Anatomy of a Winner.

A winner is not someone who has not lost but one who does not quit in moments of failure with the belief that with improvement, he would get it right someday. A winner is also not someone who wins seldomly but someone who has made an habit of winning, a winner does not see impossibilities, rather, he turns them into steps to reaching his goal(s).
In life, we all have reasons to fail; Clinton never knew his father but still rose to the exalted position of America's president, Obama was black and no black before him had got the nod of any of the major political parties ( Democrats and Republican) for the office of the president, yet he not only became the flag-bearer, he won the election and of course, the rest is history.
Jose Mourinho, a football manager with an attitude that courted him enemies everywhere he went but still succeeds despite the cloudy atmosphere of hatred. He is enroute becoming the greatest manager ever having won league titles in 3 different countries ( Portugal, England and Italy), he has moved on to Spain hoping to turn it into another of his conquests.
Great men and winners are those that arm themselves with an axe and head for the rock. He keeps smashing at the rock until the rock gives way. Everybody appreciates gold simply because it is scarce and only a few find it, the others buy it.
Winners are not born,they are made. Every living person ( white or black) have chances to win in life. Victory in life does not favour a particular skin colour , race, religion, age or even language.
To win in life. all that is required is grit, determination, belief, obstacles and luck. Life is like a football match in which a keeper is faced with the daunting task of keeping a clean sheet. For 90 minutes, he foils the attempt of players of the opposition to score against his team, he throws his body , jumps and a times, gets injured but still manages to continue. We are all goalkeepers in life.
Obstacles bring out the best in us. You will never know how fast you can run until your very life depends on it ( Imagine facing a very hungry lion). It is usually good to embrace obstacles and challenges for they only make us better.
Luck is literally good fortune but literarily, it is labouring under correct knowledge. With the right preparation, success and greatness will be achieved. Consider carefully what you desire and ask the very important question 'what is the necessary ingredient?
Let us all equip ourselves with the requisite knowledge and the success that has been far-fetched will become hand-reached.

GOLDEN RULE.

GOLDEN RULE.

Biblically, ‘love your neighbour as thyself’ is said to be the most important law but philosophers have proposed a rule which is perceived as golden and it is ‘do unto others what you will have them do unto you’.

In life, we frown when we are at the receiving end of some actions but not when we dish them out. Each and everyday, we do things to others that make them clench their fists and gnash their teeth in agony. Sometimes, they retaliate, other times; they do not owing to our perceived superior placement.

Have we ever thought of what life will be if we treat others the way we would want to be treated if roles were swapped? Most humans if not all are hedonists (pleasure seekers), thus, they would not want to embrace pain or forms of it.

Someone would owe others gladly but when he is indebted to, he will go around swearing and cursing bitterly. I ask why would you owe or defiantly refuse paying if you cannot stand being owed?

To a person paying assailants to hunt down another for whatever reason, I put it to you that how would you feel if you are the reciepient of that fatal coup de grace. No matter how rich you are, there is someone richer who can afford to pay hoodlums to cut you down.

There are some I call ‘smooth operators’. They boast about snatching others partners, sleeping with the spouses of others, ruining relationships that took long to nurture and build. To you smooth operators, how would you feel if someone else does exactly the same thing to you? You find your partner in the warm embrace of another! It is pertinent to note that no matter what your best is, it can be bettered. Be it good or evil. If you are such a good orator and feels that your tongue can cause any lady to fall, I say someday a better orator will sweep your lady off her feet and cause you eternal emotional pain. Always know that your best is someone else’s beginning and your revelation is another’s genesis.

The golden rule though simple, let everyone observe it and the world will be an eldorado.

PURE INSANITY OR AN ACT OF TERRORISM

There are surprises; pleasant and unpleasant. In Nigeria, recently, we have been having a deluge of the latter. Firstly, a brief medical check-up of the president in a first-class hospital turning into a sabbatical and French leave in Saudi hospice. Secondly, while the world was grappling with the Christmas season, a Nigerian attempted to blow a US bound plane. Thirdly, the imbroglio about the refusal of the president to transmit power to his vice, pressures from quarters for him to do so, the unexpected presence of a cabal blindly loyal to the president ( sick or not) and the eventual though belated conferment of acting status on the vice-president. It is obvious that these infamies are becoming one too many.

The crux of this writing is the shocking occurrence at the Margaret Ekpo International Airport in Calabar in which a man attempted to blow up a plane belonging to Arik fleet by driving straight to the runway and ramming it into the plane. When news flittered in that a Nigerian gentleman had stopped being gentle by attempting to blow up a US bound Detroit plane and the consequent inclusion of Nigeria into America’s terror watch list. We all cried wolf saying Nigerians are not and can never be terrorists. We came up with the argument that though Mutallab was a Nigerian by name, he was not at heart and no true Nigerian will want to die even if he was promised a mansion full of cosmopolitan virgins. How do we now explain this recent fateful development? The cab driver at the eye of the storm declared stupidly that he would come back and round off his unfinished business. The action of the cab driver did not only jeopardize the lives of the 200 people on board, it also raised some critical questions as to the safety of our airports vis-à-vis the runways. It was also in a Nigerian airport that we saw a herd of cattle running onto the runway. Is the runway a green field where cattles graze? It must be in such a deplorable state for cattles to mistake it for grazing field.

This recent ‘punisher’ has successfully proven that there are terrorists in Nigeria and I doubt if the white house will grant us the reprieve we brazenly crave for.

I have a few suggestions that if implemented, will put a stop to these spates of shameless occurrences in our airports.

All the security men that were on duty at all the gates when the cab driver did his stunts should be sacked and made the feel the full wrath of the law. They were negligent of their duty and by allowing to ride unchallenged as there was no report of gate crashing, they are all accomplices to his crime.

The national assembly should pass a bill that would make it a criminal offence to ride straight unto the runway. This law should be binding on the rich and the poor alike as what is good for the goose is certainly good for the gander. If you are too rich to queue with others at the terminal, then get your own aircraft and international airspace license and if you do not want to miss your flight, go on time to the airport for your flight.

Security should be tightened at all the airports. The airport is not a market. The airports project the image of the country to a visitor. If it is rowdy, the visitor will assume that the country is unstable and if it is serene, the visitor will have just that impression.

CORRUPTION, WHO IS AND WHO IS NOT?

When the word ‘corruption’ is said, politicians and top government officials come into mind as if they are the only ones who are corrupt. The word ‘corruption’ as defined by the Encarta dictionary is ‘dishonest exploitation of power for personal gain.

In the light of the above definition, can we search ourselves and still say we are not corrupt? Everybody that engages in any form of exploitation for personal gain is corrupt and this I say without any apology to anybody. Nigerians are great hypocrites who points to a broomstick in another’s eyes when an iroko lies unattended to in their own eyes.

The motivation behind this write-up was an incident that took place at the weekend. I had a business to attend to in Lagos, so early in the morning I went to the park to board a bus to Lagos. This I did at 420 naira. At the end of my business in Lagos, I headed for the park to board the one heading for Ibadan and it was at this place that I got the shock of my life. The bus I had taken less than 8 hours earlier had skyrocketed to 1,500 naira without a corresponding increase in the cost of fuel. I had only 2 options staring me in the face; pay the highly inflated fare or stay back in Lagos until that momentary madness was healed and because I did not have the luxury of the second option, I grudgingly took the first. If this is not corruption, then what is?

In Nigeria, if a politician embezzles 100 million, Nigerians will call for his head but what should we do to cab drivers that exploit and extort commuters? All through the journey, my heart was in my mouth because the bus was literally flying as the driver was moving at top speed just because he wanted to get to Ibadan on time to pick more passengers. In short, he wanted to maximize profit at the expense of the passengers’ lives.

So much for drivers, what about market women that dubiously shrink the container so that it would accommodate less at the normal price. We all need a change of orientation and attitude. It is not the amount that defines corruption; it is the motive behind it.

LEGENDARY MESSI

LEGENDARY MESSI.

He busted onto the scene in 2005m at the Fifa youth soccer championship held in Netherlands where he won the golden shoe and golden ball for the highest goal scorer and most valuable player of the tournament. Then, people saw an innocent and probably docile young boy but now call Messi and defenders the world over will cringe.

He plies his trade with Barcelona fc in Spain and at only 22, he has won all there is to win at club level, sweeping individual accolades in his wake. The world of football had in the past seen the emergence and departures of great players like Marco van Basten, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo de Lima, Ronaldinho, Thierry Henry, Bergkamp, Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo mentioning just a few but I make bold to say that none has been like Messi.

Fleet-footed, creative, entertaining and fantastic in front of goal. He is not a striker but plays as a right winger in the triumvirate attack of the all conquering Barcelona but yet scores more than the arrow head of the attack.

After scoring 34 goals last season and emerging the top scorer in the Uefa champions league, he was voted the Ballon d’or and Fifa world player of the year winner. In this ongoing season, Messi has scored 40 goals with 10 still left. He has also made hatrick a mince meat. I do not think any player has mustered as many hatricks and ‘foursomes’ in a season as Messi had mustered so far this season. Also, he is the first player to net a foursome in a quarter-final match of the Uefa champions league when his man of the match heroics put paid to Arsenal’s champions league ambition. He is the strength of Barcelona , take Messi out and it will be like every other good team around but add Messi and Barcelona will be a huge distance ahead of other teams.

Messi might be a toddler going by football age standard at only 22 but besides his footballing heroics, he has displayed the wisdom of a sage. When Manchester city bankrolled by the Abu Dhabi dynasty dangled a massive financial carrot before Messi by asking him to name his price all in a bid to lure him from Camp Nou to Eastlands, he simply shook his head politely saying NO. by this, he has proven that football is not all about money unlike Nigerian footballers that make money their first and major priority when jumping club ships and switching allegiance. Mikel moved over to Chelsea in 2006 instead of Manchester united. Well people would argue that he is playing. Truly, he is playing but not at his optimum, he has lost his panache, long-range passing and vision and had taken on the role of a hatchet-man just to satisfy his erstwhile boss. Because of financial greed, Nigeria has lost the heir apparent to Okocha’s midfield throne.

Emmanuel Adebayor, though plays his international football for Togo, he has Nigeria’s undiluted blood flowing in his veins. He left the London emirates to join the Manchester eastlands just because of money in the summer. Is he happy? His recent statement in an interview sums it all up ‘I am frustrated’. Why won’t he be, no title to chase, no champions league football, no exquisite passes to waste and above all, no tolerant manager to stand by him.

Back to Messi, football managers say that a player reaches his peak when he is between 28 and 30 but how do we explain Messi’s performance at just 22? We can say he has not reached peak, so to defenders cowering now, I say the worst is yet to come and to Messi, I say keep on the ‘good’ work.

Some detractors would say that Messi only plays well for Barcelona but I ask with which team did he win the Fifa world youth championship and Olympic gold? Your guess is as good as mine. If there are still some doubting Thomases of his ingenious ability, wait until the 2010 Fifa world cup when Messi will be unleashed on the world especially the lazy, slow and lackluster defenders.

JOS: HOME OF PEACE AND TOURISM OR VIOLENCE AND MASSACRE

JOS: HOME OF PEACE AND TOURISM OR VIOLENCE AND MASSACRE?

For every Nigerian state, there is a sobriquet attached to it. There is the ‘centre of excellence’, .pacesetter state’ and even ‘food basket of the nation’. Have they lived up to their names? That is a discourse for another day.

The crux of my writing is on Jos. This is a city that has become more popular than the state housing it. There are many towns in Plateau state but Jos has been grabbing the headlines and refusing to let go for a while now because of the prevalent violence for which there seems to be no end in sight.

Plateau state has the nickname ‘home of peace and tourism’ but that has been substituted of recent for ‘home of violence and massacre’ or how else will you describe the huge volumes of lives and properties that have been lost to the unending spate of senseless fighting ( ethno-religious).

Jos had been peaceful until some people ignited a sizeable chunk of gun-powder that sent the whole peace into a huge inferno in 2001. The violence of this year led to the brutal killing of Christians and Jos indigenes not dwellers on infamous roads like Bauchi road and Angwa –Rogo. Only an irresponsible head is not around when the house is on fire, unfortunately, that was the tale of the political head of government in Plateau state, he was out of town and didn’t return until many lives had been lost and properties ruined.

I was an ‘ear witness’ of the 2001 crisis but in 2008 , I became an eyewitness and it was God and mother luck that prevented me from being a victim. In August 2008, I was posted to Plateau state for the compulsory national servitude. After the orientation, I was posted to the Jos north axis of the state for my place of primary assignment. Initially, I struggled to get a peaceful accommodation but after a while owing to God’s favor, I was able to get a place to share with a big brother friend. The only ‘but’ in the place was that it was a predominantly Hausa and by implication Islamic environment. I did not see this as a fuss until after the crisis. What crisis? You might want to ask, I will be telling you about it shortly.

In November of the same year, the state Government organized local government elections into Jos north and the day after huge crisis erupted. I awoke not to the usual hustle and bustle that should characterize a new day but to pandemonium, people running helter skelter for their lives. I owe mine to God and a big brother friend that persuaded me to run away fast since I thought it was just a harmless riot that would soon be put out. How wrong I was, that so-called harmless riot cost people their properties, took lives including three from the NYSC.

After the crisis, the government of the sate vowed to prevent any future occurrence and even the federal government said it would never happen again. In 2010, when every other person was saying happy New Year, residents of Jos metropolis had to scamper away from their homes to places of safety. This time around, the crisis was not limited to Jos north but it got to Jos south and neighboring villages. The loss of lives and properties was colossal.

The whole of Nigeria is still grappling with that when just some few days back, we heard that some Fulani herdsmen went to a village murdering innocent people in their sleep, women and children. I did not know the full import until I saw some gory pictures of some slaughtered women and children. A child’s head was slashed into two equal halves. Having given you a compressed download of events in that state, I will like to ask some pertinent questions.

1. Are Jos residents vampires ( I mean blood thirsty)?
2. Are security operatives in the state paid for doing nothing or how else do we explain recurring bloody crises occurring in the same location three times in a space of 10 years.
3. Is the federal government happy seeing blood on the television screens and pages of newspaper, if the state government is negligent and the state governor inefficient should the federal government and the presidency follow suit?

I would really appreciate it if someone can give answers to my questions. They are not so tough, are they? If things continue like this in Jos, tourist might only remember and visit the place when they want to watch Nigeria’s version of horror movie.

ELECTION PETITION ONE TOO MANY

ELECTION PETITION ONE TOO MANY.

Mimiko, Oshiomole, Obi and some many others make the list of politicians that recovered their stolen mandate from the usurpers that had stolen them. It is no longer a tell-tale that there are some politicians who are currently occupying positions that do not belong to them.

The most shameful thing is that these bandits turned politicians know that they did not win the election but yet they keep appealing the judgments until they can appeal no more. The ready question is why do they do this? As complicated as the question seems, the answer is very simple and not far fetched. They do this to buy time, steal money and consolidate on their ill-gotten wealth.

This idea of reclaiming snatched mandate had and is still giving Nigeria a bad name, disrupting the political calendar of the nation and making the electoral commission very inefficient.

Elections are conducted every 4 years but this is disrupted by someone reclaiming a stolen mandate after 3 years and the new winner is sworn in to spend another 4 years which is his own tenure. This was a problem that showed up in Anambra during the 2007 general elections. Chief Andy Uba ran under the platform of the PDP and won the election but the incumbent Peter Obi went to the Supreme Court for succour, the apex court upheld the fact that Peter Obi had not yet expended his own 4 years and thus it was sheer stupidity on the part of INEC to have conducted a gubernatorial election in the state. This simply means that the Anambra gubernatorial election will never align with the timing of the Nigerian general election. This also goes for the other states that have the same political pattern.

This unholy political pattern will continue until some severe deterrent is put in place to check the vote robbers we call politicians. I will suggest a few punishments, they may seem too harsh but what else do you think can stop an armed robber if not the fear of being sent to face the firing squad.

My suggested punishments go thus:

That every politician that steals the electoral mandate should be sent to jail for twice the number of years spent occupying the stolen office.

A life sentence for every politician convicted of stealing the votes of the electorate to occupy an office.

In addition to either of the above sentences, they should refund all the salaries and emoluments received while occupying the office they never won.

I do not have the power to enforce this things but I hope someone that does will read this helpful article. Thank you.