Medley of Thoughts. Written by Chinelo Orizu

Love, hate, fantasies, money, emotions, passions, and death are part of the mysteries of life. People say I love you every day and yet can’t explain the meaning of the word “love”. Ok! How can you tell when you are truly in love? How do you know you have found the right person? When in a relationship does love die? How do you truly tell when the person loves you back? How do you know when it’s true love? How can you measure love, and with what yardstick do you measure? These are questions that will hunt mankind from generation to generation.  In our quest to illuminate such grey areas as such, we have developed and created talk shows and several volumes of books to act as a guideline out of obscurity. But unfortunately they only leave us at crossroads with so much confusion.

We all fantasize at one point or the other, and we could become so engrossed with our fantasies that you just wonder, how did it start? Why did the human mind at some point divert from the normal to the abnormal? Well it’s simple. Fantasizing is our way of escaping the real world, using the imaginative to create a new world that sometimes only resides in the mind.  A world we can only wish for but can never afford in reality. We have different way of playing out our fantasies. We play out our fantasies over sex, Love, The idea of death {by changing it}, Life with technology, Power/superpower, Life with money, A different childhood, Different gender or race and the list goes on.

Some people have fantasies and find a way to lay them to rest, while others try to live it or die trying.

Hate is pure-not mixed or uncertain, hate is sure; hate is in black and white it has no gray in it. Hate is perfect, hate is explainable, hate begets violence, hate begets revenge, and hate is true.

We have found a way of confusing emotions with passions. Books have been written about them, shows have been hosted on behalf of them, but this is what I have to say: emotion came into this just like you and I, it’s something we were born with and like our age we have little or no control over it, but passion is like a degree we acquire, it’s like language we make use of it. The emotions of a person can only die when he kicks the bucket. Passion in man can die at any time or as soon as he loses interest.

Many times we erroneously say “money is the root of all evil” Some understand better and they say “the love of money is the root of all evil” Scratch the former and stay with the latter while I give you my candid perception to the money thing. If you ask me again and again I will simply say “society is the root of all evil, money is just a helping hand” confused?

All over the world we realize that so much attention is given to the rich people and people of the high class more than the poor. And come to think of it our immediate society is one where the rich gets away with almost anything, or is it not in our society that the rich thieves get all the respect meant for noble men, or don’t you see executive robbers work with so much pride that they are even offered front role seat at religious gathering.

Ours is a Society where the poor is treated poorly as if being poor is not enough. The system has always been like this. Presently, even the middle class have no class anymore ‘cos they are treated terribly. Now, it’s either you are rich or very rich, and that’s terrible for our society! Man now thrives very hard to become very rich or filthily rich either by hook or by crook. Not that the need to be very rich is the most important thing but the craving to be accepted by the society has made the chase for vanity the only sane thing. So now evil duels in the society, the society is like a car, and money is only acting as the fuel. Ponder about it!

We live to die, to die is to live-death is inevitable. Death is what makes us human” so why are we afraid of dying if we know it’s inevitable? Why are we looking for ways to live longer and remain forever young? Why can’t we accept the fact one day we will get old? And come to think of it there is no shame or crime in getting old.

I am not afraid of dying but I am afraid of how I will die, when I will die and were I will go to when I eventually die. Death is a bringer of sorrows, the taker of life, it has no respect for age, it does not discriminate, and it does not care for time. So live today like is your last. Imagine life without death; will it work? Will there be a balance in our world?

Don’t get me wrong I am not here to tell you how to live your life. I’m merely stating the fact that we pay way too much attention to love, money, emotion, passion, fantasies and death that we eventually forget to live life and enjoy it now that we still have it. 

[ Read More ]

Healing the Sores We Don't Merit. Written By Lanre Olagunju

She came in with high hopes, and a little much more than a mustard seed sized faith. All she wanted were healing prayers for her mouth deformation, which has brought her shame and constant misery. But little does she know that Sokoto can be much closer than her own ‘sokoto’. Before she could say much with the same deformed mouth, the clergy got this strong nudge to ask her about her mother in-law.

With so much pain and reserved anger, she expressed that the memory of her mother in-law isn’t one she wants to remember, let alone discuss. The reverend again explained to her that the one who teaches him all things says that she has unresolved issues with her mother in-law. He persuaded that no matter how cruel or hateful she might have been; it’s right about time she freed the old woman.

She did all she could possibly do to ensure that her internal waterworks doesn’t bleed out, as she fought back hot tears. At this point, the painful videos of her mother in-law’s wrong doings brought her freshly cultivated sharp emotional pains of suffering. The deep unhealed sores were punctured on the surface and the misery done to her by another mortal who doubles as a woman just like herself were played back with clear motion picture sharp enough to bring back pains just the same way they were first felt at the point when she was afflicted.  

For all the reason she could think of, letting the old woman be was just ok. But to be persuaded to forgive her, to her, is like giving her only heart to a foe. Of a sudden she lost the control to tame her tears and couldn’t but wail with such profusion strange of an adult. Amidst her weeping and wailing she decided with so much effort and struggle in her mind to forgive her mother in-law just like the clergy as persuaded. And almost instantly, something absolutely incredible happened. I mean something hugely amazing!

See, without everlasting series of prayer sessions, where worried prayer warriors cum prayer contractors sweat it out at loosing the same unknown demons they bind. Her mouth returned from the state of deformation. Even without the simple Lord’s Prayer. I mean her mouth, again became like that of you and I.  

Immediately the woman left the office of the clergyman, something more dramatic happened. The clergy in awe went on his knees and said to the one who sees every corner of darkness much more than we see in daylight. ‘I forgive anyone who might have wronged me, including those I can remember and those I might never remember’.

Someone said to forgive is to set a prisoner free only to discover that the prisoner was you. There can’t be a better way to say it! When you hold resentment towards a person, it’s like being bound to that person by an emotional link stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to melt such link and get free, considering that we have great things to do and that life is short.

 Forgiveness is the most difficult of all forms of giving. It has nothing to do with the pocket. Though, most times it costs pains and tears. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend, at other times; it might just be hopelessly more difficult to forgive oneself than to forgive a friend. That we haven't forgiven ourselves of something might be responsible for why we don’t see enough reasons to forgive others.

I like the fascinating way Gandhi put it when he said “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” No one forgives with more grace and love than a child. In fact the most captivating thing about little kids is their intricate ability not just to forgive but to completely forget.

When we forgive as adult, do we truly forget? Memories that won’t vamoose from the skull easily are the memories of pains and pleasure. Since forgiving comes with element of pains, whether big or small. Therefore, to forget in the literary sense of the word, is an almost impossible task. After all, to forgive, one must first remember and move beyond the experience itself.

When we move beyond pains and bitterness, a freshness that beats the breeze of the sea brings joy and insight to produce positive results in that same area that once brought pains. The positive outcome brought about by such insight, heals wounds faster than any balm medicine can provide.

Forgiving won’t miraculously wipe out bitter and distasteful experiences. Never! The ‘forgive and forget’ cliché only sounds moral and I wonder how practicable it is. A healed memory is not automatically a deleted memory! Rather forgiving the unforgettable helps us to remember the experience in an absolutely better way. When we look those who have wronged us in the eye without resentment or any iota of bitterness, and then can wish them well, then we just know that forgiveness has taken place.  

Follow the writer @larigoldd on twitter.

[ Read More ]

The Best Presidents Nigeria Ever Had written by Dele Akinola

They are both retired military generals and septuagenarians. They are both Grand Commanders of the Federal Republic. They both enjoyed the rare giant privilege of ruling the Giant of Africa for as many years as the greatest and best achieving American president ever had no privilege to surpass. They are the most talked about former leaders the country has had. They are the most active controversy generators in the land. Uncle Sege and Uncle Ibro! They are the best presidents Nigeria ever had.

Going by what each of them thinks of himself in comparison to the other (and others), that is. Olusegun Obasanjo became a general in the Nigerian Army a decade before Ibrahim Babangida attained that rank. The former also tasted the goody-goody of the State House about that same length of time before the latter. That, by secondary school tradition, should normally make IBB address OBJ as Senior Segun. IBB, on the other hand, became president (executive or self-proclaimed) a whopping 14 years before OBJ. Senior Ibrahim!

That may not necessarily be a basis for any supremacy battle between the duo, though. Actually, they have so many things in common that they perfectly complement each other. More than a few commentators both within and outside our shores would insist that IBB institutionalized corruption in the country while the canker flexed its deadliest muscles under OBJ. If Senior Ibrahim had the $16b OBJ “wasted” on PHCN that never really stagger beyond the stalling point of NEPA, he would have created a nuclear and power Utopia in Nigeria. And if Senior Segun had the $12b Gulf War oil windfall, Americans would by now be falling over one another in desperate attempts to win immigrant visa lottery to Nigeria. On two occasions, the right leader at the wrong time! Nigeria, o ma se o (what a pity)!

What OBJ flaunts in the Ebora Owu in him, IBB more than makes up for with the Maradona that he was. OBJ conducted, in 2007, the most fraudulent general elections Nigeria has had the misfortune to witness as attested to by all home and abroad. IBB ‘midwife-d’ but, with the same delivery gloves, curiously aborted the nation’s freest and most credible elections to date, in 1993. The former justified his action by insinuating that even the Lord Jesus Christ couldn’t have done better in Nigeria. The latter rationalized his misdeed by lecturing a ‘dullards’ nation on the difference between “annulment” and “cancellation”. Only the worst and weak presidents admit wrong-doings and make apologies. OBJ and IBB never admit and make apologies for wrong-doings; they only take responsibility.

In one accord, they also bear the burden of shared responsibility over the abortion of June 12, which IBB himself described as a “watershed” in the political history of the nation. Almost everyone expected OBJ, as a statesman, to condemn the unspeakable act that was a coup against the people. But he stunned a bewildered nation with his characteristic show of contempt virtually describing Nigerians as idiots for electing one MKO Abiola who, by his kill-and-go proclamation, was “not the messiah.” That, by Al-Mustapha Theorem, made him technically privy to the annulment, and consequently made both gladiators to be technically guilty of the eventual death of the late president-elect.

OBJ has been massively accused of serially betraying his loyal friend, IBB, who in spite of Nigerians cleared the path to his installation as Nigerian leader on two occasions. IBB’s sympathizers never cease to knock OBJ for standing, more than twice, in the way of his friend’s scheme to stage a dramatic come-back “to correct the mistakes of the past.”

But here is the manner the chief occupant of the Hill-Top Villa, Minna himself rewarded loyal friendship: “When I was broke, I picked up my phone and called him and he came to my aid, even as President. Sometimes, when he travelled and he didn’t plan it, it may be too late in the night, sometimes 2 a.m.; he would tell me he was passing through. I would share whatever I had with him.” That was IBB talking about MKO Abiola, the same man whose popular election he annulled, leading to his death. A similar visa to the land of no return he granted to the one of whom he said, “Vatsa was my best friend. We knew each other as far back as 1959 and we remained so close and fond of each other.” Nigerians indeed have a lot to learn in the art of managing and rewarding friendship from their best presidents ever.

Both multiple chieftaincy titles and honorary doctorate degrees holders who first shot into political leadership limelight as beneficiaries of the dividends of military coups-de-tat, were themselves ultimately sent packing via people’s revolts. After throwing the red herring that was the annulment of June 12 elections, Nigerian people applied so much Egyptian-style heat against IBB that he was forced to “step aside” 24 hours ahead of schedule of dubiety on August 26, 1993. And OBJ, with all his masterly and crafty political manoeuvres to award himself an unconstitutional tenure elongation having been mobbed by the people at the Anti-Third-Term Square, had no choice but to flee back to his farm on May 29, 2007.

Curiously, both friends held the destiny of Nigeria in their hands for a combined period of approximately 20 years. With just an insignificant fraction of the resources available to them, a founding father of Nigeria, within a period of a number of years countable on the fingers of one hand, transformed the region he led as premier beyond the imagination of all within and outside the country. The region would have ranked among the world’s leading nations today if it had been allowed to develop at its own pace and in accordance with his focus and vision. How I wish Nigeria has had “the best president we never had” in place of the best presidents we ever had.

[ Read More ]