Let me share with you a piece of information you probably have not come across. Between June 8 and July 6, a call was made over the internet; a call that was both weird and grossly unconventional. It was a call for participation in the Autoblow Vaginal Beauty Contest. Autoblow is a men’s sex toy manufacturer. As it were, the winner will claim $5000, the second and third runners-up will claim $2500 and $1250 respectively. The take-home for Autoblow was to find the world’s most aesthetically pleasing vulva with which to create a model for a future version of Autoblow 2. As the main criteria for entering, you were required to be 18+ of age and should take the picture of your vulva with your name written on a piece of paper by it (sort of tag). Truth be told, I found that competition amusing, but particularly very annoying.

Guess what? At the end of the day, 182 women entered for the competition and 134,707 site-visitors did the voting. Of course, the 182 participants submitted photos of their external genitalia for the online vulva beauty contest. And as planned, Autoblow arrived at The World Most Beautiful Vaginas on the planet! And these proud winners came forward to claim their prizes: 1. 27-year-old Nell from the UK; 2. 23-year-old Jenny from Bavaria, Germany; 20-year-old Anita from Hungary. Definitely, you should expect that this exercise got as many praises as it got lots of criticisms.

Although my Christian bent inspires me to strongly condemn that exercise, and others that are like it, the main focus of this piece is not to make moral arguments. This is, instead, an exercise in women empowerment. Frankly speaking, I believe that the first port of call in the whole women empowerment/emancipation concerns is proper orientation. Yes, with proper orientation, we really don’t have to ‘give anyone power’ (empowerment) – not even men, since every authentic human being is innately ‘power-full’. In essence, give a woman proper orientation and she can take it up from there herself. For instance, Michelle Obama’s family only had to give her ‘first-rate’ education, and she’s today doing women proud – not only by being first lady; watch her say and do her things and see for yourself.

The highest indignity being meted out to women is the fact that the world makes the average woman feel terrible about herself. And we do this in many different ways. When the ‘thighbrow’ madness came on board, we made women who didn’t have it feel terrible about their thighs. Same applied to the era of ‘bikini bridge’ and ‘collarbone club’. Most women had to undergo outrageous medical procedures and nutritional routines to attain those so called ‘ideal’ body types. You can bet that every beauty this or that leaves many a woman hating herself.

And then Autoblow pushes it to the limits with their vagina contest. Of course, they ended up shaming the vaginas of the billions of women that don’t look like the three winners. And then what would many of the rest of the pack do? Labiaplasty! You know what that means, right? Simple: a cosmetic surgical procedure to modify a woman’s genitalia. Needless to mention the many other ‘corrective/enhancement’ cosmetic surgeries done on the breast, hips, buttocks, face, lips, skin, etc. that cost a fortune on the one hand, and very risky on the other hand. In fact, let’s call them by their proper names: vaginoplasty, hoodectomy (clitoral unhooding), mammoplasty (breast enlargement/augmentation), maxtopexy (breast lift), abdominoplasty (tommy tuck), rhinoplasty (nose surgery), liposuction and liposculture, neck lift, brow lift, hip and bum enlargement, etc. You can imagine.

Now, the implications of this state of affairs is enormous, especially the fact that our women’s world is seriously gone chaotic. The rate of jealousy in that clime is far beyond the human normal, and, of course, the unintended consequence of this is the fierce competition that happen among them. Fierce, to say the least. Let me substantiate this with the comment left by the second runner-up of the vagina competition: I thought it was really funny and interesting and so I decided to give it a try, because I thought that maybe I could do better than these girls. Imagine that! And we’re pretty familiar with tales of how far some women have gone and can go to beat this competition.

Truth be told, we can’t, I mean WE CANNOT, meaningfully do women empowerment without starting off on the footing of addressing this madness. Come to think of it, how much empowerment can a woman who’s lost the last iota of her confidence to the size or shape of her breast get? There are two possible ways out of this particular situation:

it’s either we get her to accept that her breast is cool just the way it is through orientation or reorientation, or we begin her empowerment programme by sponsoring her breast lift or augmentation cosmetic surgery procedure. If we go by the latter option, procuring the cosmetic surgery, you can trust she’ll soon want a nose job.

I shall return to this matter sometime in the future, but I wish to categorically state that we’re all wasting our time on women empowerment if every woman don’t get the following points locked up in their heads:

Variety is the spice of life
Imagine that we all look alike in every conceivable respect: facial, breast, hip and bum, and even the vagina. I bet that earth would have been as boring as hell. God knew this enough to give earth a touch of variety. Why are you complaining? In this regard, the winner of the hitherto discussed competition has a killer lesson for us: I still do not believe I have a special vagina. I happen to have the best picture of my vagina. That’s it. It’s nothing less, it’s nothing more. Even the very introduction of the scientific analysis of the Autoblow vaginal beauty contest data reads: vulvas are diverse. Dimensions, colour, labia minora size, and rugosity present a broad range of variability. Does this not ring a bell?

No one is flawless
Because I’m a huge fan of Ms Adichie, I’d to download Queen Bey’s Flawless. Perhaps that’s the only thing that’s flawless – just because it goes by that name. However, we’ve all got our fair share of bodily and character flaws. Those that appear truly flawless did some behind the scene jobs. Trust me; ask them. So, what’s the point? Enjoy your flaws; be truly human!

Cultivate a strong self-will
This one got me really angry: My boyfriend made me do it. He told me about it and then I didn’t want to do it. And then we had a few drinks and then we did it…I was very uncomfortable. That came from the third runner-up of the vagina contest. Where did most women learn that they shouldn’t stand by their ‘nos’? I definitely know that relationships are run on the fuel of compromise, but there are definitely some no-go areas, and this is one for God’s sake!

Enjoy your uniqueness
We don’t just believe that we’re all and individually unique. If we did, we’d be enjoying it already. Why must one look like another for God’s sake? And if we truly understand this message of uniqueness, then the whole competition thing dies naturally.

While the wailing wailers wail and the rest of the pack throw stones at our dear President, Muhammadu Buhari, I’ve decided to look kindly upon him with compassion. At least that is what Jesus would do; I’m Christian. And I hereby invite my fellow compatriots to do same. Before I go on to explain myself, let me play the saint some bit. I actually didn’t vote him. Maybe because I lost my voting rights to the INEC job they ‘used’ us for; I was corps member at the time. Even if I were to vote, I still wouldn’t have voted him. Make no mistakes about this; I wasn’t for Jonathan either. You may be wondering already where I stood. I simply stood on that fine line between Buhari and Jonathan, and those of us on the line where I stood held that until Nigeria is ready to arise and move to the next level of governance experience, either Buhari or Jonathan could still keep the seat, conducting the business of the hell we’ve been in our 55-year-old self-rule. The point is this:

the last presidential election left us in a dilemma and our best bet was the lesser evil, and for all I care evil is evil.

Now, let me get down to the Buhari question. I’ve been in this country long enough to know that things have fallen apart. In Karl Meier’s very own words, “This House Has Fallen” (the title of his book on the Nigerian situation). And this is pretty obvious, as next to everyone is crying, if not complaining – or wailing. The much desired change came to us in its fullness. Much like the Christian Incarnation, that saw God take flesh and turn into a man – like humans in all things but sin – our out-of-proportion clamor for change saw change take pity on us and appear among us as fellow Nigerian. Now, as it were, we’ve the fullness of change; we’re beholding it and we’re feeling it. Good for us.

While the “change” mantra saturated Nigeria’s airwaves, which one of us was quick enough to notice that there was some touch of intellectual dishonesty to it already? Plagiarism, I meant. Did they acknowledge that they copied US Barack Obama? Again, was the time lag between 2007/2008 when Obama employed it to fuel his drive for the White House and 2014/2015 when Buhari copied him too long a time that we couldn’t run a comparative analysis before falling for the latter’s? Little wonder Matthew Kukah described Nigerians as suffering from collective amnesia. We just have this annoying way of forgetting; our apathy towards history is second to none on the planet. Yes, they copied the “change” mantra because it had some talismanic effect on the Americans. Painfully, between Obama’s “change” and Buhari’s “change” was a whopping 7/8 years and we really didn’t think we should consult with the Americans to know how well they’ve faired with “change.” Perhaps Obama actually meant “change” from White to Black, a sort of “change” that is none of our business down here. The bottom line is that we’re gullible enough to believe him.

Again, in our choice of Buhari we went superstitious. And we’re paying for it. Since the number of Nigerians that believed Buhari are so many that calling them irrational would be going too far on my part. If they weren’t irrational, then they must have been superstitious. This leans against the backdrop that certain outrageous promises were made to Nigerians and these promises were believed and celebrated. What was on our mind when someone promised us that he would equate the Naira to the Dollar? That’s mad. If Buhari gets 10 tenures, he wouldn’t be able to do that. Even elementary economics tell us that this is mission impossible. Many believed him. How on earth was he going to pay every unemployed Nigerian N5,000 every month? In a country like Nigeria where there are no reliable records, can anyone say how many unemployed Nigerians we have? Even at that, where will he get all that money from? We usually cow ourselves into thinking we’re rich enough for oil’s sake, but the way we run things here suggests otherwise. And to tell us we’re really fooled, he shows up to deny that promise. He always knew he couldn’t do it. So, if we sincerely believed him at the time of those promises, then we sincerely expected him to do magic. Interestingly, we can already see he’s not the “Merlin” we thought of him.

Furthermore, there was this way we thought so highly of him, especially as it bothers around the promise of corruption eradication. He told us he’s done it before, and we believed him. How and when did he do it before? This is exactly where the problem lies, as Nigerians fall into two categories in this regard:

those that were either unborn or were still too young to know a thing at the time and those that were old enough at the time but have forgotten everything. Funnily enough, our apathy for history didn’t let us consult with the pages that chronicles Buhari’s first time. Both the former and latter categories of Nigerians didn’t check; the former didn’t check to know, the latter didn’t check to remember. And I’m not here to educate us either. But get this straight from me: it wasn’t as great as he made us believe.

I can go on and on stating the many ways in which we let ourselves be deceived, but that wouldn’t save the day. My point, however, is that it is time to claim responsibility. We must take responsibility for our choice. Yes, we, as much as Buhari, made mistakes. Buhari was too desperate that he underestimated the Nigerian situation, and he came in to find that it’s a different Nigeria now and that things have toughened up. We made our mistakes too, by thinking that they could be a quick fix to the Nigerian situation. For instance, the so much expectation we heap on Buhari to deal with corruption is a difficult one, given that we’re all corrupt in one way or the other. He thinks he’s got good men to work with him, and they all shock him with the budget scandal.

As we cast stones on Buhari, I urge us to reserve some for ourselves. But if we think we don’t deserve some stoning for the choice of Buhari, then neither does he. This is a man who was desperate to occupy Aso Rock before he parts earth, tried several times, and then found an entry point when we crazily clamored for change. And given that he wanted it badly enough, he told lies, made bogus promises, and covered up his innate autocratic tendencies. Then we fell for him. We’re now all complaining because while he’s got what he’s wanted, we’re yet to get our fair share of the dividend of democracy.

And so, while we wait and wail, while we complain and criticize, Buhari needs one gift from each and every one of us. Not patience. Not trust. Not understanding. But COMPASSION. For God’s sake, that man is going through the most difficult phase of his life. Or have we also forgotten that the toughest job on the planet is being Nigeria’s president?

The first time I ever set my eyes on him was sometime in March 2010, when he showed up to claim his University of Nigeria Alvan 111 bed space. I was a freshman (100 level) at the time and he was in his penultimate year (300 level) – History and International Relations. And the last time I saw him was sometime in 2011 – his convocation. This is 5 years afterwards and it seems like forever already. In “Just” 5 years and Sammie has gone on to claim his pie of the good life – and still climbing.

March 20, 2016 was the first day of the rest of my life. Guess what happened? I met Sammie again. On Lagos Island. And the next 3 hours with him, in the company of Paschal and Raphael, was a rebirth of some sort. To say the least, when I saw him wave at us, signaling the car he was driving in, I immediately felt I was in for quite a day – a day with a difference!

“This appears to be your first time, am I correct?” he asked. “Yes, actually,” I answered. It was my very first time of visiting Lagos, a trip I’d spent all my life looking forward to. Yes, Lagos has always meant so much to me because methinks it is the residence of the spirit of Nigeria; there can be no meaningful engagement with Nigeria without knowing, first hand, what happens in Lagos. Truth be told, in Lagos, more than in any one part of Nigeria, the Nigerian story runs in one single piece; a “balance of stories,” to say the least. And I’m happy I saw it all in this one visit; Sammie saw to it. “Then let me give you a tour of the Island.” That was Sammie’s response when I concurred it was my first time.

As we drove off Teslim Balogun Square, TBS, Sammie already started pointing me to the big places: Sterling Towers, his Shell office, and I’ve lost the name of the tallest structure in Nigeria he’d showed me, etc. And we were just headed for Victoria Island: Intercontinental Hotel, Eko Atlantic, Eko Hotel…. Then an appreciable tour of Ikoyi was done, the most expensive neighborhood in Africa. Of course, we needed to drive past where the Lion of Bourdelion, Tinubu, lives.

And then came what mattered most: the lecture. As he’s always been, my great teacher, Sammie sat at table with us to share with my friends and me the most important lessons he’s learnt in the course of his life. The intriguing thing about this encounter was that Sammie was insanely generous with the details, which gave his talk some touch of magic. At some point, to be sure I wasn’t alone in this transforming moment, I looked at the faces of Paschal and Raphael and got the confirmation that we were all on the same page.

At this juncture, I’m obliged to go straight to the point! To share with you the awesome lessons Sammie shared with us. Yes, I spread the pie for maximum impact.   

1. Background weighs little
“We were so poor that even the poor called us poor.” Those were Sammie’s exact own words. But at the time of speaking, he was lodging at the most expensive hotel in Nigeria (Intercontinental Hotel), flies first class on every single trip he makes on his job. Of course, with a salary to match. What does this tell? Inasmuch as one’s background counts for something, it actually weighs so very little. In fact, a disadvantaged background should be more of a motivator than a disadvantage. Chinua Achebe created a perfect example in his Things Fall Apart. Unoka’s celebrated failure was the reason for Okonkwo’s outstanding success. Sammie even told the story of the night he flew first class with the likes of Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, TuFace Idibia, Babatunde Raji Fashola, and Linda Ikeji around him. If background really mattered, then how come Sammie is on it?

2. The good life is up for grasp
Wealth acquisition is so democratic; anyone who wants to can. Here Sammie was emphatic in saying that the good life is not the exclusive preserve of anyone. This was the killer point he made in this respect: You only just have to want it badly enough. Of course, wishing one had it is far from the truth. One only has to pay the price. What is this good life? Call it luxury, call it anything. That Linda Ikeji bought herself an N500million worth of house is just no big deal for Sammie. She’s paid the price. She’s got the cash. She’s got to spend it the way she knows how to. It’s just not a big deal. It never was. Don’t forget that it’s a long time coming for Linda; she wanted the good life badly enough when it wasn’t there. And she got exactly what she wanted, such that she earns so much from her blog.

3. “I owe it all to ‘The Wonder of Books’”
I had a copy of my newly published, The Wonder of Books, for Sammie. As soon as I presented him his copy, he took it up from there. He too, like the guys I featured in my book, owes every single thing in his life to the wonder of books. He goes on to tell us his recruitment story. Quite a story I must confess, one that qualifies for the front cover story of every magazine worth its name. Shell had only 2 openings and 42,600 people who met the minimum requirement came for it. When the number was cut to just 6, Sammie was up against 5 foreign trained applicants. Not just foreign trained but from the Ivy Leagues – Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford, Manchester City. These guys were also the best in their classes, with higher degrees in human resources (the position advertised). Where did Sammie come from? He just studied History and International Relations in the University of Nigeria. He didn’t even have a first class; just first degree. Without mincing words, one of the interviewers asked him: “What makes you think you stand a chance?” Sammie told us it was The Wonder of Books. Sammie’s readership is now so badly good that he does 4 books at a go.

4. Cultivate the skills for seeing and seizing opportunity
Sammie is vehement in holding that the ability to see opportunity and the strength to seize them are two different skills that are a conditio sine qua non for success. He said that one thing about opportunities is that they are not just always there, but are always up for grasp – only to those who can. He talked about the fact that he gets bombarded with CVs by family, friends and fans, being human resource personnel at Shell. The problem, however, is that many of these people really don’t know what they ask for, and those that do, really don’t know that they can’t carry what they ask for. Those skills are just too essential; they hold the key to everything.

5. Defy convention
At this juncture, Sammie was all warning. He warned us never to follow the bandwagon. The bandwagon is directionless; the bandwagon is a bloody liar. It tells us we can’t get it for so and so reasons that are more or less unfounded. It chooses to talk about the negatives, how the number of unemployed youths runs into the millions, how the Nigerian situation is devastating… It doesn’t tell us that side by side this sorry state of affairs some people out there are not just making it but making it big!

6.Define your success
This is critical because after all said and done, where fulfillment will come from is the realization of one’s inner yearnings. And it also follows that once a personal definition of success is on ground, things naturally begin to fall in place. Trust me, he said, it wouldn’t really be about what you have or what you haven’t in, say, 10 years’ time, but about what you always wanted.

7. Success is all in your routine
Sammie said that success is not really what ensues some day in the distant future, but about what we choose to do every single day. Of course, these add up into the big thing in the future. The implication? Focus on this “24-hour day” you have today. That’s what matters. That’s all there is! Choose to do those things that really and truly matter, no matter how little they appear. Success is today. Failure is today. And there are no two ways about it.

8. Understand the “Cash” and “Impact” relationship
Cash does not automatically translate to impact. No, it doesn’t. But it really does make impact way easier. In essence, Sammie told us to go out there and make all the money we can. What informed his own choice of Shell was that he wanted where the cash will pour in like rain. And with all his gets, he makes a difference in other people’s lives. Emphatically, Sammie said that success actually begins at the point where you’ve transcended living just for self and family but for every other other.

Ulysses (Latin) or Odysseus (Greek) saw his ears without a mirror when he challenged the instrumentality of the gods to his leading the Greeks to victory over the Trojans. Before his very own eyes, the sea-god, Poseidon, had sent a mighty snake to drown the soothsayer who was about revealing the trick behind the Trojan horse. But that was not enough for him to accord the gods their pride of place in the Greeks deceit and defeat of Troy. Consequent upon this, he was barred from seeing his native Ithaca, his beloved wife, Penelope, and his lovely son, Telemachus, for as long as it will take him to learn his lesson. At long last, his prime lesson was communicated him by Poseidon, which runs thus: Without gods man is nothing. The celebrated The Odyssey by the legendry Greek poet, Homer, has all of that. You could look it up!

This story was not meant to get you entertained, nor was it an attempt to make a haphazard summary of The Odyssey. The intent is, however, to pass that singular message across: without gods man is nothing. For the Greeks it was gods because of their polytheistic orientation, but God is proper to the Christian and contemporary monotheistic bent. So, without God man is nothing. And the Psalmist will forcefully drive down this fact when he questions that: What is man that you take care of him, mortal man that you are mindful of him? (Ps 8:4).

Since the rise in humanistic thought, religion has been put on trial and has remained docked because the count-charges increase by the day. It is secularism that is pressing charges against her, with, first, calling for a division of society into ‘secular’ and ‘religious.’ The jury granted that and now we have secular and religious societies – the one excluding the other in her concerns. And it is mostly in intellectual houses, such as the university, that these notions are nursed and injected into society, beginning from the poisoning of the minds of students. It was as a professor in the university that Karl Marx described religion as the opium of the people, and it was equally as a professor in the university that Friedrich Nietzsche announced in two of his books (The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra) that God is dead.

Now, in school we get to meet and study ideas that are anti-religious, and most of us buy into them; losing faith as it were. Quite unfortunate. On a personal basis, what do you think about God? Inasmuch as we need to be critically on some religious demands, but is our dishing a treat of reckless abandon to religious experience and expression worthwhile?

And you mustn’t be a Christian to believe in God, since the idea of God as that Supreme Being in whom we move and hold our being is not restricted to Christianity. In Islam, for instance, he is Allah.

To walk with God essentially involves an appeal to, and the acceptance of his will, and the clearest way of doing so is by internalizing the Zen Buddhist teaching of ‘what is, is’. Yes, there are certain questions whose answers would never come; certain things are just bound to be; many problems cannot be resolved – just get used to them.

Freaks of innovative technology know Jobs for being the brain behind Apple, makers of Macintosh, ipad, ipod, iphone, etc. Although Jobs died in October 2011, his memory lingers, especially as one of the most innovative people the world has ever known. In the succeeding address, he shares with Stanford University graduands three stories from his life  stories that thrill, entertain and motivate, and a must ready for everyone. He titles the entire piece Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.   

STAY HUNGRY, STAY FOOLISH

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Conclusion

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

The end…