THE GATHERER

Tourists to Nigeria’s popular cities -- Lagos, Abuja, and Port-Harcourt -- may query statistics that suggests Islam to be the peoples’ major faith. Arguably, there are twelve churches to every mosque in each local government area, in, say, Lagos. Majority of these churches are privately owned organisations, e.g. Winners Chapel: formerly world’s largest church capacity, with fifty thousand seats, until recently upstaged by the Apostolic Church of Nigeria’s one hundred thousand seats church auditorium, also in Lagos. Approximately 160 million people, individually affected by two or more of the following: Tribal racism; Post-trauma of a civil-war (Biafra); Societal under-development stemming from thirty-two-years of oppressive military rule; Poverty; and now Terrorism. Taking a social science approach, expected loss of human dignity and social cohesion in such society, especially having evolved through slavery and colonialism, prior, it’s understandable why the world’s larges

“Do you know what is right or wrong?” - these reportedly were the last words that came out of Late Gaddafi, in a state between Life and Death, as he was dragged by the rebel force along the streets of Sirte, Libya. These words have kept ringing in my head. Coming from a man whose death was near, and one would have expected him to be begging for mercy or cursing at the top of his voice. Rather, he chose to ask a question - “Do you know what is right or wrong?” Now, what is right? Are they those things our parents told us were right from cradle? And we grew up to find out that they actually meant ‘do as we say’ and not ‘do as we do’. Or are the right things, the Ten Commandments of Moses? – that we find difficult to fulfil all 10 day after day? As we now say no man is perfect, and perfection is only meant for GOD. If no one is perfect, then how come we judge ourselves? - to the extent of executing one another in the name of doing the RIGHT thing, from ‘Capital Punishmen

In light of today’s 51 st Independence Anniversary in Nigeria, I have been tweeting all week starting from Monday (26-09-11) those positive things that I want to celebrate about our country. While many joined in to mention good things about Nigeria and hash tagged with #OCT1 , I couldn’t help but notice those who decided to gate crash the positive thinker’s party and flooded us with ‘depressing facts’ about our nation and her polity. Among the many negative rants was one that jumped out at me, it read – "We always do ask ourselves, When will 9ja b Great again? But I ask Again, Again and Again, Has 9ja ever been great?" This tweet bugged me a lot, maybe for the fact that unlike the person who posted the tweet, I grew up seeing a little of a great Nigeria before things started to really deteriorate mid 80’s. I grew up when we had Kingsway, Leventis, UTC and Masco Stores and a variety of amusement parks around town where our parents took us to shop and have fun as kids.

An idea you’re passionate about may never materialize. You may stay over-thinking until it becomes stale, or perhaps, your efforts to actualize it are continually frustrated. If you give up, you won’t be the first to let a dream die. Nonetheless, many have faced same predicaments and defied odds, not only fulfilling their dreams but also surpassing them. How did they do it? – Motivation! By default, the mind is programmed to quit when overwhelmed. Body pains and tears are its natural reaction to physical or emotional pressure. But ironically, strength to keep going when your mind says – quit – will only come from a past or present pain. An experience that transforms your psyche and literally turns you to a wall – the harder the ball is thrown at you, the farther you bounce it off. I’m not glorifying sufferings, but you won't find any successful person without a story of pain to share. And hardly will you find   trust fund kids   who   multiply their family wealth. I rememb

Passion can be defined as an “uncontrollable or intense feeling or emotion towards achieving a set goal”. It is also described as a “crazy drive to achieve”. People who are passionate about attaining a feat, often, stretch themselves beyond their natural limits to get the job done. Take for instance a toddler, after the stage of crawling they start to get up to walk. And after taking some few early steps, they fall back down, because obviously their legs are still feeble. But their desire to walk like every other person around them, ultimately drives them to continue to get up each time they fall - to take some more steps  forward, until they finally master the art of walking erect and before you know it they're already running and jumping all over the place. This is the same approach we have to adopt towards succeeding in life. Without Passion, it is impossible for anyone to achieve anything significant, worthy of Praise, or to be emulated by others. Permit me to say, we hav

What can be said of LOVE? Other than it is essential to the existence of the human race. We all naturally feel the urge to show and to receive love. So, if it is an instinct as natural as walking, talking and eating, then how come we haven’t got it right as a race for millions of years? How come we feel short changed in our marriages? How come it is so easy for a couple who once professed love for one another all of a sudden feel the urge to call it quits? Some say Love is like ‘The state of Utopia’ [desirable but not attainable]. Yet, we see some marriages celebrate their silver jubilees, golden jubilees today and when you ask them what has kept them going for all these years, they are quick to tell you ‘It’s Love’. But somehow, we like to conclude that they must be tolerating each other or out rightly just pretending to themselves or they’re still together because of their children’s sake. Well, there might just be a logical explanation why some marriages have stood the test o

Do you know a common way poverty creeps into a family is by selling-off inherited properties? Examine the Forbes rich list and you’ll see almost 35% of the entire listed, especially majority of the top 100, are people who inherited their wealth. Landed properties, hedge fund investments, trust funds, stamps, paintings, precious stones, company shares are some of the forms by which wealth is transferred from a settler to a beneficiary. Now, if as much as one-third of the rich folks in our world today are heirs to riches, why are we then so quick to sell-off our own stuff? I recently observed three average families close to mine, which by the way is an average one too. And I notice members of these families including mine, have continued to own houses, cars and other valuable items as far back as three generations from today. But the habit or may I say culture of selling properties, either for selfish interest or simply for lack of regard for it, has kept them–us–on that a littl

Seeking the face of God and not the hand of God shows our spiritual and mental maturity. As a child we always seek the hands of our Parents (Daddy give me and Mummy give me), but as we grow older and become mature, we start learning the ways of our Parents and start to get concerned about pleasing them. Not necessarily to receive anything from them, but to eventually fill their shoes and continue from where they've stopped when they retire. If you've not got to a point in your life where you haven't started asking your Parents 'what you can do for them' as opposed to 'what you can get from them' then you're still a child/immature regardless of your age! This is the same with God. If as a Christian you still find yourself asking, asking from God always: God forgive for my sin (then going back to the same thing again), God give me a car, God give me money, God give me.. give me..give me..! Yes, He will give you. Yes, He will forgive your sins just as

My write ups may not be excellently drafted, but that is because I’m not looking to entertain you, instead it is my desire to share rare truths with you on all issues that are key to us enjoying our time while on this realm. Truth, I have discovered is what made the earth that we live in, and the same truth, was deposited in all of us by our creator and the source of all truth – GOD. It is for this innate truth that our conscience pricks whenever we are in the wrong. It is sin that made us lose our accurate sense of judgement and through it MAN created what we now call the “grey area” between black (evil) and white (good). This is why today, you find people openly perpetuate evil and they find a way to justify it. Words like “the end justifies the means” “heaven helps those who help themselves” and more like that are common sayings in our midst as we now almost permanently live on the grey area. In our society today, we judge good or evil with our “grey-meter” where we compare