What is wrong with being black” asked these questions and more:

*What is responsible for these 2,000 years of “Black backwardness”?

*Why do we seem to fail even where we are in the majority?

*What is responsible for Africa being the richest continent and yet inhabited by the poorest people?

*Is there a conspiracy to keep Blacks at the bottom?

*Why do Black nations constitute the biggest borrower nations?

*If Blacks are not cursed, is their land cursed?

*What is the future of the Black person?

*If there is a future, what is the key to that future?

*When will the Black man’s day of manifestation come?

So with all these issues that plague Africa, I want to ask; has neither Africa nor Africans a hope?


Comments please….

Learn from others mistakes

In my last note “Failure is necessary” I said that it doesn’t matter how fatal your failure, never give up because you can start all over from there.


“Learn from others mistakes” is a sequence to “Failure is necessary”

Eleanor Roosevelt said “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself”.

The message here is “nobody can live long enough to make all the mistakes by their selves”.

Being perfect is almost an impossible fact thus it is very prudent that we learn from others mistakes and experiences in order to be very efficient in life.

I believe some ugly happenings on life’s highway can be avoided if we learn from the lessons others have learned along the way.

Almost everybody in life can point to a mistake they made and the lessons they learned from them. The benefits we derive from interacting with others is not only to learn only what they they’ve done right, but also what they’ve done wrong.

Truth is, it is way cheaper to learn from others mistakes than making them yourself.

It is not about who made the mistake but the lessons they (you) can learn from it. Many at times we look back at the roads we’ve taken; the opportunities we had but didn’t take and then we say “if I had known”.

Learning from others mistakes can be in the line of “Business, Career, Relationship, Love, Life itself etc”.

The purpose of learning from other mistakes is to make sure that we as much as possible prevent similar mistakes from occurring.

Don’t try and make all your own mistakes before you learn from them. For all you know, yours may be too dreadful to even learn anything from.

Some very dreadful mistakes end up taking lives and what if yours is one of such?

Be wise… learn from the mistakes of other.

Just sharing my thoughts….

Failure is necessary

Mistakes are no mistakes unless someone makes them. Mistakes might be clumsy but what’s the fuss about it because we all make them.

Show me a man apart from Christ who lived and never erred… man isn’t perfect and so also is life. Mistakes are part of life process.

Don’t let your mistakes define you. Yeah! Some mistakes might be really big and bring upon you overbearing consequences but you don’t have to stay in the mud.

Get up, clean up and move on. All is not lost because you made a silly mistake just learn from it. Don’t give up on you dreams; give it you best shot.

Here is the thing… We live in a human society where failure is more or less a taboo. We have been given the thought that we have no excuse whatsoever to fail. If you fail, you are branded failure. Your name changes automatically. You walk around and people call you failure instead of you name.

Well, failure of course isn’t a pleasant thing and nobody wants it but truth is, we all fail at a point in time because we don’t have our way all the time.

Being human as we are, we shouldn’t be afraid to fail. Should we? I know this is such a big message to some of us. Especially, those of us with plenty of pride…

I learnt this the hard way. All the while I was growing up, I failed a whole lot and each time I failed, pride always had the best of me. I denied, I lied and I hid it. But guess what, it didn’t help me one bit. It only made me miserable.

It is just the grace of God and some very special people that help me get up again each time.

Truth is, almost every one of us started from failure –We have all met a point in our life when we failed miserably. And then we realize, we can start from that miserable failure!

So when we fail, it is entirely up to us to decide whether we are going to stay down, or going to get up. We are supposed to shake failure off and move on. You can’t stay in that pit forever.

No matter how fatal your failure, never give up because you can start all over from there.

Just sharing my thought…

It takes Understanding

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting get understanding. - Proverbs 4:7

Understanding is one word but very complex. Whether complex or not, it is a prerequisite in every aspect of life.

For when we understand ourselves and the things we do, life will be much easier. Don’t you agree? Understanding whether complex or not, is achievable.

Understanding is seeing exactly what is intended and acting accordingly. Understanding is in levels and isn’t cheap thus achieving it is a process.

Understanding mostly is a function of your standing- how exposed one are, educational level, background, belief(s) amongst other things.

Understanding is achieved in many ways but I think the basic medium by which its achieved is via studying, personal experience, others experience, exposure, mentorship, divine revelation etc.

It takes understanding to know that it is the Grace of God that sustains us and not our fat salaries, neither allowances nor bonuses. It takes understanding to serve God totally with all sincerity.

It takes understanding for a girl to know that she doesn’t need any man to exploit her for little favors when she can be catered for by her father.

It takes understanding for some men to know that they don’t need other women when they already have a wife. And also that with a little investment, their wives can be turned into the dream woman they so desire.

It takes understanding to know that doing the right thing wouldn’t take anything from you rather; it will make you a better person.

It takes understanding to know that we all don’t get the same chances/opportunities at life and as such, must take advantage of the ones we get.

It takes understanding to know that you can never reap where you have not sown.
It takes understanding to know that your case is not peculiar to you; there is someone out there who has it worst off than you. So we must be thankful for whatever we get.

Of course no body can understand everything but every body can understand bits and pieces about many things. The importance of understanding cannot be over emphasized so get wisdom and with all thy getting; get understanding.

Just sharing my thoughts…

TWENTY ELEVEN, TWENTY CHANGE

Nigeria without a doubt is a great country with good citizens and of course the most populous black country in the world. Nigeria over the years has had it share of everything from the good, the bad, to the ugly.

Rich in abundant natural resources, man-power and the rest, Nigeria is plight with lot of issues like Corruption, Cyber crime, and recently, Terrorism has been added to the blacklist.

This note is purely my thoughts. I apologize if any part of it appears vague or misleading.

Corruption has become a brand commonly associated with Nigeria. There is tension and unrest in the Niger Delta peninsular. The North is plight with religious violence almost every year. Rulers have come and gone yet still none of them have been able to find an antidote to this menace.

Quality education has eluded Nigerians especially quality tertiary education for the youth. With over 36 states owned universities not to mention the polytechnics, colleges of education and the private ones, it is almost impossible for some youth to get tertiary education.

Why? There is the frustrating and hindering factor JAMB and POST JAMB and even then, when one manages to scale through these two huddles, there is the compulsory lecturer’s strike. A course for four (4) years ends up taking six (6) years.

Government officials and the elite in the society send their wards abroad for quality education whiles our educational sector is left unattended to.

Our education system is in shambles and I believe the system needs total reform and my candid opinion about JAMB and POST JAMB is that it should be scrapped.

Bad road is killing so many innocent Nigerians. Highway robbery, bank robbery, kidnapping is rampant. Maternal mortality is on the high.

Clean water is inaccessible, constant electricity is more or less a dream meanwhile, we produce tons of gas that can be used to power PHCN’s so called hydro electric plants.

Nigeria is the sixth largest producer of oil in the world yet we are the only oil producing country that experiences fuel scarcity.
We pay our taxes yet still, we still have to protect ourselves because security is absent.

Outside Nigeria, it’s quite alarming how almost everything bad is associated with Nigerians. It’s even more hurting when you find out that in an act of crime, a Nigerian or two are directly or indirectly involved.

Of course every country has it share of problems but that of Nigeria have become like a cancer that is eating us up slowly…

Perhaps you don’t know; ask around. You go somewhere, you are asked where from you, you say Nigeria and you are given a funny look. Now how does that feel?

It’s almost impossible travelling freely on a Nigerian passport without getting a stir or two.

Kind courtesy “Abdul the terrorist”, many Nigerians when they arrive at foreign airports are stripped and searched whiles nationals of other countries just walk pass by.

Some Nigerians have lost faith and hope in the country so much so that they are switching nationalities and acquiring foreign passports.

Let’s not blame them so much because lets face it; who would like to be called a citizen of a country where doctors strike, teachers strike, public servants strike; one with bad roads, kidnapping issues, religious and ethnic violence, highway robbery and what have you.

I can go on an on but that wouldn’t solve a thing.

Nigeria is what it is today kind courtesy our bad leaders. They are the genesis of this whole menace.

I dare say we have all failed when it comes to choosing a leader. We’ve all in the past sold our votes for money and at times fear.

Don’t you think Nigerians deserve better from these so called leaders?
With the impending 2011 elections, lets us all vote; and vote only for the right candidate.

I know some people will say that there is no need voting because election in Nigeria is more or less not credible. Well, that is a very good point but I have no doubt in my heart that this time, our election will be a credible one.

Corrupt leaders will be disappointed come 2011 because only deserving candidates will emerge winners.

I believe in Nigeria and I believe that Nigeria can and will get better and it only begins with you. Yes you!



Nigeria is 50 years. What better gift can we give this country than change…? Change yourself, change your vote and change Nigeria. Don’t sell your franchise; don’t sell your conscience for money or favor. VOTE RIGHT.

If you are not a registered voter, go register when the registration starts and when its time to vote, do well and exercise you franchise wisely.

Voting is a civil social responsibility we owe this country. Choosing a right leader devoid of fear and favor should be the only thing on our minds because it’s our prerogative.

It is said that “think not what your country will do for you but what you will do for your country”. I guess what we can give this country in our capacity is to choose for her a good leader who will in turn give us all we deserve.

A leader that knows corruption kills, and is ready to kill corruption. One who believes in youth empowerment… One who understands that stable electricity is keen for economic growth and development. Someone who knows that education is very vital and paramount for human and societal advancement and development.

Let’s vote only for the right person so that we can take our place on the world map as a truly great nation. Our image has been dent so much already.

It time to recreate, rebuild and re-brand Nigeria and of course there is no better time than now; now that we are 50years. Let’s not say we can’t for we all know we can and we most definitely will.

We have no excuse whatsoever to be where we find ourselves because we have all it takes to be great. Abundant natural resource, manpower and what have you. All we need is a leader to lead us aright.

Don’t wait for somebody or some other time for change. Change will not come unless you effect it. Effect change by voting right. Vote the rulers out and vote the leaders in.

It’s time to change the situation. Nigerians deserve better. Twenty eleven, twenty change Nigeria.

Not to forget, lets all go on our kneels and pray for NIGERIA and also the impending elections. For it’s about time CHANGE came into our beloved country. CHANGE WE NEED…

CHANGE WE MUST GET.

Please vote right. GOD bless NIGERIA, GOD bless US all.

Nigeria wa o ni baje oo!

“Born Nigerian, Born Great!!!”