Tuesday 12 December 2017

Awakening Marital Joy

Mr. and Mrs. Desmond were a lovely couple. They had paid their dues through work life and had risen professionally to the peak of their careers. Parenthood was quite successful because the two daughters they have were almost through with university education. However, home had become a regimented routine of early dash-outs to work, late arrivals, frequent travels, light meals, almost no television, brief conversations, and little sleep.
After years of slowly grinding their used-to-be romantic love life into a mechanical and fractious cohabitation, sex had become quite alien to them and they were growing used to not having regular passionate sex. Though in her mid-forties, Mrs. Desmond was still attractive with firm skin and a frame that mirrored her youthful self.

Saturday 25 November 2017

Explore Humanity: Influence, Network, and Partner

The modern professional or career worker needs to make him or herself a distinguished tool for integration whether in the workplace, social, or family circles. This is because it is important for every human being to imbibe some management skills to function efficiently through life. Management skills are no longer a skill set for managers alone but for every human being who can access knowledge. It is often said that good leaders make good managers but not all good managers make good leaders. This means leadership and management can be separated. While many of us may not have the opportunity for leadership, we all need to learn to be good managers. If for nothing else, it is important for us to manage our lives well.

Friday 10 November 2017

The Human Commodity




Three gentlemen, smartly dressed in black suits and sunglasses, came upon a house. It was a three bedroom bungalow. The house was in the middle of a paved compound and was fenced with brick walls. The house looked abandoned, spooky, and puzzling. They walked around the house taking notes and making references. When they got to the back, three old metal cabinets stood abandoned with a litter of paper lying around them. They thought little of the litter and moved on. Having gone round the house, they stopped at the front door which was ajar and one of them knocked.

Tuesday 7 November 2017

The Sanctity of Human Life

It normally takes at least 9 months to cultivate human life through processes peripherally explained by science. Inherent in the process, are deep mysteries that manifest in various ways and continue to leave human kind with more questions. In this whole drama of cultivating life, especially human life, several still ask “when does life truly begin?”

Monday 30 October 2017

The God Factor of Love

When you look at a mirror what do you see? An image of yourself, isn’t it? But who are you exactly? Have you ever sat down to have some alone time about who you really are? If someone walked up to you and asked you to name five things that define you uniquely, what would you say? How long would you have thought about them? Would any of them have anything to do with love?
I think something common to all of us is love. We all know what love is, and we feel it when it is experienced. Pure love is unconditional and can be perceived even without action. Now, is there usually an intention behind love?

Monday 23 October 2017

The Long Trek




As dawn broke, he awakened with a heightened level of anxiety. He had trekked several kilometres from a village close to Abuja; the last village a truck had volunteered to drop him. He was seeking the place he believed was his destiny to find. He got up, and rolled up his sleeping baggage; a set of very old blankets he had grabbed from what was left on the bed he slept on for years. He went to a nearby tap and washed his face and rinsed his mouth, after which, it was time to begin a series of actions he had set up to achieve by the grace of God. It didn’t take long before he was noticed. A dissident loitering a few metres away from an Embassy was always going to draw some attention.

Friday 13 October 2017

The Fruit of the Womb

From the womb of emptiness and nothingness, phenomena beyond human comprehension sparked life. A Supreme Being designed and executed a plan that will continue to remain a mystery even to the best scientists; the creation of space, matter, and time. Did this Supreme Being remodel the earth and put life on it? Are we alone? Did this Supreme Being also create the entire multiverse as we know it from NASA? The human mind cannot execute thought processes beyond the capacity prescribed for it from the beginning. We cannot truly comprehend the magnitude of all the elements contained alongside us in space. But we can control what to believe and how to live.

Wednesday 4 October 2017

In Memory of the “Love Locks” of Pont des Arts Bridge


He heard the news over the radio days ago. Since then, a series of involuntary actions led him to a bunch of padlocks on the barrier rails of the popular Pont des Arts bridge in Paris. The barrier rails on both sides were filled with padlocks of different shapes, colours and sizes that reflected the dawning sunlight. He stopped and  stared at a particular one. The particular one that set him in motion when he heard over the radio that the padlocks would be removed by government maintenance officers.

About twenty five years ago, he and a young lady he was in love with played around the narrow streets of Paris like toddlers in kindergarten. They chased each other from street to street and drank from pub to pub. No one could separate them. It was true love indeed. One day, they bought a padlock and swore never to leave each other until they were married someday. They placed the padlock on the fence and locked it. An inscription on it read “together always.” The dream of marriage ended the day he went over to her house and found out that her family had vanished.

Monday 2 October 2017

Dyeing our Mosaicked Fabric


Like the approach of eventide, gradually intensifying with time, a country so dear to us is sinking gradually into a sea of trepidation, and we are quite unsure about our future. We have heard statements from very highly placed Nigerians stating very firmly that Nigeria must remain one and that the unity of Nigeria is not up for discussion. I like hearing these statements a lot because quite frankly, they are the only source of belief for me now. The Nigerian state today reminds me of an earth tremor on the verge of eruption. Whether we like it or not, our country is unstable and like every chaotic situation, opportunists prowl cunningly, seeking to take advantage where they can. At this time in our history, we must ask ourselves if we want to continue to be Nigerians.

Friday 29 September 2017

I am first of all a Nigerian

The human being at birth can be likened to a computer. We were all born quite unfilled. However, we all came to this world with the innate capacity to care for each other. Even as babies, we recognised other human beings as analogous to us and discerned them from the animals we found around us. As we grew older into toddlers, we stopped selecting who we allowed to carry us as long as someone we recognised was around. We were attracted to other Children we came across and played we with them more freely. Sometimes, too freely. We enjoyed human gatherings because they provided us with opportunities to further explore possible relationships with more and more people, and to play some more. No wonder I cherished the “end of year” parties my parents took me to so much.

Thursday 28 September 2017

A Twist of Fate

“I will love you wellu wellu, I must to love you wellu wellu, Maria don come for me oh. I will love you wellu wellu. Bread wey I no dream of oh, Don find me come oh, Make una come helep me shout oh, Wetin I go use thank Maria oh. I will love you wellu wellu, I must to love you wellu wellu, Maria don come for me oh, I will love you wellu wellu.” After singing this song on top of his voice, he cleared his throat and started his story while his son listened with keen interest. “Maria and I were friends from babyhood. We danced and rolled together in the sands of the village in pants and sometimes without clothing. Maria lived two compounds away from mine but you could not tell the household members apart. My house was her house and her house was my house. We followed adults to the stream and played in the stream waters like baby mermaids. We were like brother and sister.

Sunrise at dusk: A Prayer for Nigeria

When I look around, faces of despair are not in short supply. My own face is not immune. Thank God every Nigerian has some innate resilience to abjection. The issue however is that we all have our breaking points. We know when enough is enough! Though our past as a nation was quite eventful, we seemed to have thrown the cigarette butt into a trash can filled with papers and moved on without putting the fire out completely. The smoke from the trash can has gained dense billows and ignition is not far off. With reference to the political antecedents of Nigeria, no Government in uniform or without uniform has adequately coped with the immense expectations of Nigerians. If you kept an inventory of newspaper headlines from 1960 to date, the word chart would throw up a trend of words that abound in our discussions on national issues today. There is a popular saying that “Government is a continuum.” If this is true, why haven’t we as a nation overcome basic recurrent issues that continue to plague every successive Government in Nigeria?