Archive for the 'Nigeria' Category

May 05 2010

Adieu President Yar’Adua


Death is a very sensitive topic. I am usually amazed at how death makes celebrities out of people who’s CDs we never would have bought. I get amused at how it’s difficult to speak ill of the dead or wish the person anything other than heaven or a good place. I have attended a few burials in my life, and when the person was outrightly wicked and bound for nowhere else, we all still believe the best and hope that in his or her last moments, a mini dialog with God had made all things good. In the light of this, I do not wish to talk about the hear after, but the here and now! May his gentle soul rest in peace.

Isaiah 6:1a says, in the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord…

It is my sincere prayer tonight that in this hour that our president departs from the world as we know it, God will speak to His prophets! My hearty prayer tonight is that the blueprint of God for this nation will be proclaimed and he will set in power those who will execute his will! I prophesy this night and as we progress into morning, that God will destroy the Pharaoh spirit holding this nation captive! I declare you evil genius’, you antichrists, let my people Go! I decree plagues in the camp of the cabal, I decree that one event after the other will commence until the proverbial Pharaoh lets Nigeria Go!  I pray that ears will be opened and the eyes of the Isaiah’s of this nation will see! Continue Reading »

43 responses so far

Feb 25 2010

Nigeria – A time to PRAY


Those who contend for the soul of this nation, are not not resting on their oars. Underneath the obvious is an evil spiritual force fighting for the right to steal, kill and destroy the soul of this Nation. The Masters command to his disciples is not to disciple individuals, but to make disciples of Nations. God is interested in National influence and discipleship, the alignment of people groups is more important to him than the alignment of individuals. The shameless events being perpetrated by those who will stop at nothing to exert influence over this nation is disturbing, and even though we are in the season of ACTION, we are in that time as well, when we must pray. Trust me, prayer ranks high on our to do list, cause there is nobody there today to engage, nobody to walk against or publish anything about.

It’s not as if we haven’t been praying though, I only doubt if we have all been praying about the right things, I also doubt if we have the full picture about prayer. True prayer must be backed up by receiving action. Elijah prayed earnestly that it would not rain and for three and a half years it did not rain. It took another fervent prayer to release the clouds, before the clouds made sense he ran, he was sure that God doesn’t store prayers. When Jesus decreed about the fig tree, it wasn’t go and come back, it dried up!  The true measure of prayer power is not length, it’s function. Today is not the day of diplomacy or standing in the middle, today is the day to take a prayer stand, backed up with the willingness to surrender ourselves to the process of answered prayers. Please circulate this far and wide, this is prayer with ultimatum, this is the time where we back up our prayers with oaths and a fast until our eyes see that which our soul desires. Here are the prayer points. Continue Reading »

19 responses so far

Feb 03 2010

Insights from India


 

It’s been unduly long since I wrote, I’ve been on a hectic vacation schedule, and it has been difficult to spare 1hr in front of my computer and realy write something to my taste. My mind has beeen shifting back and forth on different topics. I’ve been mostly on the move as well, so there is a load of information that I have recieved on these amazing 7 days on the exotic laps of luxury. It’s exciting enjoying the vacation that others only dream about, take my word for it, tourism is higher education. This year seems an adventure already, courtesy of Holidays and Cash, we’ll be doing Sun City this month as well, Spain around the corner, Thailand and Las Vegas. Don’t die in the rut of running a marathon race with your life, rather enlist in a relay race, and enjoy your life.

There are quite a number of topics struggling for priority attention in my mind. I will simply write about them all, and then do the diligence of expanding the write-up as passion becomes available. I will jump from topics that don’t seem connected, but the thread that will join them all together are valuable wisdom nuggets that we can take away and add to our lives. Welcome through the lenses of my eyes, lightly tinted by my development bias into the world of India. With 36 million gods and religions, a population above 1 billion, host community of one of the wonders of the world – The Taj Mahal and rich historical content, I welcome you to Incredible India! Continue Reading »

20 responses so far

Jan 21 2010

Enough is Enough


“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”- Martin Luther King

The Lagos version of the Abuja walk by the Save Nigeria Group titled, “Enough is Enough” is taking place today at 10am. We’ll be moving from Arch Bishop Vinning Memorial Church to the Government house in Alausa. Our message has not changed, we are marching in peaceful protest against the current issues which stem from the same root -lack of good governance! Ever so often the intellectuals want to ask -why are you walking? Will this walk achieve anything? Are there no other risk free things that can be done? Is there a hidden agenda?  Intellectuals love to ask questions, and thankfully, I’m not un-intellectual as well, so I can answer what I can.

6 months ago, I stayed for many hours everyday at the intensive care unit of a Teaching Hospital, waiting outside in the sun everyday as my young mother struggled to live. Ever so often power would fail in the hospital, and I will hear the UPS of the most funded and most equipped room in the hospital beep as it neared its life’s end. Amazingly these life support UPS’ were no different from those used for small personal computers.  I sat and watched as many fairly clothed bodies got wheeled daily to the mortuary. It wasn’t rocket science, but it struck me, when power fails, people die!  My mind wandered back easily to the road accidents that I had seen on my many road travels over the past few months, and to the other thousands of lives lost uncelebrated. It’s real, that we are losing people who ought to be alive daily in this country! Continue Reading »

27 responses so far

Jan 16 2010

Religious Brain Drain


There is a trend I’m picking up and it’s grieving my soul. The most religious (Christian or otherwise) societies in the world, are it’s poorest and most underdeveloped. The cities that pack millions into auditoriums are the ones that don’t have any representation in other aspects of human influence. It’s seems like an inversion of everything that I have learnt, that light should give illumination, that spiritual enlightenment should lead to economic, social, governmental and whole revival. Thorough analysis however reveals, that the opposite is true. Continue Reading »

24 responses so far

Jan 08 2010

If Nigeria Fails


Yesterday was quite a full day for me, it was a day in which many things simply came to a head. I had deliberately refused to comment on a number of issues for a while, hoping that in the period of my silence things will bounce back to normalsy. The more the days pass however, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that we are approaching a failed state. Optimism is good, if it is bound at the bottom by reality, at the top by faith and at the sides by work. Baseless optimism is a cancer, it’s false hope and mere lies.

Rather than confront our issues and do what we need to do to save our nation from a head on collision course with failure, we tell ourselves it’s all going to be well, God will do it, we make God out to be our slave. In the face of unconstitutional behaviour, in the face of  televised dishonesty, of forgeries at the highest levels, of being labelled as terrorists, of no power at home and a vacuum in the seat of power, the elite in Nigeria have not heard the drums of war. We pacify ourselves with phrases that show that even if we lose all, we still have something. We are voiceless in our own country, slaves where we should have been princes, our young sons and daughters flee from our shores preferring to be slaves abroad than at home, and our elders have nostalgic memories of when they were slaves to colonial masters. This house is falling, and those who exercise the power of faith limit it to their words and are slow to back it up with action.  My brothers and sisters, if we continue to fold our hands we will soon have them cuffed. History is replete with trends we can learn from, the distance between our current state and people seeking refuge in other nations as refugee is not as far as we have been deluded to think. The time to have a stand and stand for it is now! Continue Reading »

43 responses so far

Dec 24 2009

Converting Tests to Testimonies


A lot has happened lately with the financial sector in Nigeria. This has led to a number of people losing their jobs, and a list being compiled of more to come. Many people in the banking industry are ending their year without much hope, and many are anxious of what awaits them in the new year.

If you work in the banking sector in Nigeria and have either lost your job or are afraid you might, then this small meeting is for you. We are organizing a meeting of Bankers and Entrepreneurs. We are fishing out entrepreneurs who have been bankers, entrepreneurs who forcefully entered the productivity market and entrepreneurs who left and at a point in their lives had nothing. It’s a serious meeting for a select few, we have number constraints so we want to ensure the meeting features people that are really dying for this opportunity. Continue Reading »

11 responses so far

Nov 24 2009

Church Relevance 2


Amos 5:21-14 (The Message Translation)
“I can’t stand your religious meetings.
I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
your pretentious slogans and goals.
I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,
your public relations and image making.
I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
I want justice–oceans of it.
I want fairness–rivers of it.
That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”
How else can we ensure oceans of justice and rivers of fainess without accurate representation in the executive, judiciary and legislative arms of government? How can we take responsibility for doing what God wants when we have strategically placed it out of our reach?
What was God really upset with here, and what was he saying the priorities should be? I think it’s clear, don’t you think so? I think it’s so clear we might need to have to hire someone to decieve us. God is not interested in religious meetings, conferences or conventions. He doesn’t want anything to do with religious projects or pretentious slogans. He’s had enough of fund-raising schemes, public relations and image making stunts. He’s not interested in celebrity ego-music, he wants people to sing to him not about themselves or to themselves. More importantly he wants an abundance of justice and fairness – virtues we may never be able to model without playing an active role in the polity of the nation.
Don’t get me wrong, the Church in Nigeria has tried. We have supported and built a few orphanages, we have created Jobs for many people in the Church industry, we have converted unproductive warehouses into development and production centres, we have kept a lot of young minds busy, rather than idle-ing away their sunday mornings and midweek evennings. Some of the more noble ones among us have even gone further to venture in education, health, communities and all. We have tried, or haven’t we? What worries me however is not what we have done, but what we have done compared to what we could have done! What we have done compared to what we can do! And what we have left undone! All that we do and have done pales into near insignificance when compared to what a serving governor can achieve in a few months of his/her administration. We need credible people to lead us, and what it means is that you and I must be interested, and the church cannot be silent participants anymore. We can give billions to support certain courses, but if the head is sick our investments on any part of the body will soon rot.
Oh, I understand and do know history, I know how in the past the church of God became nothing else but a political gathering, and I know that the fear of that error is enough to completely take one’s hands off it. However, the same way the church has learnt that money itself is not a bad thing, but the lust after it without recourse to ethics is what is wrong, in the same way, we must assure ourselves that if all we do is fold our fingers in the time of voting, we’ll continue to be ruled by wickedness. If we cease to be light, then our lack of expression gives permission to darkness. This is not a clarion call for community development, this is a call for taking political leadership. “Nigerian politics is dirty”, is so common a phrase, my question is how will it ever get clean if those who ought to be making change happen run away from it? The church in Nigeria has gotten more enlightened in the last 20yrs about it’s members taking their rightful place in the economy, today however we must with the same zeal and fire enlighten and empower ourselves to advance into leadership. It is shameful to have 5 star churches and worldclass catedrals in an underdeveloped country. We need to move to action, or we’ll lose our place. Or isn’t the government meant to rest on the shoulders of the body of christ?

Amos 5:21-14 (The Message Translation)

“I can’t stand your religious meetings.

I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.

I want nothing to do with your religion projects,

your pretentious slogans and goals.

I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,

your public relations and image making.

I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.

When was the last time you sang to me?

Do you know what I want?

I want justice–oceans of it.

I want fairness–rivers of it.

That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”

How else can we ensure oceans of justice and rivers of fairness without accurate representation in the executive, judiciary and legislative arms of government? How can we take responsibility for doing what God wants when we have strategically placed it out of our reach?

What was God really upset with here, and what was he saying the priorities should be? I think it’s clear, don’t you think so? I think it’s so clear we might need to have to hire someone to deceive us. God is not interested in religious meetings, conferences or conventions. He doesn’t want anything to do with religious projects or pretentious slogans. He’s had enough of fund-raising schemes, public relations and image making stunts. He’s not interested in celebrity ego-music, he wants people to sing to him not about themselves or to themselves. More importantly he wants an abundance of justice and fairness – virtues we may never be able to model without playing an active role in the polity of the nation. Continue Reading »

17 responses so far

Nov 20 2009

Is Your Church Relevant?


“Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a dry-as-dust religion.” – MLKJR

In the days we live in, the world celebrates Martin Luther King Jr, even the church is apt to identify with him and with what he stood for, but it was not so in the days that he lived in. When I listen to people refer to great men like this, I’m often ashamed when I discover that those that speak know little more than their listeners about the life of the people they speak about. Many are shallow, from not reading  in depth enough, to not engaging their minds when they read, to  having insufficient experience to draw from to connect with the lives of these great people. Read this slowly and understand it clearly – “The “Organized” Church Opposed Martin Luther King Jr, in his days!” If you need to read more about this, find articles like the Letter from Birmingham Jail or his book “why we can’t wait”. I daresay, that anybody interested in change in any nation must read the “Letter from Birmingham Jail”.

“But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.” – MLKJR.

The question today, is simple and straight forward – “Is your Church relevant, or are you gradually becoming an irrelevant social club?”. I  must warn you that NOW requires urgency. Our nation is in on an auto-cruise that is collision bound with annihilation. We are failing as a state, with all our metrics and indexes for measuring progress plummeting, in a few years we may well be history and the last hope of this nation is currently rubbing shoulders with those who may enthrone it as the headquarters of cowardice and complacency. So answer the question, “Is your Church relevant, or are you an irrelevant social club?” Continue Reading »

32 responses so far

Oct 02 2009

Our Year of Jubilee


It’s one of those days when I’m not sure whether to be happy or sad that as a nation, it’s been 49 years since we have been free! Where we are, and where we could have been by now is such a big gully apart that if we really knew any better we would not find so many things so funny.  Imagine for example that we are the darkest nation on earth, and parallel that with the fact that we are one of the wealthiest nations on earth in all the elements that can be used to generate power. We became independent 49yrs ago, but can we truly lay claim to freedom? In 49 years  Nigerians have willfully submitted to the recycled leadership of the same set of people. It would have been exciting if those people were actually our brightest and fairest, but it is appalling to consider that we averagely agree that our leadership is not representative of our intelligence, values and good naturedness. Year in year out however, the strongest arm of government – the people, silently reneges it’s powers to those whose voices ought be be subject to theirs, and for 49yrs we have allowed the tail to wag the dog!

It’s bad, but thank God, this is our year of  Jubilee! Without going into detailed biblical references and deep exhortations on the origin of Jubilee and the concept, let me quickly summarize. God is very structured and very detailed, and uses numbers quite well (I’ve written a number of articles on numbers). On the 7th day of creation, God rested. He then appointed the 7th day for man as a day to be separated from all labours to rest. It is meant to be a day of freedom, a day of liberty, a day when you just stay off all work and rest. For the slaves in captivity in Egypt back then, rest was a luxury indeed. God then established a number of events characterised by this number 7. After 7 sets of 7 days.. meaning 7weeks, there was the celebration of a week of weeks, same for years. The 49th year is the end of the 7 sets of 7years, and marks the beginning of a year of years. The actual Jubilee is on the clock of 50, but the proclamation of it starts from the 49th year. It is a year when two key things are guaranteed –  1. Freedom! 2. A repossession of inheritance! Nigeria, welcome to your year of Jubilee! Continue Reading »

33 responses so far

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