SECURING YOURSELF IN AN INSECURE WORLD.

I thought about putting pen to paper on this sensitive subject for quite a while, the urge to do so has been tainted with sentiments and facts bound together in a Yin and Yan. There is this saying that "Everybody plays the fool, and there is no exception to the rule". Whether consciously or unconsciously, we play the fool to some things we do not fully understand, not because we do not want to understand them, but because we have chosen to psychologically detach ourselves from such thinking or we are just being unrealistically sentimental about it. Either way to our own peril.

A bulk of this writing is directed at Africans, Carribeans, Asians, South Americans and African-Americans. I am more particular about black Africans on this subject, we are at the bottom of the economic ladder when it comes to standard of living, per capita income, life expectancy, food security, primary health care etc. Our position is not accidental, things do not just happen, they happen for a reason. 

Inter-generational wealth can be transferred in three ways: (1) Saving Money (2) Insurance Policies (3) Dependable Investments. How many black Africans have one of these three functionally in place, not to talk of having all? What most Africans have succeeded in having as their inheritance is poverty! And what most Africans alive today will leave for their children as inheritance is poverty! Same applies to some people of other races mentioned above.

It begins with expensive burial rites and ceremonies in the name of culture and tradition. A situation where the living is compelled to bury the dead with monies they don't have to please people they don't like!

Saving money, having insurance policies in place and venturing into dependable but low risk investments as means of wealth transfer from one generation to another is something that has been mastered by Europeans and whites all over the world well over 200 years ago. A major reason why they are on top of the economic ladder. An average white kid or teenager at the untimely death of one or both parents starts out with an average of $100,000 while an average black kid with same circumstances as the white kid starts out with $0 because his parents are either ignorant, selfish, insensitive or do not simply believe wealth transfer is a priority. 

You hear my people say: "It is not in our culture to do insurance", but our culture supports going to borrow money to bury the dead when you don't have it. You hear some say: "My religion forbids having insurance policies". But your religion does not forbid begging and asking people for financial support for your young family when you untimely pass on, your religion does not forbid living on benefits and social welfare accrued from the sweat of other people to support your family. Indeed, your religion forbids you protect yourself and your family against uncertainties for the price of a visit to KFC or Burger King? Think about this....

And others say: "My wife may kill me if she gets to know I have a life insurance". What did you do to her that will make her consider killing you? "My husband will strangle me if he knows I have a life policy". These are things I have heard from friends, families and clients over the years. If there is one thing such people should know, in countries like UK, USA and other developed nations, your partner will be the first suspect should you die mysteriously with a life policy in place. Murder and feigned suicide is quite difficult to get away with in climes with advanced electronic, digital, biometric and forensic investigative systems. 

The most common response is: "God is my insurance". Of course, He is the Alpha and Omega, the arbiter of all things. But we have seen men and women of God die untimely in accidents, sickness, fatal injuries, depression, murder etc. Are you saying they died because they sinned or because you are better than they were? Why don't you let earthly things remain earthly and heavenly things remain heavenly. 

Several people of faith have died because of ignorance and negligence, uncountable have died in developing and under-developee countries due to inhalation of generator fumes because they refused to buy smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors on the premise that Jesus is their saviour and Mohammed (SAW) their protector. Imagine the height of ignorance! Believing to know when you do not know is folly...

Numerous number of people have lost their mortgages and have their homes repossessed due to serious injuries or life threatening illnesses, they could not work and they have no life policies (mortgage or non-mortgage in place). These are mortgages of over a £1,000/month but not having a £20/month policy as cover in the face of uncertainties, they lost their homes and lost the equities. Those without mortgages in same situation  could no longer function as a family due to lack of funds. They became a burden to friends and families. Now, who is wiser, the lender or the borrower? 

Having insurance policies is important the moment you have dependants to cater for. God forbid untimely death, accident or critical illness on any of us. Whether dead or alive, none of us would want to see our loved ones going abegging, aborrowing and asorrowing. Let us contribute to inter-generational wealth transfer and by so doing, elevate the black race from the scourge of poverty at the bottom of the ladder to a more appropriate economic position on the ladder.

THE MASTER KEY

In my sojourn so far in this world, I have observed and experienced certain things that either progressed or regressed me. I made mistakes, learnt my lessons and came out a better person. I took chances, lost some, won some. I am glad I got a lot of things wrong, I had to get them wrong so I could eventually get them right. By so doing, I found something invaluable. I discovered a phenomenon that often elude my perception. I came to understand a paticular aspect of life out of so many aspects. I was shocked at the treasure revealed to me. It is The Master Key!

Going back to the basics,  we were made to understand that the world was made visible from the invincible. Whether you look at it from the spiritual or scientific perpective, what we see and know as the world today was either formed by oral commands of God or by the coming together of atoms and molecules that caused a loud bang. This proved that the tangible has got something to do with the intangible, as a matter of fact, the intangible gives birth to the tangible.

When a man sees a woman he fancies, he begins to scheme how to get her to like him. He will do everything possible to catch her attention. He may eventually marry and live with her for the rest of his life if what he feels for her is strong enough. His intangible thought about the woman in the form of words and affection will eventually become tangible when the physical woman becomes his own. It is called DESIRE!

When a student decides to study medicine and become a medical doctor, he/she will begin by putting his/her head to books, score excellent grades, write exams, study at night, pass medical school and eventually become a qualified doctor. A thought finally became a reality. It is called DESIRE!

Is there anything you want to become, you want to have, you want to do in life that you think you cannot achieve? Impossibility is NOTHING, desire is EVERYTHING! It is written that you should call those things that are not as if they were and they will physically manifest with faith. If the world was created with words, tell me that thing that cannot be made possible. If some people desire wrongly and got answers, tell me why your good desires should fail. 

Jezebel desired Naboth's vineyard, she did everything humanly possible to have it as hers, she eventually got it. Hitler, in his spirit of vengeance against the Jews desired power in Germany, he got it and unleashed the terror he had in mind. Abraham Lincoln desired to become the president of the United States, he was defeated several times, yet he achieved his desire. Even the Tower of Babel was built by desire. What do you want to achieve in life? When opportunity comes your way and there is no desire, nothing will happen!

The master key to unlocking any door to your dreams is DESIRE. When you desire something and you do not get it, it means your desire is not strong enough or God simply does not want you to have that thing for reasons beyond your understanding. It is important to desire to be a success in life, resist poverty and failure by all means necessary. Poverty breeds hatred and jealousy, those two are the bedrock upon which evil thrive. A poverty stricken mind believes every rich man owe him something, he has the entitlement mentality and his mind is full of anger, envy and frustration. This is worse than cancer! No wonder developed countries adopted social welfarism so people can stay safe in their homes!

The worst thing that can happen to any man or woman is to die without achieving the purpose for which he or she was created. It is often said that the greatest talents the world is yet to see are buried in the graveyard. The problem is, we think we have time when we actually have no time. Life is very short, like a flower, we are gone with the wind. Procrastination is the thief of time. Whatever you have in mind to do, NOW is the time to do it....

A TRIBUTE TO DIEPREYE ALAMIEYESEIGHA

A TRIBUTE TO DIEPREYE ALAMIEYESEIGHA

The news of your demise came as a shock and a rude awakening to me. This thing called life! Is that it? Just like that? Gone with the wind like a blade of grass! Why then? Why do you have to go through so much negativity that eventually tarnished your image for a life that is so ephemeral? Chai....

If you had used the £1m cash found in your London home and another £1.8m found in a UK bank account to build a factory in Bayelsa and employed the jobless youths of your kinsmen who are mostly graduates, I believe there will be uncountable people crying their eyes out in front of your house as I write this tribute not minding that you gave them a lease of life with money stolen from the government.

If you had built a classy and well equipped hospital in Bayelsa with the £10m you used to buy a single house in London, and employed world class medical professionals, you may be alive today as there may not be a need to rush you to a Port Harcourt hospital for treatment. As I write this article, millions of people in Nigeria and all over the world would have risen in your defence against the request that you be extradited to the UK for prosecution.

Rather than people do any of these things, they are happily sleeping in their houses and jesting about the circumstances surrounding your sudden death. Some people are even asserting that you have feigned your own death, which is in tandem with your feminine disguise from the UK. If you must know, your smartness was not responsible for your escape. The authorities turned a blind eye because they had their hands on something more interesting. Moreso, your leaving the UK was a loss to Nigeria and a gain to Britain. So, who is the fool? WE are! In your next life, when you hear British diplomacy, take a bow  and run like a bat out of hell.

Let this be a lesson to all of us, particularly those stealing Nigeria blind. We came to this world with nothing and we will leave this world with nothing. Whatever you call your own in this world is not permanently yours. As I write this, if your body had been deposited in the morgue, your wedding ring, if you had one, would have been removed and given to your wife. Why lose so much for nothing? What a life!

A Nigerian multi-billionaire died some few weeks ago. The print and electronic media was agog with the news of his death but as I write this tribute, he is no longer in the news despite all the wealth he accumulated. Why? Because he did not add value to the life of the common man on the streets of his fatherland. Fela, Gani, Lumumba, Sankara, King, Ghandhi etc will be continually praised and celebrated for as long as the world remain.

May the Lord God almighty pardon your sins, transgressions and iniquities but the voice of people they say, is the voice of God. My condolence to your family, I pray that God gives your family the fortitude to bear your loss as they greedily and violently share the wealth you vainly gathered in your life time.

- Tony Ihidero

AN OYSTER IN YOUR HAND

It is written: "who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His Holy place?, he that has clean hands and a pure heart, he that has not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully, he shall receive blessings from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation". - Psalm 24: 3-5. But, if God decides to mark iniquity, who is that person that can stand?

The journey of life on earth is filled with numerous possibilities and impossibilities. There are constants like death and taxes and there are variables like missed opportunities, nothing is absolute, to every rule,  there is an exception but with God, all things are possible!. Having said that, I am of the opinion that every individual is responsible for his/her actions and as such should bear the consequences when they come. The Bible taught us about grace and also taught us about favour. Grace is said to be unmerited favour while favour is an act of kindness beyond what is due or usual. These two things are at God's discretion, He makes us experience them as He wishes.

In life, the things we do to ourself or to other people, whether good or bad, will come back to us! From the book of Genesis to the book of revelation, every good done by every man was rewarded with blessings and every evil done by every man was rewarded with punishment and curses. God is no respecter of persons! As much as He loved David, he cursed the house of David for the death of Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba. The sword has not departed from them till today. 

Believers of today have debased and abused the concept of grace and favour as taught by our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. Our character and attitude in thoughts, words, speeches and actions are not in tandem with the teachings of the Lord. Some of us do things that unbelievers will be afraid to do, yet we claim grace to abound in our iniquities transgressions.

Does grace come on its own? Is it free? If it is, then where is our obedience? Grace comes by obedience to the word of God! There are laws to abide by and there are rules to be obeyed. Even the free salvation we seek, must be worked for. Salvation is earned and not given! How can people intentionally perpetrate evil to others and then psychologically run back to grace for cover? God cannot be mocked. We reap what we sow, as you lay your bed, you lie on it. You can't eat your cake and have it at the same time. 

It is better to stand for something than to fall for anything. Imagine someone that has no regard for anybody, a very rude, cunning, calculating and unreasonable person, no one is too small or too big to be insulted, no opinion from elsewhere is good enough, very selfish, a user of people to achieve greedy means, always causing trouble and rancour at the slightest opportunity. Such person blasting in tongues, binding and casting in church under the anointing of grace. Hmn! Is character and attitude not the true worship as written in the Bible? 

Some people have had their prayers answered long before they even prayed about it but because of their selfish, dodgy and insensitive attitude, they are yet to see the prayer manifest. Some of us have knowingly or unknowingly used our attitude to send away people God wanted to use to bless us. Imagine Mrs A borrowed some money from Mrs B and promised to pay on a certain day. The day came and she did not pay up. Five days after, she still has not paid and did not deem it fit to communicate with Mrs B to explain why there was a delay. Mrs B was compelled to call Mrs A but Mrs A refused to pick her call, changed her SIM card and started avoiding Mrs B. At the Night vigil service in church, this same Mrs A was fasting and praying and shouting to God to answer her prayers like there is no tomorrow. 

She was always complaining of her prayers not being answered. God cannot be fooled! Mrs B denied herself some comfort and did Mrs A some favour, only for her to be rewarded with lies and deception. How does Mrs A expect God to answer her prayers? She caused her friend pain and she wants to smile. She forgot Mrs B also pray to this same God.

Some people tell lies like water rushing out from a tap. They do not need to think before dishing out big lies to whoever falls prey to them. Falsehood and deception have become their middle names. The Bible warned about them. At their workplace, they appear very important. In their church, they aspire for positions of authority, in their neighbourhood, they like to be in control, in the midst of friends, they like to dominate but in their homes, they are nobody! They are grossly irresponsible to their wives, husbands, children and relatives. 

They are dodgy, they have the hands of Jacob and the voice of Esau. They cannot stand by what they say. Their word is not their bond. Beware of such people. They have their oyster in their hand just like you and I. What we make of our oysters depends on what we stand for: TRUTH or LIES......The choice is yours!

MASCULINE FEMINISM

In a world dominated by male specie, judging from sheer physical strength, coupled with cultural and religious domination of the female specie, little do we know that the woman is indeed the most powerful creature walking the surface of the earth.

In many aspects of life, if critically examined, a woman has got the upper hand, but the creator of this universe in His infinite wisdom used an authoritative clause to subdue the woman to the man's authority. I will touch that later! Nothing compares to the strength of a woman. She is better when it comes to multi-tasking and some other aspects of life.

She cooks, does the washing, fix the meals, wake the kids, bath them, dress them up for school, go to work, be the first to get back home, cook dinner, do homework with the kids, put them to bed, wait for daddy to return from work before she goes to bed, only for daddy to grab her in bed for that thing and when she complains of exhaustion, daddy will complain of neglect and emphasise having his way else daddy and mummy will not sleep that night.

All daddy did that day was to wake up, dress up, have his breakfast, go to work, come back home, have his dinner, go to bed to have it with mummy and sleep off as if he carried logs of wood during the day. Men are not designed to do what women are capable of doing, we simply do not have that patience and endurance.

Often times, we have seen women in their middle ages turn widow or single parent by virtue of their spouses' death, separation or divorce and single handedly raise their children without re-marrying. A man will find that difficult to do, he will highly likely re-marry 'cos he is a big baby that needs to be taken care of despite having so much muscles. He is not designed to do what a woman will likely do in such situation. Can we see how powerful our women are?

The worst pain anyone can experience according to medical journals is the pain at child birth. Next to it is pain associated with toothache, I have had tooth aches and must confess to you that the pain is not nice at all. I cried like a baby several times it hooked me. It was excruciating. Now, imagine child birth pain. After carrying the load for 9 months with so much pressure was on her spinal chord. Let the man that can do that raise up his hands!

In the spiritual world of worship, from the ages till today, where a god and a goddess are to be worshipped together, it is observed that the female goddess is given preference over the male god. When obeisance is paid to witches and wizards in Yoruba mythology, we hear panegyrics like "mo juba eyin to laye, eyin iya osoronga". We do not hear them mention baba osoronga. It is the woman that possess the breasts of life "omu iya dun". This shows the power naturally embedded in feminism. They may appear weak, yet they are strong, much stronger than men.

Have you seen any wise man take a woman for granted? Have you seen any deeply spiritual man treat a woman badly? They hardly do because they know the consequences. Even the mighty Prophet Elijah fled from Jezebel until God put His judgement on her. Esther, a slave woman, with her humility, dethroned the queen of the land. Adam could not resist eating the apple Eve gave him despite knowing he shouldn't eat it. Talk about manipulation, talk about being cunning, talk about desire, talk about spiritual insight, talk about the 6th sense, talk about keeping secrets, God gave the keys to these things to women. Men, haven't you wondered how a woman will quickly know when her man is secretly seeing another woman? Hehehe......

When a man sees a beautiful woman and say to himself that he would have her, there is a 90% chance that he will fail at it, but when a beautiful woman sees a man she likes and say to herself that she wants him by all means, her chances of getting him is 90%. That is how powerful our women are. It takes the grace of God and the conscious effort of a man to overcome the advances of a strange beautiful woman.

I believe men with God fearing wives that are full of upright character should be grateful to God for what they have. May we not come across women like Jezebel that will teach us a bitter lesson in Jesus name. Pastors, reverends, prophets etc are falling on daily basis before such women. Never take your good wife for granted! If that is what you are doing at the moment, please have a rethink and put a stop to it.

It is written: "Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you" - Genesis 3:16. This is our saving grace as men. If not for this decree by God,  our eye for see pepper from women. Some men eye still dey see pepper despite the decree. LORD HAVE MERCY.....