Poetry- A Milestone Cast In Stone

They say some are born great, others achieve greatness, while some others have greatness thrust upon them.

Today, we celebrate excellence,
We celebrate a legend of unqualified feats.
We adore a life laden with tremendous

In moment of chaos, like a bolt in the blue, you flash your brilliance.
Like an actor in his element, you ooze out excellence in the stage of life.
Like a tale conjured by the gods, your life story is a beacon of hope for many.

You did not have the painting fingers of Leonardo, but you possess the infinite mind that spurred Leonardo
You do not have the audacious tongue of Martin Luther King, but you are graced with the conviction that can unlock any ambition
You do not have the literary hands of Chinua Achebe, but your creativity and mindas touch is priceless
We celebrate you today, not just because you are our boss, but because you have become a part of our lives. That part that inspires, that motivates, that teaches, that stirs our minds to aspire.
We celebrate you because in an age where power has intoxicated men, you have remained true to all, remaining yourself. For this, we admire you.

You are a bundle of greatness
An effulgence of humility
A cynosure of leadership
An epitome of perfection
An Index for excellence

A man with whom there is no lacuna for mediocre
A plethora of wits
A man whose sense of humor is peerless

A father of distinguished heights
A husband of unfettering prowess
A GM per excellence
A colleague of magnificent breed
A friend of sterling qualities
A mentor that even the legendary Aristotle will be proud of
In sum, a man of Olympian heights

And while words might not be enough
While our eulogies might be fleeting, our hearts revere you today and for all time

And when the eulogies fade away
When our days in Shell shall elapse
When time catches up with our agility
When nature forces us to retire from the 7 to 4 routine
When our body whispers rest to us
We will never forget you
For our friendship shall never wither
Our bound shall grow tighter
Our fondness shall linger
Our relationship shall never flounder
And you shall always remain in our minds.

Poem dedicated to my mentor and boss on the occasion of his birthday

9 Signs It’s Time to Take a Step Forward

1. You’ve spent lots of time recently thinking you aren’t good enough.

Give up your limiting beliefs about what you can or cannot do, about what is possible or impossible. From now on, you are no longer going to allow your limiting beliefs to keep you stuck in the wrong place.

A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind. Know this. There will NEVER be a perfect time to pursue your dreams and goals. You will never feel 100% ready, because you will never be 100% complete. You’re growing every day. You just have to find faith in yourself right now. Faith means living with uncertainty, feeling your way through life, letting your intuition guide you like a flashlight in the dark.

What if, for today, you choose to believe that you have enough, you are enough, and that you’ve come far enough to be worthy? What if, for today, you choose to believe that you are strong enough, wise enough, kind enough, and loved enough to move forward? What if, as the sun sets on today, you choose to believe that you did a pretty good job? And what if tomorrow morning, you choose to believe it all over again?

2. You’ve been busy trying to satisfy everyone else’s expectations.

Way too many people are living a life that’s not theirs to live. They live their lives according to what others think is best for them… they live their lives according to what their parents think is best for them… to what their friends, their enemies, their teachers, their government and the media think is best for them. They ignore their inner voice and intuition. They are so busy pleasing everyone else, with living up to other people’s expectations, that they lose control over their lives. They forget what makes them happy, what they want, what they need… and eventually they forget about themselves altogether.

You have one life – this one right now. You must live it, own it, and above all, NOT let other people’s opinions distract you from your truth.

3. You catch yourself complaining about things constantly.

Your constant need to complain about those many, many, many things – people, situations, events, etc. – is doing nothing but making you unhappy and depressed.

Nobody can make you unhappy, no situation can make you sad or miserable unless you allow it to. It’s not the situation that triggers those feelings in you, but how you choose to look at it. This may be hard to accept, but it’s the truth. Your life is as YOU see it. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking.

4. You have a habit of blaming everyone else.

Give up on your need to blame others for what you have or don’t have, for what you feel or don’t feel. Stop giving your power away and start taking responsibility for your life.

Either you own your problems and deal with them, or they will own you. Period.

5. You’ve been more focused on not failing than actually succeeding.

You are comfortable with mediocrity – you choose not to try. Because it’s safer. Because it’s easier to talk about learning that new skill as opposed to actually learning it. Because you think everything is too hard or too complicated so you will just “sit this one out,” or maybe you’ll “do it someday.” Because you hate your job but won’t apply for a new one – because it’s easier to reject the possibility of rejection.

Snap out of it!

While you’re sitting around failing to try, you really need to be out there trying to fail, challenging yourself, learning new things and failing forward as fast as possible. Your desire to succeed must overpower your fear of failure. Because if you are too afraid of failure, you can’t possibly do what needs to be done to be successful.

6. You are stuck on wanting to be right.

There are so many of us who can’t stand the idea of being wrong, wanting to always be right, even at the risk of ending great relationships or causing a great deal of stress and pain in our personal and professional lives. It’s just not worth it. Whenever you feel the burning desire to jump into a fight over who’s right and who’s wrong, ask yourself these questions:

“Would I rather be right, or would I rather be kind?”
“What difference will it make?”
“Is my ego really that big?”

Bottom line: You are an ever-changing work in progress, and so is everyone else. You don’t have to always be right, you just have to not be too worried about being wrong. Screwing up, for all of us, is part of the growth process. Being wrong and looking like a fool sometimes is the only path forward.

7. You keep letting your fear decide your future.

Fear is a feeling, not a fact. It’s just an illusion that doesn’t exist – you created it. It’s all in your mind. Correct the inside and the outside will fall into place.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt so profoundly said, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” Know this. Never let your fear decide your future. Let your dreams be bigger than your fears and your actions louder than your words.

No risk, no reward. No pain, no gain. You’ve heard this before.

Human beings don’t become wise by reading books and thinking about things – they become educated. Living out experiences firsthand in the real world, one day at a time, is what gives birth to wisdom. Ultimately wisdom is what you get when you test out the waters for yourself. This kind of life experience is the most valuable asset you own.

Sometimes on the road to acquiring wisdom life will beat you down, but you have to stand back up. Because nothing is more beautiful and powerful than a soul who has weathered and grown through life’s difficulties. Don’t regret your time, even the moments that were filled with hurt. Smile because you learned from it all and because you gained enough strength to rise above it all. In the end, it’s not what you have been through that matters; it’s how you got through it that defines your life and your legacy.

8. You believe the best is behind you.

You have to let the past GO! I know, I know… it’s not easy. Especially when the past looks so much better than the present, and the future looks so uncertain. But you have to take into consideration the fact that the present moment is all you have and all you will ever have. And the past you are now longing for – the past that you are now dreaming about – was mostly ignored by you when it was present. Don’t do this to yourself again.

Don’t waste your present with a past that has no future.

9. You’ve been actively resisting change.

As Oscar Wilde so profoundly said, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

Living a positive life hinges on your ability to accept the fact that everything is constantly moving forward, away from everything that previously existed. Not only do you have to emotionally detach from the past, but you also have to willingly thrust yourself forward into the unknown. You have to open yourself to trying new things, especially those that you may previously never have thought of doing, or had been too hesitant to attempt. This is how you open doors of opportunity for positive growth.

So many people live within the confines of unhappy situations and yet refuse to take the initiative to change their circumstances. They are conditioned to believe that the only choice is the current choice, because it’s the life they know. Their comfort zone blinds them from the truth – that nothing is more damaging to the human spirit than a mind that resists progress and change.

All of your personal growth and much of your joy in life will come from your encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater commitment than to embrace an endlessly changing horizon.

*MANDA*

Stomach Infrastructure: An Apt Reflection of the Nigeria Story

The concept of politicians in our clime doling out fleeting incentives on Election Day is not a novel idea in our polity. History holds it in numerous stead of how the Nigerian Politician in all his untold impunity will siphon, embezzle and divert public funds while in office, yet, when elections come around, he remembers there is such a thing as the grassroots. True to the script, he becomes philanthropic with public funds and doles out merchandise on Election Day in exchange for the peoples’ mandate. The coinage ‘Stomach Infrastructure’ assumed viral usage in the just concluded Ekiti state election that held on June 16th. As we were aware, the PDP in all its scheming displaced the APC; thus, Fayose assumed governor-elect of the state. A lot have been attributed to the odds that favoured the PDP by commentators, cynics and political observers. One of such reason, as the story goes, was the distribution of little bags of rice and other food items by PDP cohorts to many of the electorates in both the rural and urban centers. While this might not be the sole reason why they won the election, many observers are of the opinion that it was a pivotal hatching.

And just before we start to pour aspersions on the electorates in Ekiti for selling their souls for a pot of porridge, it is apt to first situate the gravity of their actions. This anomaly is indeed the most demeaning act ever witnessed on the conscience of the electorate. That something as defining as deciding the kind of life one and his future generation will live can be traded for a day’s meal is atrocious in itself. Some say it’s poverty that have left them with option, but in truism, this malady transcends poverty. Something has gone wrong with the minds of many Nigerians. That we always think of ‘what we will get today’ at the expense of tomorrow wrecks belief.

Pathetic to note, this tale of ‘Stomach Infrastructure’ has become manifest in diverse forms in our country today. As a people, quick fixes are always what we yearn. We might not all be guilty of accepting a cup of rice to buy our votes, but we are guilty of simply letting such an anomaly go unhindered, and we move on. In many ways than one, that a politician and his schemers can conceive such measures in their thoughts and have the temerity to execute it, is a collective insult to every electorate. It is true that many Nigerians suffer from selective amnesia, but how we allow politicians thrive with impunity is a wonder. Today, youths are conscripted into several electoral induced groups, famous among which is a group that call themselves Transformation Ambassador of Nigeria, TAN. While I am not a big fan of the Goodluck Jonathan administration, I accept the reality that he is my president. However, I find it disturbing that the primary aim of millions of people under the aegis of TAN at a time when our fledgling democracy is bedeviled with a plethora of issues is to make GEJ to recontest elections in 2015. It is also not a coincidence that groups like TAN, Friends of Jonathan and the likes takes prominence and form during the electoral era. At times I wonder, what makes people, young and old, dissipate so much energy in clamoring, supporting and even killing themselves for politicians, who only comes around during elections? What have this people been told that made their convictions unswerving?

Many of us are guilty of simply accepting who our politicians have become. At best, we whine about them on social media, but we always tend to move on. They sting their venom on us, we cry, threat ourselves of the diseases they infected us, and wait for the next bite. Perhaps, our understanding of governance and what it represents have been chequered by the cruel reality of our polity. It wasn’t for nothing that the late Chinua Achebe was insistence that the fundamental problem with Nigeria is ‘Leadership’. This was and still remains the bane of our predicament. And if we all know this, how is it that ‘We the People’ who determine who these leaders are cannot do anything about it?

The parable of stomach infrastructure is not just a tale that resonates with the 65 year old man in Ado Ekiti, who voted for Fayose because of the half bag of rice he was given on that election day, it is a story that lives with us all; the sad reality of the Nigerian People.

12 Promises You Should Make to Yourself and Keep Forever!

1.“I will not hold the past against myself.” – Your problems, your weaknesses, setbacks, regrets and mistakes teach you if you’re willing to learn, or they will punish you if you’re not. So let them teach you, every day. Take everything as a lesson learned. If you regret some of the decisions you have made in the past, stop being so hard on yourself. At that time, you did your best with the knowledge you had. At that time, you did your best with the experience you had. Your decisions were made with a younger mind. If you were to make these decisions with the wisdom you have today, you would choose differently. So give yourself a break. Time and experience has a wonderful way of helping us grow and learn to make better choices today, for ourselves and those we care for.

2.“I will own my life and never deny responsibility for it.” – Through the grapevine, you may have learned that you should blame your parents, your teachers, your mentors, the education system, the government, etc., but never to blame yourself. Right? It’s never, ever your fault… WRONG! It’s always your fault, because if you want to change, if you want to let go and move on with your life, you’re the only person who can make it happen. It’s YOUR move to make. It’s YOUR responsibility. Own it!

3.“I will speak kindly and consciously to myself.” – Wait, what did you just say to yourself? Were they the inspiring, encouraging words you would speak to a friend? Or were they the belittling remarks you might shout to an enemy if you had no heart. Or the negative assessments about life you would utter if you had no faith? All day long we speak silently to ourselves, and a part of us believes every word. So stay mindful, and ask yourself, “If I had a friend who always spoke to me in the same way that I am speaking to myself right now, how long would I allow that person to be my friend?”

4.“I will listen to what my heart and soul is telling me.” – When something feels right, that means it is right for you (at least it is worth looking into). And if you genuinely feel deep down that something is wrong, it probably is. Pay attention to your authentic feelings, and follow where they lead. When you’re following your inner voice, doors tend to eventually open for you, even if they mostly slam at first.

5.“I will live a life that feels right to me, not one that looks right to others.” – Give yourself permission to follow the path that makes YOU happy. And realize that some people in your life will refuse to walk beside you as you embark on this journey; they simply won’t approve no matter what you say, and that’s OK. Sometimes when you commit yourself to creating your own happiness, it clashes with the perceptions of others. Sometimes when you gain something great, you have to let go of something else. And sometimes this ‘something else’ is a relationship that only wants you to do what they want you to do.

6.“I will let go of relationships that are obviously not meant to be.” – Most people come into your life temporarily simply to teach you something. They come and they go and they make a difference. And it’s OK that they’re not in your life anymore. Not all relationships last, but the lessons these relationships bring to you do. If you learn to open your heart and mind, anyone, including the folks who eventually drive you mad, can teach you something worthwhile. Sometimes it will feel weird when you realize you spent so much time with someone you are no longer connected to, but that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. You are exactly where you’re supposed to be. We all are.

7.“I will not let any situation permanently steal my smile.” – Even when times are tough, take a moment to pause and remember who YOU are. Take a moment to reflect on the things that have real and lasting meaning in your life. And then smile about how far you’ve come. Honestly, nothing in this world is more beautiful and powerful than a smile that has struggled through the tears. Any fool can be happy when times are easy. It takes a strong soul with real heart to develop smiles out of situations that make us weep. No matter how long it takes, it will get better. Keep going. Tough situations build strong people in the end.

8.“I will celebrate and appreciate the life I have.” – Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are. Don’t be one of them. Take a breath of fresh air. The past is behind you. Focus on what you can do today, not on what you could’ve or should’ve done yesterday. Remember, for everything you’ve lost, you’ve gained something else. Appreciate what you have and who you are today. Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful. Count your blessings, not your troubles. It costs nothing to be positive, and it changes things for the better. Your thoughts are yours to control, so make good use of them to give your actions and your life a powerful advantage.

9.“I will realize and use my power to make a difference.” – The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. Don’t do this. The world needs you. In a world filled with doubt, you must dare to dream. In a world filled with anger, you must dare to forgive. In a world filled with hate, you must dare to love. In a world filled with distrust, you must dare to believe. And once you do, I promise, you will find that power you once thought you lacked.

10.“I will dedicate myself to personal excellence.” – Anything worth doing, is worth doing right. And excellence is never an accident. It’s the result of high intention, focused effort, intelligent direction, skillful execution, and the vision to see obstacles as opportunities. It’s also important to note that excellence cannot be judged by looking at where you are at any given point in time, but by measuring the distance you have traveled from the point where you started. It’s about being diligent and making progress – either a step forward or a lesson learned – day in and day out.

11.“I will keep stretching myself beyond my previous level of comfort.” – Just because you’re struggling doesn’t mean you’re failing. Every great success requires some type of worthy struggle to get there. Know this! When you’re struggling, that’s when you’re growing stronger and smarter. The more time you spend there, the faster you learn. It’s better to spend an extremely high quality ten minutes growing, than it is to spend a mediocre hour running in place. Every day, you want to practice at the point where you are on the edge of your ability, stretching yourself over and over again, making mistakes, stumbling, learning from those mistakes and stretching yourself even farther.

12.“I will embrace the changes I know I need to make.” – Life is a balancing act of holding on and letting go – of staying put and moving on. We strive to make the right choices, but how do we know when it is truly time to move forward with our lives? The signs aren’t always easy to accept, but they are there and you know it. Relationships, jobs, and even the cities we live in have expiration dates. Sometimes we hold on to what’s not working out of fear that we won’t be able to adapt to necessary changes. And thus, the outcome is always the same: more pain, immense frustration, and lasting regret. Be smarter than that. Embrace the changes you know you need to make.

(MANDA).

It Was September 16th!

It was September 16th that year. The sun was prodigal and the wind, nauseating. There was nothing in the air that suggested the impending doom. It was a casual air that held no malice. Children playing with vehement passion and traders hauling their wares to your face. She had been on her selling spot that day, before her body began to itch. The kind of itching that puzzles. She was not the type to give in to illness. Somehow, her mortal spirit had infected her body. She was immune to the kind of illness that perplexes common men. And even in those seldom days when sickness caught up with her, she barely showed it. She will conceal her pain from our bare eyes. Her tears were shrouded in her dazzling smile. In times of pain, she will fight to hold up the tears, and while we look away, she will give it up, swiftly.

And so on this day, only the gods will recollect what took us away from the house. She came to meet an empty house. In the obvious itching that brought her home, she relieved the agony. We returned. From whatever venture conspired to take us out, and then she put up that cloak again. Hiding the pain she currently felt. However, this time, the pain was so grueling that she couldn’t do an exquisite job of concealing it. And then, we were beginning to sense, to feel, to decipher, that all was not well with our Jewell. She was not the same. Her beauty was extant, but there was a cankerworm eating her up. We could see by the way she placed her face, the tilting of her head, her now foisted step. Something was wrong.

Her language began to change. She spoke in pregnant words, coded gestures, and her silence became her loudest voice. And I remember, the days we will fight as kids, she will caution us, warning us to be at peace, as days will come when we will no longer have her. I remember, the times we will go wasteful on the meal her ailing body prepared, she will admonish us, on the virtues of prudence as we may not have her forever. Her silence became her default. Words began to fail her. The cankerworm was eating her up, slowly but surely.

So we were all journeyed to our hometown, in roads synonyms with death-traps and in a bus that can better be described as suicidal. On this journey, she was not with us. Word was that she had gone ahead of us for something urgent. Going to the village was a yearly ritual, but there was something unusual about this. It was too sudden, too unprepared, too hurried. The swiftness suggested trouble, but juvenile us, we couldn’t have imagined. And so we arrived. Men in black, gloomy, sullen and quiet. They welcomed us, with more precarious tenderness. Their voices were stammering. And I remember, how one of them saw me and in a despair that will rival that of judgment day, shook his head. ‘Strange old men and women,’ we thought. Perhaps, we thought too quickly. As we got in, we asked of our beauty, and as is always the case with lairs, we got a varying reply, that she travelled. We marveled! How does travelling for something urgent coincide with travelling back to Lagos? In trademark style, we bulldozed our way before these men of sorrow into the room, and there she was, beaten, fallen and defeated by the cold hands of death. We tried to cry, but we couldn’t find the tears. We tried to shout, but our voices failed us. We tried to wail, but anguish deserted us. We simply stirred at her body, wrapped in a cloth. And indeed, she was gone. We gazed at one another, and sudden maturity and realization dawn on us. This was it. We all knew that we had to chart our course in life alone. We had to fight this alone. Without her, it was us against the world.

It was September 16th. We have moved on, but we have not forgotten. Each time we remember, a part of us simply die. It was a callous departure; the type that words cannot aptly explain. And today, we wished she was around. After God, she is the first benefactor of everything we have become. The one most entitled. But alas, she cannot reap what she has sowed. But we are encouraged. Buoyed by the knowing that she sleeps well. She must have feared when she left 19 years ago on what will become of us. But today, she will be proud. Not because we have made all the riches in the world, but because we have made something with our lives. We have hoped against hope. We have survived 19 years of turmoil, of her absence. We have not broken before life’s storm. We are still standing, and we have become the proverbial stone that the builders rejected. Today, we have become the cynosure of the eyes that wished us doom. Today, under God, we have become something.

Sleep on, our queen. Certainly, we shall reconvene to depart no more. We will continue to remember you. In this journey, we will always cherish those moments, and keep living the future you always had in mind for us.
Ura na, ju afo, nyeju afo, amaka!

10 Painfully Obvious Truths Everyone Forgets Too Soon

1. The average human life is relatively short.

We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step. You expected there to be one more stair than there is, and so you find yourself off balance for a moment, before your mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is.

LIVE your life TODAY! Don’t ignore death, but don’t be afraid of it either. Be afraid of a life you never lived because you were too afraid to take action. Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside you while you’re still alive. Be bold. Be courageous. Be scared to death, and then take the next step anyway.

2. You will only ever live the life you create for yourself.

Your life is yours alone. Others can try to persuade you, but they can’t decide for you. They can walk with you, but not in your shoes. So make sure the path you decide to walk aligns with your own intuition and desires, and don’t be scared to switch paths or pave a new one when it makes sense.

Remember, it’s always better to be at the bottom of the ladder you want to climb than the top of the one you don’t. Be productive and patient. And realize that patience is not about waiting, but the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard for what you believe in. This is your life, and it is made up entirely of your choices. May your actions speak louder than your words. May your life preach louder than your lips. May your success be your noise in the end.

And if life only teaches you one thing, let it be that taking a passionate leap is always worth it. Even if you have no idea where you’re going to land, be brave enough to step up to the edge of the unknown, and listen to your heart.

3. Being busy does NOT mean being productive.

Busyness isn’t a virtue, nor is it something to respect. Though we all have seasons of crazy schedules, very few of us have a legitimate need to be busy ALL the time. We simply don’t know how to live within our means, prioritize properly, and say no when we should.

Being busy rarely equates to productivity these days. Just take a quick look around. Busy people outnumber productive people by a wide margin. Busy people are rushing all over the place, and running late half of the time. They’re heading to work, conferences, meetings, social engagements, etc. They barely have enough free time for family get-togethers and they rarely get enough sleep. Yet, emails are shooting out of their smart phones like machine gun bullets, and their day planners are jammed to the brim with obligations. Their busy schedule gives them an elevated sense of importance. But it’s all an illusion. They’re like hamsters running on a wheel.

Though being busy can make us feel more alive than anything else for a moment, the sensation is not sustainable long term. We will inevitably, whether tomorrow or on our deathbed, come to wish that we spent less time in the buzz of busyness and more time actually living a purposeful life.

4. Some kind of failure always occurs before success.

Most mistakes are unavoidable. Learn to forgive yourself. It’s not a problem to make them. It’s only a problem if you never learn from them.

If you’re too afraid of failure, you can’t possibly do what needs to be done to be successful. The solution to this problem is making friends with failure. You want to know the difference between a master and a beginner? The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. Behind every great piece of art is a thousand failed attempts to make it, but these attempts are simply never shown to us.

Bottom line: Just because it’s not happening now, doesn’t mean it never will. Sometimes things have to go very wrong before they can be right.

5. Thinking and doing are two very different things.

Success never comes to look for you while you wait around thinking about it.

You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. Knowledge is basically useless without action. Good things don’t come to those who wait; they come to those who work on meaningful goals. Ask yourself what’s really important and then have the courage to build your life around your answer.

And remember, if you wait until you feel 100% ready to begin, you’ll likely be waiting the rest of your life.

6. You don’t have to wait for an apology to forgive.

Life gets much easier when you learn to accept all the apologies you never got. The key is to be thankful for every experience – positive or negative. It’s taking a step back and saying, “Thank you for the lesson.” It’s realizing that grudges from the past are a perfect waste of today’s happiness, and that holding one is like letting unwanted company live rent free in your head.

Forgiveness is a promise – one you want to keep. When you forgive someone you are making a promise not to hold the unchangeable past against your present self. It has nothing to do with freeing a criminal of his or her crime, and everything to do with freeing yourself of the burden of being an eternal victim.

7. Some people are simply the wrong match for you.

You will only ever be as great as the people you surround yourself with, so be brave enough to let go of those who keep bringing you down. You shouldn’t force connections with people who constantly make you feel less than amazing.

If someone makes you feel uncomfortable and insecure every time you’re with them, for whatever reason, they’re probably not close friend material. If they make you feel like you can’t be yourself, or if they make you “less than” in any way, don’t pursue a connection with them. If you feel emotionally drained after hanging out with them or get a small hit of anxiety when you are reminded of them, listen to your intuition. There are so many “right people” for you, who energize you and inspire you to be your best self. It makes no sense to force it with people who are the wrong match for you.

8. It’s not other people’s job to love you; it’s yours.

It’s important to be nice to others, but it’s even more important to be nice to yourself. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. So make sure you don’t start seeing yourself through the eyes of those who don’t value you. Know your worth, even if they don’t.

Today, let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as incomplete as you think you are. Yes, let someone love you despite all of this, and let that someone be YOU. (Read Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It.)

9. What you own is not who YOU are.

Stuff really is just stuff, and it has absolutely no bearing on who you are as a person. Most of us can make do with much less than we think we need. That’s a valuable reminder, especially in a hugely consumer-driven culture that focuses more on material things than meaningful connections and experiences.

You have to create your own culture. Don’t watch TV, don’t read every fashion magazine, and don’t consume too much of the evening news. Find the strength to fill your time with meaningful experiences. The space and time you are occupying at this very moment is LIFE, and if you’re worrying about Kim Kardashian or Lebron James or some other famous face, then you are disempowered. You’re giving your life away to marketing and media trickery, which is created by big companies to ultimately motivate you to want to dress a certain way, look a certain way, and be a certain way. This is tragic, this kind of thinking. It’s all just Hollywood brainwashing. What is real is YOU and your friends and your family, your loves, your highs, your hopes, your plans, your fears, etc.

Too often we’re told that we’re not important, we’re just peripheral to what is. “Get a degree, get a job, get a car, get a house, and keep on getting.” And it’s sad, because someday you’ll wake up and realize you’ve been tricked. And all you’ll want then is to reclaim your mind by getting it out of the hands of the brainwashers who want to turn you into a drone that buys everything that isn’t needed to impress everyone that isn’t important.

10. Everything changes, every second.

Embrace change and realize it happens for a reason. It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end it will be worth it.

What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow. You never know. Things change, often spontaneously. People and circumstances come and go. Life doesn’t stop for anybody. It moves rapidly and rushes from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds, and happens like this to people every day. It’s likely happening to someone nearby right now.

Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction of our lives. A seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a meteorite striking Earth. Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event. And these events are always happening.

However good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the one thing you can count on. So when life is good, enjoy it. Don’t go looking for something better every second. Happiness never comes to those who don’t appreciate what they have while they have it.

(MANDG).

Why The Fuss About Nuhu Ribadu?

As news went viral that former ACN (Now APC) presidential candidate has dumped the so-called progressive party for the often declared sinister PDP, the national political space went agog. For many of his loyalists, it was a blue day murder, a rape of morals and a betrayal of the principles that they claim Nuhu Ribadu believe in. In his article titled ‘Nuhu Ribadu and the Rest of Us’, Dele Momodu laid bare the hurt that must be felt by his many supporters. He lamented ‘Politics have destroyed too many of our finest brands…a man of Nuhu’s caliber would now have to bow to gods with feet of clay or get hacked down to miniature size.’ Momodu’s epistle was one in a litany of commentaries that decried the decision of the former crime fighter and mourn at the new marriage, as if to say flirting was ever a new word in such marriage.

So much have been suggested as to what demons must have led Ribadu to dine with the party he has so associated with evil in the past. A school of reasoning is of the opinion that this might be a ploy in the grand scheme of the APC to infiltrate the PDP ranks, and wreck havoc. Their thinking is that if Ribadu succeeds in the PDP, it will be a launching pad for APC and the Northern elite to then bite the PDP in the long run that is with the assumption that Ribadu will then forsake the PDP to his first love. In the minds of those that hold this rational, no one is more skilled and poise to carry out this plot, than a man like Nuhu Ribadu. However, the other school of thought differs. For them, Ribadu is simply a fiercely ambitious man who will trample upon principles and break hearts to achieve his dream. With the luxury of relative youth on his side, this school of thought is convinced that this was an obvious story of a man seeking power by all means.

While there is some rational to the two schools of thought, for the political neutrals, Ribadu’s action was simply a great shame, for a man so highly referred as a beacon of principles and ideology. It is to this thought, I wonder. People make it sound like the APC which he left, is a party of saints and men of high principles. Sadly, this is far from the reality. It is worth mentioning that the seemingly moral standing and sentiments that makes the APC more appealing to the average Nigerian, is due mainly to the fact that the alternative, PDP, is a peerless evil. For those of us that have not been too gullible in the face of these recent sub-plots to 2015, we can surely see that the APC clearly thrives on PDP’s failure, without it being able to clearly define what it has to offer Nigerians. If PDP is renowned for electoral malpractices and lack of internal democratic processes, the APC is no exception. The same national decay in the PDP is prevalent in the APC, albeit, at different variance and forms. Thus, all those that claim that Ribadu betrayed principles will want to check again. What principles? Our political parties are not built on principles and ideologies. Moreover, it is a season of political prostitution, retargeting, political scheming and positioning for maximum impact. Perhaps, Ribadu was only doing this. He might be ambitious, but when did that become a bad thing? It is sickening that when people like Rotimi Amaechi are rumored to abhor presidential ambition, we treat them with disdain and contempt, as if this is an acrimonious ambition to have. Perhaps, our basterdized rational is ‘Why should he want to be president, when his brother is there already. It is betrayal.’ Little wonder our politics is still at its teething and elementary level.

However, the trouble for Ribadu is what might be, in his new political voyage. We know that his first port of call will be to win the PDP primaries to earn the right to fly the party’s flag in the upcoming governorship election in Adamawa state. Such battle will never be easy. His name might be the most recognizable among the other candidates with same goal, yet, he needs to still fight some vehement detractors within and outside the party. Many believe and rightly so, that the PDP is wise (If wisdom is the word) enough to know the underlying motives if ever he carries some, of Ribadu’s latest political move. For some of the PDP stalwarts, Ribadu is a man to be handled with caution. His antecedents suggest that he might be too hot to handle. They believe that trust is not a word to be associated with him. In sum, he might have an agenda. And even if he does, who doesn’t?

Perhaps, the greater danger for Ribadu is this: What if his PDP sojourn ends in doom. As one commentator remarked: ‘While it is always easy to move from the right to the left, it is not usually simple to move from left to right.’ What if this adventure ends up being a charade? The editor-in-chief of ThisDay newspaper, Simon Kolawole, in concluding his beautiful piece titled, ‘The trouble with Nuhu Ribadu’ wrote ‘A humorist once said this about relationships “Love is ideal, marriage is real. Any confusion of the two shall never go unpunished” That is the trouble. If the PDP adventure turns out well for Ribadu, he could be an Oshiomhole. If not, the ridicule will be unbearable.’

While I largely agree with the foregoing, somewhere in my left hand column, I think that irrespective of the ridicule that might be if this doesn’t go well for Nuhu Ribadu, he will simply move on. I have never known dignity and reverence to be associated with our politicians, and I somehow think this is a win-win, at least in Ribadu’s mind.