Category: RELATIONSHIP

Dear Nigerian worker, remember these and be at peace…

Cornelius NdubuisiLeave a comment

may day

As we celebrate May Day, International Workers’ Day, it is right and just that we should call the following facts to mind. They will help us persevere in our difficulties, they will help us stay strong amidst the weakening tendencies of the recession, and they will inspire us to aspire to even greater heights.

1. You’re a child of God: You must be very clear about your identity, and begin to walk in the light of it. This is because your identity projects your image to others; people see you the way you see yourself, and relate with you the way you carry yourself. Don’t ask me how; it works like magic. You want me to tell you what it means to be a child of God? It means you’re gorgeous, talented, fabulous, terrific, incredible, and beautiful. You’re designed to wow! Go through Genesis to Revelation and see what Father God has said concerning you. Find there that your insurance policy is comprehensive, that you’re guaranteed prosperity and good success, and that you’re to fear not and be worry-free. And God asked, “Is there anything that is too hard for me?” Elsewhere He said, “I am not a man that I should lie.”

2. You’re Nigerian and live in Nigeria: Only average Nigerians suffer. It is no news that typical Nigerians are pro at the blame-game and are best at hoping even against hope. All real Nigerians do is thrive! We’re not being braggadocious about it; the whole world knows about us. We’re diehard. We’re innovative. We’re exceptionally brilliant. We change things. We find a way any way. We brave odds. We break old records and set unreachable ones. In fact, we’re a people like no other people; unique in every sense of the word. And so, you need to key into your Nigerianness, which is a mental thing. Real Nigerians don’t take no for an answer; they thrive against all odds. The Nigerian market is the envy of global investors. With 170,000,000+ human beings, anything can be sold!

3. The world is up for grasp: It’s a free world! Anybody from anywhere at any time can be anything in this world. Anyone that tells you otherwise is a big fat liar. The story of Obama is exactly the story of a man from nowhere becoming the most powerful man on the planet and staying so for an uninterrupted 8 years. If you can’t imagine yourself realizing your noblest aspiration – whatever it may be – then you need not just a mental reorientation but a mental revolution. It should be super-abundantly clear to you that anything is possible, not just for some but for you also.

4. You’re unique! The fact of every individual’s uniqueness has to sink and settle at the very bottom of your subconscious. You’re not just unique in your looks; you’re also unique in every sense of that word. Your purpose is unique to you. Your talents are customized; no one does and can do anything you do just the way you do it. We all come original! This knowledge will make you realize that there is no competition in destiny. In this life, all we do is do our thing and afterwards walk away. That’s just what this life is about. Nothing else. And so, don’t spend it living other people’s lives or being weighed down by the burden of external expectations.

Happy Workers’ Day!!!

“WE-MEN”must change our ways…

Cornelius NdubuisiLeave a comment
men
I’ve read that the rate of divorce is growing by geometric progression. I’ve heard many a man blame it on feminism. They say men are cut out for family headship. They say that’s how God made it. How much we can use God to cover our tracks! Look closely at individual divorce cases and find that it is usually more about ‘power’ than anything else. Yes, infidelity is part of it, but there is far more to cheating than meets the eye. Lemme leave it here.
 
Read, read, read, and see that feminism is only a reaction not an action. Women were so pushed to the wall that bouncing back became natural. Truth be told, the history of the human society interestingly coincides with the history of gross gender inequality/women oppression. Can you imagine that women’s right to vote was actually debated for decades? What inhumanity! What nonsense! Imagine that it took American men about 144 years to decide that women were capable of voting. Imagine that women’s right to own property was debated over years. Imagine that a Jewish woman was counted as property. That’s insane! If not madness, what would make a man batter an adult woman; wife battery is the craziest thing I know. And we want them to always be docile cows ready for milking. I’ve heard men say that women are nothing but sex machines and children making factory. What’s that?!?
 
The other day I heard a young man say that the best way to ‘tie a woman down’ while continuing in one’s ‘sexcapades’ is to get her pregnant as soon as she weans her baby so that she’d remain in the maze of children-making until she loses every flare for going out. Friends, is this guy not mad? And most men are as mad, and even madder.
 
I’m not being sympathetic with women here because it’s not necessary. I’m only saying that we owe our problem to men’s reluctance to cede some powers to women. We owe it to most men being egomaniacs, so power drunk that they want every woman to worship them.
 
My point: We men must change our ways. We must rethink a number of things about gender we inherited from generations of long ago. Trust me, the most loyal women I know are those that were ’empowered’ by their husbands. One told me she owes 70% of whatever she is to her husband. Anty Dayo said she owes 100% of her everything to her husband. Both women also professed 100% loyalty to their husbands.
 
Finally, I know that gender struggles is complex and far bigger than the picture I just painted. However, it begins with men realizing that they need to cede some of the absolute power they inherited from their forefathers to their women. It is urgent. And funnily enough, there is a way you get back whatever you give to women; they’re the most generous people I know.
 
P.S.: Women may hail this post, men may say whatever. But I don’t care. #iTeachTruth

The power of the ancients

Cornelius NdubuisiLeave a comment
ancients
 
Today’s scholarship has become an exercise in copying. I mean, the more entries you’ve on your bibliography the higher your paper, dissertation or thesis is rated or graded. We have come to call it research, and what is research if not the legitimization of plagiarism. More often than not, an academic paper is all about what everyone else said but the author. They start off quoting and quoting and quoting, then proceed to analyze and analyze and analyze those quotes, and then close by drawing obvious conclusions.
 
I woke up this morning with this thought on my mind: How did the ancients do it? #howdidtheyusetodoit. How could Aristotle write those big fat volumes with very little dose of ‘quotings’? How did Plato compose all those dialogues with little recourse to other materials? How did St. Paul produce those 13 (or 14) of the 27 books of the New Testament credited to him with only a minimal recourse to Old Testament scriptures? How did Thomas Aquinas write those volumes that make up his “Summa Theoligica” with little external inputs? How did Kant and Nietzsche write those seeming crazy pieces of theirs? How did Hume, Locke and Hobbes do it? #iStillTheWonder. Don’t get it twisted, it wasn’t like they weren’t quoting; they were, but very very very minimal. They were more of airing their views than reporting the finds of others.
 
My point: One thing school does to us is insult our intelligence. For instance, the dominant question on the lips of project supervisors is: What authority backs you? Or, get me the material where you found it. I’m angry because we’re not promoting original thinking; I realized that the ancients did it by indulging original thinking. And so we must rediscover the power of original thinking, and begin to employ them in both academic works and engaging our dawn to dusk problems.
 
This example will do. Peter Drucker has become the father of ‘scientific’ management. How did it happen? When he set out to research into that area, he found that there was little or no materials available. He then went on to deploy the power of original thinking, and here we are!
 
P.S. To academic guys in the house, be informed that I’m not feeling like anything. I’m simply insisting that students are capable of original thinking and should be given a chance to try.

A different kind of friendship – with benefit!

Cornelius NdubuisiLeave a comment

obama-and-benedict

The singular best way to lose in an American presidential election is be Catholic. Here’s what I mean: of the 44 past American presidents plus Trump, only John F. Kennedy has been Catholic, and you know how he ended – assassinated! In fact, the America voters ensured JFK made it abundantly clear to them that he wasn’t gonna sell out to the Pope, and he did give them his word on that. The next person that came closest was John Kerry, who got kicked out at the Democratic primaries. My point is, Americanism and Catholicism appear to be parallel lines; Americans just can’t imagine a POTUS that bows down to the pope, or kisses the Ring of the Fisherman (pope’s ring), symbolic of submission to the papacy.
 
However, guess where Pope Benedict XVI celebrated his 81st birthday? You’re correct if your guess was the White House. It was an elaborate celebration, one that lasted 90 minutes. In fact, of this event MailOnline writes, “The pontiff’s 90-minute stay at the White House was accompanied by the kind of pomp and pageantry rarely seen even on grounds accustomed to routinely welcoming royalty and the world’s most important leaders.” You may equally not have known that while the American Civil War lasted, the arrowheads of both warring camps, Abraham Lincoln (Union) and Jefferson Davis (Confederates), were corresponding with Pope Pius IX – who replied their letters. Needless to say that the friendship between the Catholic Church and the United States of America is deep!
 
Moreover, this is squarely a different kind of friendship, a friendship based on benefit. While America got the power and might, the Catholic Church got the intelligence. You don’t need to be told that the Catholic presence is the most present presence ever! Wherever you see Catholic priests and their religious men and women, and they are indeed everywhere, there you have seen the pope – everything is wired back to him. For America, that’s an invaluable asset. When America was after the head of Osama Bin Ladin, for instance, they simply tapped into the Vatican’s surveillance. On the flip side, when Pope John Paul II wanted to shutdown communism, he knew whom exactly to call on – George Bush, Snr.
 
My point: If the Catholic Church could do this, friendship with benefit I mean, then I see no reason why you should be more Catholic than the pope. While you keep at the traditional friendship, the type built on shared values, also try your hands on this other kind of friendship, the one strictly built on interests and benefits.