The heat is on! Right now and every second the likes of especially Democrats’ Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on the one hand, and Republicans’ Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Ted Cruz on the other hand, are buying their way into the mind and heart of America’s electorate ahead of November presidential polls. Why is the planet agog with the nitty-gritty of the forthcoming US election? Understandably, the one who emerges US president, succeeding Obama as it were, will be as good as the globe’s president, given the enormous influence the US wields on the global scheme of things. However, I doubt that that singularly accounts for why it is commanding global followership.

Side by side the American experience is Nigeria. Electioneering in Nigeria, the much I know, and I can assure you I know enough (at least I played presiding officer for one of the polling units in the April 2015 polls), is a mess at best. Truth be told, a whole lot depends on the credibility of the electoral process: it instills faith in the government and reinforces patriotism. For me, it’s high time we learnt one or two things from those who are better at doing it, such as:

1. Money should go invisible

There is no gainsaying that the politics and the economy enjoy a husband and wife relationship. Yes, they do. And so, every election is run by so much money. Publicity alone on the various media runs into mega-millions. Of course, not to mention the crazy mega-millions that must be paid into the accounts of the various and varied gatekeepers and gods and goddesses of the land. In the US this money is invisible while in Nigeria it is shared on the streets in raw cash or its material equivalent. The invisibility of the US cash leans on the fact that campaigns are adequately, transparently and accountably funded, converting most of the cash for services procured in the furtherance of the bid for the White House. In Nigeria, our recent “Dasuki-gate” reveals it all; even our dear media appears to have been largely compromised.

This is the problem: the visibility of cash in the process compromises credulity; it makes it bribery and not the lobbying that it should be; it corrupts the minds of the electorate.

2. The candidates themselves must command followership

For months, all the candidates must build followership either from the scratch or consolidate on what they used to have. They must be charismatic enough to demonstrate their suitability for the White House and their particular ability to bear the larger-than-life image of the US among the comity of nations while stating and negotiating their interest without mincing words. In this regard, it is almost never clear that a particular candidate is being sponsored by this or that individual, since it has to be clear from Day 1 that the country is never to be held ransom by the whims and caprices of those sort of sponsors. We can do better than we’re already doing. Yes, the party is important, but it is always the individual that must bear the character of the party.

3. The media is a major and independent stakeholder

There is no doubt that Nigeria’s media is part and parcel of the electioneering here, but the challenge remains as to whether she is true to her calling as the fourth estate of the realm. Of course, running a media outfit is business, but devoting to driving positive social change at critical moments as poll time is a social responsibility. In Nigeria, while the media focuses on paid publicity and just gets by with debates and analyses, the American mainline media takes every inch of the steps towards the polls seriously. The debates are superhot and the analyses leave no one stone unturned. In America, the citizenry can confidently depend on CNN, for instance, on the in and out of the elections; and CNN always delivers.

4. Electioneering is everyone’s business

Knowing the implications of a free, fair and credible poll on the furtherance of the national course, the average American takes everything about her elections personal. They are there for the rallies, the primaries, the debates, and on poll day; they’re there for virtually everything! And almost all US elections are near-perfect. The reverse is the case in Nigeria, where the voting is not urgent, and optional at best. This has to change.

Conclusion

America is not perfect; the name calling characterizing the current American presidential race, especially as championed by Trump, is not virtuous. But her electioneering has got a lot of lessons for us. And we’ll be doing ourselves a whole lot of good learning from them. Thanks to Arinze Nwafor for his generous insights on the US elections.

On this platform, I talk about things that matter to both ‘collective-us’ and ‘individual-me’. I especially talk about books and celebrate legends, and since February 8 I came onboard blogging I’ve enjoyed the grace of consistency. However, this grace of consistency was threatened today; I’d travelled and really couldn’t figure out how to compose the post or even what to compose. As soon as I met Ijenna, I just knew something was up! And I didn’t hesitate to immediately ask her permission to talk about her here. She neither said yes nor no, but was surprised that a guy she just met for the first time since Adam would want to talk about her on a blog post. I insisted I would, which is what this post is about.

I’ve chosen to spare us the details of how we got to meeting; let’s leave it at providential. However, the rich content of our little more than 2 hours chat is what motivated this post. Walking out of that teaching hospital (yes, a medical student), I became better in the following ways:

Grace is real
Here was a girl who has it all! She appears to have beaten the four-fold criterion for classing the ideal woman: Behavior, Brains, Background, and beauty. Don’t ask me how I knew; I just knew. The brains and beauty part were pretty obvious; I used to know the background; and I trusted that the behavior was consistent with the background, plus I experienced some of the behavior for myself today. When I pointed this out to her, Ijenna and I were unanimous in attributing whatever she’s got to grace. Grace is real, and always real. And there is plenty of it for each and every one of us. Just ask it!

Vision is everything
A friend once told me I’d make a fine journalist. Ijenna would have said same if she had to. The questions I was firing at her were just too many for my own count. But this Ijenna of a lady keeps wowing me with answers that set my brain afire. Though still a medical student with some time left for graduation, she already had everything figured out. She demonstrated to me that vision is everything. Methinks I’d be crossing the line revealing those of hers here; all I can say is watch out for her in a few years to come.

Teacher par excellence     
Moved by my questions, she taught me some medicine. I’d read about caesarean operation but didn’t quite get the basis for the distinction between the vertical incision and the horizontal incision. What Ijenna did was unbelievable. She simply raised up her wrist, made two moves on them, said just a few words and I magically understood what she explained like forever. She taught me other things: what happens with and around pot-belly, the real gist about cholesterols, the art of eating healthy, and what happens with the heart. She just had this way of explaining everything so well.

Sophisticated simplicity
This collaborates with her being a teacher par excellence. Medical jargons didn’t come anywhere in the picture. There was no need to as she always had her way of getting around them. Where she was obliged to use them, she always had to produce and keep producing ‘layman-friendly’ synonyms until I got the gist. This sort of simplicity is a sophisticated one. It is a sort of simplicity we should all aspire to.

Conclusion
Today, more than ever, meeting with Ijenna made me realize that there are amazing people out there; all you need do is become amazing yourself and then reach out to connect with your kind. She particularly told me that life’s got levels and we all get to, by our actions and inactions, decide where we belong. If in her turn she gets to write about me, I’m confident she wouldn’t say she wasted her precious time.

What a blessed day! I should especially thank Ugo Okoye for making it happen.

I doubt that there is something that turns human beings, and possibly God, as on as heartfelt gratitude. This conclusion can be reached by anyone; it’s so very obvious. While the greatest exhortation in the Christian Bible is, “Give ‘thanks’ to the Lord for He is good, for His love endures forever,” someone put it more forcefully, “A person who is not grateful is not better than a great fool.” To say the least, it is truly right and just that we give thanks for every positive gesture shown us – in kind and/or in cash. The reason is not far-fetched: although the disposition to do good could come naturally, the actual act of goodness, or better put, ‘loving kindness’, demand some sacrifice on the part of the doer.

However,

the question of gratitude raises some pertinent concerns, especially as it bothers on why we crave it so badly, and why it appears that our subsequent rendition of ‘loving kindness’ is dependent on how much gratitude we got in the previous episodes.

To illustrate: a dependant gets his school fees once from an uncle, and because he wasn’t grateful at all or wasn’t grateful enough (from his uncle’s judgment), he never gets subsequent school fees. Funnily enough, this uncle now brands him an ingrate, and uses him as a worthwhile example whenever a tale of ingratitude needs to be told. And then it didn’t end there. This uncle concludes, based on this experience, that nieces and nephews are ingrates, and now refuses to help others. How did things get this bad?

And don’t misunderstand me here, gratitude forever remains a great attitude, and we’re always turned on by it when we occupy the receiving end – even when we pretend to say, “Don’t mention it.” In truth, would you have found it funny if he/she didn’t mention it in the first place? I doubt.

The gratitude problem largely derives from motif or intention. Put differently, it largely depends on the why of our giving. If giving stems from ulterior motif, then one gets to feel bad or even terrible when one’s expectation is cut short. Moreover, if it stems from charity, then the presence or absence of ‘Thank You’ makes little or no difference. Pay attention to my usage of charity; it means everything as far as understanding my point of view is concerned. Of course, our application of the term to most giving gestures constitutes a gross abuse of the term. They may best qualify as philanthropy; charity belongs in a different sphere – ‘Godsphere’. And the difference between philanthropy and charity lies in the why of the giving. In philanthropy, the giver gives ‘just’ to salvage the human situation; the credit is his or hers. In charity, the giver gives because he was first given and was commanded by this ‘First Giver’ to give; the credit goes to the One who first gave, and who left the command. The one giving in obedience to this command is nothing but an instrument in the hands of God.

Seen thus, one can already say that the unbridled craving for gratitude, which seems to be characteristic of our kind and cash gestures, is borne out of anything else but charity. Yes, in charity, appropriating gratitude to oneself is a case of usurping that which belongs to another; a sort of idolatry in this case, wherein that which rightfully belongs to God is taken for oneself. However, given that the actor was God’s agency, he could only receive, never to demand, thanks on behalf of God, and stating that to be the case.

Two examples will suffice here. When Jesus complained about the ingratitude of the other nine Jewish lepers that didn’t show up to give thanks, as against the Samaritan that showed up, he asked: Why have they not come to give praise to God? It is always to God. And did he actually complain? Not really, as we know Jesus to always seize given opportunities to teach. Should the one leper not have showed up to give thanks, he probably wouldn’t have talked about it. A second example can be found with the Angel Raphael on the successful completion of his mission to Tobit’s family. On their return from Ecbatana to recover the debt owed Tobit and to help marry Sarah for Tobias, Tobit asked his son Tobias to give a sizeable portion of the goods to his kind company, Raphael. Raphael quickly disclosed his messenger identity and instructed that all thanks and praise and glory belong to God alone.

Finally, St. Josémaria said it best:

Do and disappear.

When people talk about the ‘good old days’, they already imply that ‘these days’ are gone bad. For instance:

1. They talk about the high esteem to which virginity was held Vs the fact that the 21st century 15-year-old should have had sex over and over again or knows next to everything about sex.

2. Again, they talk about the worrying state of education Vs the fact that the average Standard VI pupil back in the days was already so good that he/she could become a teacher.

3. They talk about ethics and values and etiquette of time past Vs the nonchalance of millennials towards everything that use to make for civility – in time past.

4. In time past, too, the cardinal virtues (prudence, fortitude, temperance, justice) meant so much, and helped defined a man’s worth and strength of character Vs now that more of vices have taken centre-stage on the scheme of things.

5. Then, too, there were immortal codes for living for which men were prepared to die; like honour, like courage, like friendship Vs now that next to nothing is worth dying for. Enjoyment galore!

However, did things really become bad or they simply changed? For me, things only changed, and it’s only when we make comparison and pass value judgement that we can say things turned bad. But come to think of it, was it all better and is it all bad now? I doubt. And my doubt leans against the backdrop that those ‘purported good old days’ was bad in it’s own way, too. Come to think of it, again, who were responsible for turning these days from good to bad? In a relay race, for instance, which of the runners would be responsible for winning or losing the race, the starter or the finisher, or the intermediate runners? Truth be told, there is just a way every runner glories in the victory or partake in the lose; the starter no less than the finisher.

There is a better attitude we should adopt, instead of crying over spilled milk or throwing the baby away with the bathwater. I’m suggesting that we focus more on the inquiry into how things fell apart, with a view to arresting the situation as much we can. This is because, like it or not, certain predisposing factors saw us to this point, which include:

The sex revolution
It would be very unfair outrightly condemning this generation for sexual recklessness without going into the very root of the matter. And if you look at it closely, the people of the good old days were more afraid than virtuous. There were no reliable contraceptives and venereal diseases almost had no cure. And so, virginity was more or less an escape route. Such that when the 1960s saw the perfection of contraceptives and a way forward for venereal diseases, the hitherto adoration of sexual purity quickly eroded. Here we’re!

The fall of the family
Truth be told, this house has fallen! With the turnaround in the economic fortunes of the globe, family had to adjust in response to the economic trend; both parents now had to work to make ends meet. The result is that the children are left to form themselves. And what do you expect? They just keep trying things and crossing lines. Left home alone, should we be surprised at siblings seeing sexually explicit movies and trying things out with one another? Needless to begin to talk about morals and values.

The ICT revolution
In more ways than we can say, the advancement in information communication, especially the advent of the internet changed everything forever. And we cannot talk about this enough.

The rise in humanism
At least we now know that people fear God more than they love him, such that when an alternative showed up they left him with the speed of light. When social scientists started ascribing significant changes in societal organization to human effort, God started losing his place on the scheme of things. Then his many Thou shall nots were thrown back at him.

Seen thus, the factors that got us where we’re now are not only identifiable but can be worked on. So, why not we focus on working on them and stop trading blames. The blame-game can at most make certain quarters feel better about themselves; it just never changes anything.

In tune with Ayi Kwei Amah’s 1968 published The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, it’s beginning to dawn on me that the best books are yet to be written. This realization leans against the backdrop that I’m yet to arrive at the best book I’ve ever read, talk less of the best ever written. Of course, I’m not talking about religious masterpieces, such as Christianity’s Bible, Islams Koran, and Buddhists Sutras, which claim divine inspiration, and even divine authorship.

When on this platform I talked about and recommended Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese?, I thought it was about the best book ever, given its sophisticated simplicity and its capacity to make profound impact. Of Who Moved My Cheese? someone had commented: This book is all the miracle I’ve been asking for. And then came Tuesdays with Morrie; I’d read it through and through and reviewed it on this platform. Tuesdays appeared to be far more remarkable that it rated higher than the Cheese story. Being a report of a real life encounter, it just had this way of cutting deep into one’s mind and heart as would a sword forged under the proverbial dragon breathe.

Today, I’m up to yet another thriller: “BUY THE FUTURE: Learning to negotiate for a future better than your present“ – by Ghanaian Mensa Otabil. Without much ado, Otabil, in a single book, killed and nailed his subject of discourse: ‘the future’. What about the future, one may already begin to wonder. Otabil, though a Pentecostal preacher and founder of Ghana’s first private university – Central University College, employs the biblical story of Esau and Jacob to demonstrate how one’s future can be sold or bought – without the hand of the divine element. There is absolutely nothing preachy about the book, and the choice of that biblical story hinges on the fact that it’s one single story that embodies all the dynamics that play out in the journey from the past, through the present, to the future. In fact, Otabil radically holds that every human being alive and every nation on earth is either an Esau or a Jacob.

Now, something particularly triggered up the writing of “Buy the Future.” It is this, and he writes himself:

Why does our future often so contradict our present? Is there a way in which we can determine our future today? Are there some things we do that make us prone to success and others we do that make us prone to failure? Can we determine the outcome of our future today?

…[T]wo people can be born under very similar circumstances go through similar experiences and yet arrive at different destinies. People sit in the same classroom and listen to the same teacher, use the same textbooks, do the same assignments, sometimes even get the same grades, but then as they grow into their future roles, they do not achieve the same levels of success in their individual pursuits. The same applies to corporate bodies, organizations and nations.

The above situation was what got Otabil writing. And he killed it and nailed it. Trust me, the book is worth every effort you put into the search for it, because I can assure you that it’s going to be a hard task finding it. However,

seek and keep seeking, and you shall find.