IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR NIGERIA???

                                                           

The only thing I did not do is moo or low like a cow.  Okay, Okay, I forgot! I did not chew the cud either. But bovine restlessness and restiveness were my companions as pain shot through my waist all the way down to my feet. I was tired of being weary and tired! The pen of restriction binding me with others of my kind fed the flames of claustrophobia, I needed air but the uniformed shepherds kept directing us like a policeman controls onerous traffic.  In this country, there are so many uniforms that you don’t know who is who.  The whole place is a livery of confusion. The voices of the uniformed men cut intermittently through the buzz of activities shouting, “You can not go beyond here”.

I was at the Murtala Muhammed waiting for my brother to arrive. Nonso is the best brother in the world but the way he usually plans can try a saint (GUY, YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU). I did not reckon I was going to be here until a few hours ago. It was hellish. As I stood outside Arrivals, I wondered what it was about Nigeria that dehumanizes people. Citizens were made to feel like cattle because they came to welcome family and friends. In other parts of the world, we should be sitting in air-conditioned rooms while awaiting our loved ones. Some work always seems to be going on at the Murtala Muhammed “international” airport yet anytime one visits, it’s still same old, same old. On his trip back, entering the departure lounge made me feel like “boli” roasting on a grill. SMH…….

Nigeria, a place where the populace grope in perpetual darkness like misguided bats, a country where bombs go off with the regularity and frequency of fireworks at twelve midnight on December 31^st, a nation whose streets are strewn with the carcasses of the weak, poor, sick and bedraggled, a land that inhabits fainting sheep without shepherds, a land where monkeys have tree branches but pupils have nowhere to sit in classes. A friend recently said we are a diabetic nation with a surfeit of sugar but the cells within starve. The heart of this country swarms with fat, swarming maggots of corruption and dishonesty. Nigeria makes the soul bleed, the heart break and the eyes weep like they were infused with onion fumes!

So if you would ask me whether there is any foreseeable hope for my “fatherland” I would give you an EMPHATIC  NO!!!

……Hey! But wait a minute, why do we study history. I would guess it is to prevent the mistakes of the past from catching up with us or to show that what has happened in the past can happen in the present or future.

So let’s rewind to about 856 BC, Samaria case in point. The Syrians had besieged the Samarians and there was terrible famine in the city. This is so reminiscent of Naija. We have been overwhelmed by corruption and evil that there is now a dearth of everything good you can think of.


Things were dreadful in Samaria, doves dung ( I used to think it was poo but it’s actually a wild vegetable) was going for like 3 dollars. Here wild vegetables go for almost nothing and you could get succulent “Ugu” leaves for almost free in some parts of the country. Things were dreadful in Samaria especially if you also add that a donkeys head was going for fifty dollars (I don’t think a plate of “Isi ewu” costs that much). To cap it all, the hunger was so bad that mothers were sharing and killing their children for food. Hmmm, Nigeria is bad but we have not gotten to this point yet and I don’t think we would ever. Is that a smidgen of hope? You tell me!


The king of Samaria tore his clothes at the calamity that had befallen his people. He was distraught, and confessed that the predicament that had befallen his citizens was more than his capacity could handle. One thing that leapt at me in this story is that he could be reached by his citizenry. Okay, they have one up on us here. We have leaders who do not “give a damn”; their skins are like Benjy Grimm’s of the fantastic four. Stony and hard, no human feelings penetrate their hide. They are so unreachable, so untouchable, so away from it all. They sit on their high horses and would never admit they don’t know diddly squat.

The king went looking for an answer to this national riddle, which led him to a prophet called Elisha, who prophesied that in 24 hours there was going to be a turnaround in the economic situation tormenting the country. There was going to be so much surfeit of food that gallons of grains were going to be sold for a dollar. The king’s economic adviser scoffed at this and the prophet told him that he was going to see the change but never partake of it. The dude was like our special advisers, all hot air and nothing. With all their degrees, bought or achieved, they don’t know anything and can only purport theories which do not amount to much while they feed off the trough of the nation’s coffers.

24 hours later, something that Jack Bauer could not have done happened. Four lepers outside the city gates of Samaria decided to take a step of faith towards the camp of the Syrians and while they walked, God amplified their steps and it sounded like the Samarians had partnered with other countries to help them defeat their enemies. The Syrians ran for dear life and left a camp that was brimming with everything good you could think of. The lepers stuffed themselves then announced it to the whole populace. Subsequently there was feasting and celebration. The last people that we would have expected to deliver a nation were those lepers. They were physically challenged, had nothing but faith but they did what the king, his soldiers and special advisers could never have done. I believe the citizens of Nigeria are those lepers but for any transformation to occur in this country, it has to be the ones living outside the city gates. When you live outside the city gates, your mentality is not locked in like the others within, you can move, live and think outside the box. You do not conform to the ways of the people within the walls. These are the kind of people Nigeria needs now, people who might not have much but have faith and are different in their outlook. These are Nigerians who are ready to live by faith or die trying. They do not need to have much; they do not have to be many. In the similitude of those lepers, they would take deliberate steps towards our problems, that is when the ordinary would become extraordinary, the earthly becomes divine and the natural becomes supernatural. It is when we take calculated steps that God steps in to amplify our efforts, human ambition and vision sets off an earthquake of heavenly intention. This is not just about interminable religious prayer and fasting. We need people who would refuse to die, who want change at all costs, who believe and will work and walk towards change.

It happened as the Prophet declared and change happened within a day. The special adviser saw the change and died without partaking of it like the Seer said. THE UNBELIEVING RARELY EVER PARTAKE OF THE GOODIES OF CHANGE, except if you are a Thomas, maybe. Such doubters are trampled into the sands of time as people rush towards the spoils of transformation.

I know some unbelieving soul out there might just discountenance this as some biblical mumbo jumbo or some pop psychological baloney. Such a person is not a student of history. Look around you change is springing up in the most unlikely places. Nigeria is not as bad as Samaria was, if change could happen then, it can happen now.


I cannot tell you that our tomorrow is 24 hours from now, 2 years or 10 but if we keep believing and keep working towards it, I believe these prophetic words will become real in our lives soon…. “Hear ye the word of the Lord; Thus saith the Lord, Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria (NIGERIA)”.

Nigeria does not need more political leaders. It is prophets that we need, people who will look beyond the present circumstances and see a bit of hope. People who will keep speaking and prophesying in words and deeds over this nation……IT IS BY THE BLESSING OF THE RIGHTEOUS THAT A CITY IS EXALTED!!!

A KING IS BORN IN BETHLEHEM

                                                                       

Mummy giving Santa Claus a smackeroo under the mistletoe (I sincerely don’t think it would have been a laugh if dad had seen), jingling of bells, sleds and snow, gifts and lights, stockings and missing snowmen, puddings and decorated trees, these are the classic features of Christmas.

The rush of adrenaline as people shop till they drop, the thrill of opening presents, the joy of family reunions, these are the caffeine in the coffee of this high energy season.  Like a toy boat in the strong grip of a maniacal flood, we are swept away by the fever of it all. 

Now there is one little town that is embroiled in the swirling currents of the Christmas story, that is Bethlehem. Thing is, unless you look very closely, you would miss this rural municipal in the snowy mists of all the merriment.

Some thousands of years before, Prophet Samuel went down to Bethlehem to anoint a shepherd boy as King of Israel. The crowning was swallowed up in the festivities of the sacrifice he made to God to disguise the true purpose of his visit and almost no one noticed that history had been made. People thought “The Prophet” must have been clowning with David since another king was on the throne of Israel.

Fast forward to Augustus Caesar’s decree for a population census during the Roman’s world domination. The whole earth was caught up in the excitement of the edict while in a manger a King was born and no one noticed. Herod was on the throne calling the shots and was oblivious to the divine nativity going on in his back yard. No one reckoned with Bethlehem, not even the wise men that saw a rare star. They felt kings were usually in palaces and went looking for the Ruler of the world in Herod’s place. Somehow in the showy events of life, Bethlehem always seems overlooked.

Herod was confused by the enquiries of the wise men and inquired of his scribes the meaning of the oriental men’s search. The scribes discovered in the books that Prophet Micah, who had a glimpse of the potential of the unknown town had prophesied about its future.

Bethlehem, small dusty town without frills and thrill, a place not usually mentioned when you talk about the cosmopolitan cities of Judah. But it was a place where Kings were born.

Bethlehem never looked like it but it was it! If you judged it by its cover then you would miss the heavenly bestseller in it by a mile. You overlook the place at your peril. It was unglamorous but within it was born the Glamour of heaven. Contrary to prevailing public opinion, great things happen in Bethlehem!

Recently, I went for an oncology seminar organized by Ace Medicare Clinic in the African Leadership Developmental Centre of Covenant University Sango Otta. Sango Otta is an unspectacular place, if there ever was one, compared to the Victoria Islands of this world. The conference was world class and drew great people from all over the world. The convention was a king amongst conventions!

Same thing applies to you. YOU MIGHT NOT LOOK LIKE IT BUT YOU ARE IT! THERE IS A KING IN YOU!

Jesus was born in a manger after been rejected in the inns, surrounded by goats and sheep but it never detracted from the fact that He was the King of Kings.

Have you ever been rejected by a human, marital, financial, educational establishment, then you are in distinguished company. Are you currently in a stinky smelly, manger, beset by the scent of the hay of limitations, the braying of the donkeys of lack of companionship, are you sleeping in an ugly crib of insolvency, do you seem to be booed by the lowing of the cows of hopelessness, are the baaing of sheep telling you there is no wool of dressing to keep you warm in the harsh winds of a hoary winter,….? All these will never detract from the truth that there is a king in you.

In the manger you might feel that you do not have humans to assist the delivery of your dreams and publicize it to the world. Your thoughts might be that you are not in a labour room and there are no midwives. Keep your cool, angels will be your midwives and will announce you. Even when men finally appeared, they were common shepherds. How will shepherds help your present ordeal? My friend, think companionship, when the night is cold and long, nothing helps like the camaraderie of folks more joyous than Ukrainians loaded up on vodka doing a Gopak dance. Be patient a little bit more, The Orient kings will soon arrive bearing the gifts that are tailor made for your destiny.

Look beyond the fanfare of this period and key into the purpose of this season! Christmas is beyond dining and wining, it is a time to take a long critical look inwardly. IT IS A TIME WHEN KINGS ARE BORN!!! YOU ARE A KING!

Has life belittled you in any way then listen and listen good to what Prophet Micah told Bethlehem, it is also a message for you…..“FOR THOU O, BETHLEHEM ARE NOT THE LEAST AMONGST THE PRINCES OF JUDAH, FOR OUT OF YOU SHALL COME A GOVERNOR THAT WILL RULE MY PEOPLE ISRAEL….”

 

 

 

 

 

TAKEN...

                                                              

Recently I have been too tired to watch any movie, I even had to struggle with the Avengers, which I am sure beggars belief. In spite of my fatigue, I had to take out time to see “Taken” since everyone seemed to be talking about it with the intensity of surf crashing on a beach and the constancy of the droning of worker bees.

It was a great movie!!!

Liam Neeson is quite the actor. In the last few years, the movies he has been in have been absolutely magnificent. He has pure vintage class. As he gets older, the man is getting better. Like rich Merlot, Mr. Neeson saturates the buds of our creative senses with a flavor that is akin to that of the grapes grown in the vinery of Bacchus himself.

I loved “Taken” for a number of reasons. One it was revelatory; I haven’t been able to get past the horror of Albanians kidnapping pretty tourist ladies and flooding their systems with drugs for prostitution rings. The depravity of the human heart especially when it comes to pecuniary gains is absolutely astounding. The heart of man is indeed desperately wicked. What gets me most about the film is that it is a story of redemption.

It is just in the human nature for us to gambol away out of the reach of our Father like errant lambs. We flaunt his orders with reckless abandon in the name of having fun and escaping the boring reaches of His “Stultifying” presence. He says “go this way”, but we prefer the other and by doing so we do not hear when He calls until things get out of hand, then we are taken. It is just our way, we have been like this since the earliest days of Eden.

Getting out of His radar, we end up being taken by the Albanians of drugs, alcohol, divorce, poverty, prostitution, depression, suicidal tendencies, afflictions, diseases, an inexhaustible list of problems, even death sometimes. By the time we start shouting and screaming for Dad, things have usually gone out of hand.

You would expect Dad to leave us to ourselves and our issues since they were self afflicted through our self destructive tendencies but He does not usually. He puts everything on the line to save us, even His very life. He sacrifices everything, battles the hordes of hell, death and the grave to set us free. He loses blood, takes unbearable punishment and suffering to emancipate us from the evil ones who have taken us.  Whipped and lacerated with gun butts and garrotes, He takes the bullets of our tormentors in his hands and feet, but His love never lets up. SUCH LOVE LIKE HIS IS AMAZING! His affection is for us is incredibly unimaginable. He never walks away. He will follow through thick and thin to be with us again, go through every maze, look for us in any nook and cranny, would do anything it takes for us to have our freedom again.

One important thing though, for His salvation mission to be achieved, we have to listen to him and listen good! We would need to recognize His Lordship and obey his instructions to the letter. This is what would give Him the vital lead that would help guide Him to where we are being held captive. Without this, waterloo might just be ahead like it happened for Amanda, Kim’s pal. It was a vital lead that saved Kim.

When The Father finally battles through to us, we are shocked and ask with stupefying incredulity like Kim did. “You came for me” she said and with all the love in the world filling his eyes like all the oceans in our hemisphere together, he tells us “I told you, I would”.

At the very end of it all, He reiterates, “I LOVE YOU” when we express our love to him, then He sets us on a path of purpose like Bryan did his daughter when he took her to meet Sheerah who was to show her the ropes of becoming a musical star.

FOR GOD COMMENDETH HIS LOVE TOWARDS US IN THAT WHILE WE WERE YET WITHOUT STRENGTH, CHRIST DIED FOR US………….

MERCY SAID NO......

                                                              

I was doomed for destruction!

As I was dragged along by the burly bullies, almost naked aside from the shawl I quickly tied around my waist, fear like liquid lead percolated in my soul and crystallized into a solidified mass of dread that made my whole being heavier with each step taken. What transpired the last time this happened ran vividly in Technicolour across my mind in slow motion.  I could see her pretty face as the projectiles unleashed by a mob frothing at the mouth with religious fervor hit her with unerring accuracy. Her face dissolved into a pulp of bone, gristle, flesh and bones. Her whole body became disjointed. She was made over in a horrific way that still gives me nightmares. What was left over at the end of the gruesome exercise could never be deemed to be a person but broken debris of humanity. Fountains of blood spurted and jetted from different parts of that wrecked mass, a crimson tide which ebbed into caked bloody ponds from which hordes of flies drank their fill. But it was her screaming that still got to me the most, the piercing shriek of a tortured banshee in excruciating agony, a maddened ultrasonic sound that shattered the glass of my consciousness. As I was hauled away unceremoniously, my mind could not could not come to terms with the fact that I was about to become like her!

Funnily though, I had continued plying my trade before now despite the punishment I knew would be meted out to me if I was ever caught. I had to eat! The need for food has always blunted the serrated, razor, sharp edge of my horrors. Ultimately I had been caught in the very act of adultery and was now going to be stoned to death.

To make matters worse, I was being hauled to the temple so any chance of going scot free had been erased completely. The temple is a den of religious vipers, Pharisees and Sadducees who will judge me guilty in world record time. To make matters worse, I overhead that the Galilean would be there, He who was even more righteous than the snakes mentioned above. There was no squirming out of this one. I was thoroughly hooked!

It turned out that I was bait for one of their religious games to ensnare the Galilean; another woman caught up in the intrigues of a man’s world. My partner in the tango dance for which the death sentence stared me in the face had long gone. Funny, he was supposed to be guilty too but I was left to shoulder the burden of sin for both of us. But what kind of people sees a human life as something cheap and dispensable in the bid of trying to snare another? These people were worse than I am but were too blinded by religion to see it.

When we got to Him, they brought out their arguments; Moses had said that the crime I had committed was punishable by death. But instead of answering them, the weird man that self allegedly called Himself the Son of God kept doodling in the sand. What kind of a man plays in the sand when someone’s life is at stake?  Just my luck that my destiny had to be at the mercy of such a one as this, He did not even look up but kept writing in the dust like a child. A frisson of anger and irritation flared with my fear drenched soul. He should just get it over with; I can’t stand this any longer.

His silence dragged on, but my accusers were persistent and kept pestering Him like pesky flies until he raised his head and said “he that has no sin should cast the first stone”. The hush that ensued made a graveyard seem noisier than a market place.

My would be executioners were stabbed with conviction and started to leave one at a time dropping the weapons that had been custom picked for my painful death. They must have realized that we all live in glass houses and should never throw stones because ALL of us have been caught right in the very act of one thing or another. We are all guilty because we have all sinned. Mine was adultery, his was stealing public funds, hers was peddling venomous and poisonous gossip and the list goes on interminably.

Mouth agape, I kept looking at the growing pyramid of stones that would have been the end of me until they all left and my fear began to recede into the distance.  I now had enough presence of mind to take a peek at what He was writing. In lovely prints, He had written that the free gift of grace now trumps the law. I saw that He had re-written my story in the sands of time. He had closed the past and opened a new chapter for a new story. Instead of an adulterer, He called me woman. He did not see my past but saw me as I am. I was dazed! I came to be condemned. Instead of Judgment, I got mercy. Instead of pain, I got relief. I got a new lease of life, a sweet taste of freedom. I have one more shot at life because MERCY SAID NO!!!

He finally lifted his head and His eyes bore through my soul. He asked about my accusers, if no one had accused me. I told Him no and He smiled at me.  To me His smile was a snowy white ocean where angels took their bath before embarking on divine assignments and I could feel its warmth melting the snow caps of the Mount of Olives. 

I left with his last words ringing in my head. “NEITHER DO I CONDEMN YOU, GO AND SIN NO MORE”…..