Olamide - Eni Duro (Official Video)

I love this video...nothing beats being real.

F.SHAW- Moonlight Serenade [Official]

Marianne Williamson (1996)

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Impatience...17/08/09

Yesterday evening on the bus from Ibadan, something bizarre happened.
I had gone to visit Grandma and soon afterwards to Kush’s place. From there, we went on to Sir K’s place in the Eleyele-Ringroad axis area of Ibadan. I met some of my egbons that I had not seen in a while.

I boarded bus from the site of the old toll gate and there was a pregnant woman on board as well.

Barely 5 mins into the journey, the driver stopped the bus for her to urinate. About 20mins into the journey, she started contracting…

Trust my naija people, various suggestions from the different passengers. While some wanted her to seek medical attention at Oke-ogun, others suggested Sagamu or Mowe-Ibafo.

She alongside her husband just wanted to get to Lagos. We got to Oke-ogun close to Sagamu but there was no hospital in sight.

Driver, speed up and let us get to Berger as fast as possible and she would be able to get adequate medical attention there. That was the consensus that the passengers reached.

Just before we got to Ibafo, she started contracting seriously and there was this kind old woman attending to her.

The next minute, still in the moving 18-seater bus, I heard the sound of a baby. I tried to fight the realization that a baby had been born.

Indeed, a baby girl had just been born.

We got to Ibafo about 5 minutes later and we went looking for a new packet of blade for the old woman to sever the umbilical cord.
We continued our journey to Lagos about 25mins later.
The woman and her male companion alighted at Berger and seconds later were lost into the receding Berger night lights.

I caught a glimpse of the impatient baby girl and as I write this, I really think she should be christened Impatience.

Yaradua 101: How Not To Be a President.

President Umaru Yaradua has been described by different people as a very gentle, unassuming, down-to-earth man with a very large heart.
However, He is still in a race against time not to go down in history as the worst President, the Federal Republic of Nigeria has ever had.
A President is supposed to have a sound body and presence of mind. S/He is someone who should be able to make split-second decisions in the best interest of his wards.
Oftentimes, prospective candidates jostling for the Presidency of a Club, Society or Country have chosen prospective Vice-Presidents based on derivable bloc of votes they can get from people perceived to be different. Prospective Vice-Presidents are often docile and are supposed to be easily manipulated.
Presidents most times do not trust their Vice-Presidents and oftentimes fear they are going to be overshadowed if they give their Vice-Presidents a free hand to operate.
Below are some tips on how not to be a President.
1. Yaradua is an adult. Nobody made up his mind to run with Goodluck Jonathan on the same ticket. If He didn’t think Goodluck was capable to step into the shoes of the President at anytime, He shouldn’t have run on the same ticket with him.
Lesson 1: Be a man of yourself. Don’t be misled into taking a decision that you cannot defend or stand up for.
2. Yaradua could have shopped for a VP he could trust with the Presidency if the need arises. Jonathan was not the only southerner that He could have paired with according to the arrangement of the PDP.
Lesson 2: Trust your VP/Deputy wholeheartedly.
3. Yaradua should never have promised what He couldn’t deliver on. Yaradua promised Nigerians ‘rule of law’. His actions/inactions have pushed the country into a constitutional crisis.
As an apostle of the supremacy of the law, albeit the constitution, He failed woefully.
Lesson 3: You don’t preach something and do something else or act unconcerned when what you stand for is being rubbished by your aides.
4. As the president, the buck stops at Yaradua’s table. No flip flops. Indecisiveness is one of the hallmarks of the Yaradua administration.
Lesson 4: As a leader, the buck stops at your table. You can delegate authority to your aides but you take responsibility for whatever they do.
5. When Yaradua’s sickness became more apparent, he could have relinquished power to his deputy, long before his condition deteriorated to the abysmal level where he wasn’t in control of himself again. A little more faith and respect for his deputy would have forced his overbearing aides to respect Goodluck as well.
Lesson 5: Know when to quit when the ovation is loudest. Yaradua’s success handling the Niger-Delta Amnesty package was already endearing him to Nigerians again.

6. Politics has elements of show Business. A President in a democratic dispensation must always be visible, for in him, the state is embodied. There should be information flow about the President at all times. There has to be a real interface with the people. Yaradua was virtually inaccessible to People during his spell as a functional President and totally inaccessible when He became incapacitated.
Lesson 6: AS a President, never be inaccessible to people who voted you into power.

Calling on my President on behalf of Haiti…

A few minutes ago, I had to put off the television. I just couldn’t watch the suffering of my fellow human compatriots in Haiti.
I come from South West Nigeria. In all the major cities that I have been to in South Western Nigeria, Abeokuta, Ibadan, Lagos, Osogbo, etc., I know there are a lot of skilled artisans who can effectively handle heavy machinery for buiding purposes.
Every morning including Saturdays and Sundays, I see most of these men and women around major motor parks or in some cases at designated places where contractors who need their services go to meet them in the morning and negotiate for their services.
These men and women run into thousands and possibly millions.
In 48 hours from now, enough machinery and men could be scored from the nooks and crannies of Nigeria. Each state government could be given the task of getting 20men, a total of 720 men ready to move to Haiti to assist in the ongoing Rescue Operation going on in the devastated country.
The Nigerian Army I believe should have the capability to mobilize up to a thousand men to join other security forces in maintaining peace and order in Haiti if the need arises.
What Haiti needs most right now is machinery and workers who can operate them. Nigeria has both in abundance.
With all due respect Mr. President Yaradua and Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan and all Nigerian State Governors, this is a window of opportunity to redeem the image of Nigeria that has been soiled in the comity of nations. Act now before this window slips away.
Haiti needs us!

4Rm GIRNE TO 9gErIa

Departure (July 11, 2009. 1615hrs)
As Peace my travelling partner and I boarded the shuttle bus waving to our friends who were waving us goodbye, the reality that I was finally going to Nigeria after a long time dawned.
Thoughts of similar departure scenes for the victims of the two air-crashes: Air France and Yemeni Airlines came to my mind. Some of them would have waved goodbye to their loved ones and some more of them would have called ahead to their loved ones to await their arrival at their point of disembarkment.
All the way to Ercan Airport and after boarding the plane, I was still empathizing with those who had lost their loved ones in those ill-fated flights.
As the plane taxied and took off into the skies, it was time for confessions of sins. What could have gone wrong with those flights? What could have caused the malfunction of those planes? It beats me.
As the place touched down at the Istanbul Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, people started clapping, joyful and thankful for a safe flight.

TRANSIT 1: ISTANBUL ATATURK AIRPORT, ISTANBUL.
Our connecting flight to Amsterdam was not going to take off until 5:55am the next morning. We got on the queue to clear Immigration. The Immigration Officer on duty brought out his magnifying glass and checked our Nigerian passports thoroughly. That was something he did not do for the others who preceded us. He checked the bio-data and visa pages one ‘mm’ at a time for any sign that we had tampered with the passport somewhat. After a while, he let us go.
How do we pass the time and not get bored before our early morning flight out of Istanbul? Peace and I decided to take a walk round the airport and we ended up boarding the bus to Taxim at the heart of Istanbul. The crowd at Istanbul is same to what you will see at Idumota in Lagos some years ago. Not even in Central London would you find such a thronging crowd.
We had a cub of roasted corn each before we went looking into the shops and came out with some nice stuff. We got tired and went back to Taxim Square where we sat down on the steps and were talking about stuffs. After a while we headed to the café so that I could make a call to someone.
We boarded the Airport Shuttle around 12:30am back to the Airport. The parts of Istanbul we went through were beautiful. Old buildings interspersed with modernity dotted the whole area. I would love to go back soon.
At about 1:30am, we got back to the Ataturk Airport, got confused at the local terminal and finally found our way to the International Terminal and the storage facility where we stowed our luggage before we ventured into town.

TRANSIT II: Schipol Airport, Amsterdam (July 12, 2009 0820hrs)
At about 2:30am, we checked in our luggage, Peace, Abutu and I at the KLM Counter A22. From the storage facility, I got a porter who carted my luggage for me. He wanted me to give him Abutu in exchange. He was a crooked dirty old man who should go home and die in peace. What a fool! Do I look like Abutu’s father?
My passport was checked, scrutinized, re-checked and rechecked over and over again. Finally, I was allowed into the boarding area and allowed to join my two friends who had less trouble clearing Immigration this time around. We went into the Duty Free Area and we almost missed our flight. Not until we heard our names over the loudspeakers before we started rushing to our boarding gate to board.
The flight from Istanbul became interesting towards the end because it started raining and it had been a long time since I saw rain fall.

LAGOS:ARRIVAL
The first thing I saw on arrival was the remains of a Nigeria Airways Plane. The plane we flew in from Amsterdam to Lagos was much more bigger with three aisles and good entertainment facilities. They were really giving us value for our money. Also, unlike minimal services for people in Economic class, the KLM crew went all out to make sure that everybody had enough to eat and drink and were comfortable.
At the check-out counter, we were made to wait endlessly while the immigration officials held sway. We waited and waited until they finally checked us all out.
My Uncle and Aunt drove us to a restaurant where we had a proper Naija welcome with Jollof Rice and fried Snails.
Need I say that there was no public power supply by the time we got home? They had been counting three weeks of no supply and were on generators. I would have to wait five more days to catch a 20secs glimpse of power supply.