Who loves to be told the truth – always? Everybody, I suppose. Who loves to be told as much as a lie, just one lie? Nobody, I guess. But the irony is that the same Everybody who always wants to be told the truth, the same Somebody who abhors lies, and would not even accept as much as a slice of lie, is the same Somebody that tells lies, or, at least, has told one before – for one reason or another; in one way or the other. I should immediately give kudos to whoever hasn’t told as much as one lie before – including the infamous white lie; yours is definitely the kingdom of heaven. And I hereby exclude such a person from the sweeping generalization I earlier made – that Everybody tells or has told a lie before.

If Adam had his way he would have told God a lie; he resorted to the blame-game because no lie was readily available. Eve had no option but to resort to the last option: blame the serpent. I bet Adam and Eve would have “lied” if there was a third human party in Eden. Their actions reveal that humans are hardwired to evading responsibility, which is one motivation behind lying. However, the point I’m driving at here is that human nature is wont to lying. Put differently, lying is a natural disposition. How so, one may already be wondering. Simple: the very first law of nature is self-preservation, and lying is its loyal and faithful servant.

Moreover, the higher life we all aspire to abhors lying. In Christian ethics, for instance, lying is a no small sin. It is so big a sin that Apostle Paul mentioned it as one of those sins that could deny one access to the kingdom of heaven; he even ranked it with sexual immorality. Everyday morality sees telling of lies the same way. There is this way a liar is just seen as an undesirable element and a thief. For lying, a spouse could go as far as suing for divorce; it is grave matter.

The simultaneous ubiquity (almost everybody does it) and abhorrence (everybody hates it) of lies got me thinking. Why should a liar hate being lied to? This is funny. And to this effect a joke was once told, one for which you’ll die laughing:

A burglar found this sign on the door of a safe house he was about to blow: “Please do not use dynamite. This safe is not locked. Just turn the knob.” The instant he turned the knob a sand bag fell on him, the premises were flood-lit and sirens woke the entire neighbourhood. When the Master visited the man in prison he found him bitter: “How am I ever going to trust another human being again?”

[Adapted from Anthony de Mello’s One Minute Nonsense]

Now, it is important to know and understand why people lie. Of course, this knowledge wouldn’t justify any one lie. It will essentially serve two reasons: firstly, knowing the motivation behind lying will help us discourage lying in those under our watch. For instance, being in the know that fear can cause one to lie, one may choose to always begin one’s interrogation by allaying the other of their fears. Secondly, this knowledge will help one in classifying and relating with liars. Pieces of information from one who is wont to lying to deceive, for instance, would have to always be double-checked.

1. Some people lie because they’re afraid: The classical example here is Sarah, the patriarch Abraham’s wife. Her immediate reaction to the prophecy of her childbearing was laughter. And when she was queried to this effect, she lied – “because she was afraid.” Yes, some people lie because they’re either afraid of punishment or may risk losing something dear to them telling the truth. How on earth is a woman supposed to tell her husband the truth of her cheating, or a husband tell his wife of his? Who is not afraid of divorce?

To relate with people whose lying is motivated by fear: always allay them of their fears. In this regard, a mother may tell her son that he should simply tell the truth and that’s it, no big deal. These people should know that truth sets free – in one way or the other. Of course, put mosquitoes away and malaria is no more.

2. Some people lie as part of being over-protective: Parents and guardians are particularly guilty here, including friends and self-acclaimed well-meaning acquaintances. The thinking that a child be protected from the devastating effect the news of a parent’s death may bring may lead to his/her being told the parent travelled faraway and won’t be coming back for a really long time. In a bid to install sexual restraint in a daughter, mum may conjure up all kinds of lies, with some as terrible as “you’ll get pregnant by any form of bodily contact with the opposite sex.” And when the child discovers it was a lie and confronts such a parent, the response is usually: “I said it for our own good; I was protecting you.”

How do you relate with these ones? You may not doubt their protective intent, but since all lie is lie you may wish to begin to cross-check facts that seem overly protective coming from those quarters.

3. Some people lie to retain their holier-than-thou reputation: Some people want to be more Catholic than the Pope; they want to be more American than Americans. Having gained the holier-than-thou reputation, the next thing is to retain it. And so, when they do things that are inconsistent with this reputation, they can tell all the lies on the planet to cover up. They will say things like: ”How on earth do you think I’m capable of a thing like that? Don’t you know I’m a holy person, and don’t you know that people who do such things will burn in hell?”

These ones are simply deceiving themselves; leave them.

4. Some people lie to mislead: Many teachers and preachers belong here. Because they want to win people over to their side of the divide they tell lies. In a bid to grow their own congregation some pastors will say all kinds of horrible things about other churches, so as to have members of those churches being disparaged come over to theirs.

One should particular not be gullible. Always cross-check. Always think. Always research. Always ask questions. And, importantly, never take anyone that castigates others seriously.

5. Most people lie because they’re thieves:
The classical example here is Judas Iscariot. He would protest that the 300 denarii worth of ointment being splashed on Jesus’ feet would have been sold and the money given to the poor, not because he cared one bit about the poor but because he was a thief. The most potent instrument readily available to thieves is lies, which is why it’s a consensus that liars are thieves – if not of material possessions, of truth.

Oh, no! The only way to relate with thieves is to keep them at an arm’s length. To suspect their every word and deed. Yes, to show them charity, but from a distance.

The Men Who Built America is the title of History.com’s docudrama chronicling how America, as we know, admire, and even adore it today, came about. Although America prides herself as God’s Own Country, men it was who built it. And, interestingly, the men showcased in the docudrama were not the ‘many men’; no, they were just five (5) in number: Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Henry Ford. Of course, there is no doubt that the rest of America’s manhood had their hands on the nation-building project, but it was the combined weight pulled by those titans at their respective stations that sealed America’s development fate.

Vanderbilt University speaks to the very first of them all – Cornelius Vanderbilt. He was more. The Commodore, a nickname that accrued from his shipping exploits, was the indisputable king of America’s rail transport, a industry he’d push to the limits. And its trickle down on the economy was massive.

The Ohio oilman, John D. Rockefeller, ran the American oil industry as a near-monopoly, given that he owned about 90% of oil refineries in America. He made so much money that he stands as the richest modern American. And, of course, the Rockefeller Foundation still ministers to present societal needs.

America grew vertical on Andrew Carnegie’s steel; he made the building of skyscrapers possible by flooding the market with steel.

There is today a giant financial institution in America called J.P. Morgan; that’s him. His influence on America’s financial life was so profound that “Morganization” is a valid economic concept (meaning: to install order in a chaotic or overly competitive industry). Morgan was the one man who had the capacity to financially bail out the US government. The Panama Canal is reputed as one of the most ambitious projects undertaken by human beings; Morgan’s US Steel it was that did it.

Ford Motors and the Ford Foundation came down to us from Henry Ford. It is said that he democratized automobile, making it possible for the average American to afford one.

However one tries to see it, the hand these men bore in building contemporary America can never be over emphasized. And because America is home to the amazing discoveries and inventions that revolutionalized the planet, we can say, by extension, that the men who built America built the planet.

The point of this seemingly lengthy exposé on the men who built America is to arrive at this one particularly peculiar trait that was common to all of them: the government didn’t exist. They provided for themselves whatever infrastructure they needed for the smooth running of their business. I repeat: government is one word that didn’t matter to them. And when a particular presidential aspirant, William Jennings Bryan, came howling threats at them, hinting a clampdown on big business if he’s elected, these men came together at a roundtable, and there adopted Morgan’s suggestion: We buy our president. And they did buy William McKinley.

Time to face home: Nigeria. That this house has fallen is no news. Achebe aptly captured it in these words: This is an example of a country that has fallen down; it has collapsed. And so, time spent on further exposing or lamenting the situation amounts to time wasted indeed. Focusing on the way forward will serve us better.

The most important question anyone can ask in or about Nigeria right now must touch on the way forward for our national experience. It is essentially this: Who will rebuild Nigeria? The men who built America already said how: ignore the government. This point owes its truism to the fact that the government and its policies has become a good reason for inaction to many a Nigerian citizen. Here, it is always the government to blame, and the name Buhari is probably the most castigated name on the planet, second only to Jonathan – his immediate predecessor.

Come to think of it, what difference will blaming the government make? It can at best constitute an inexcusable excuse. And, don’t get me wrong, I know that the government plays the backbone role in the country’s body, especially in the economic sphere, but who says those with backbone problems can’t use wheelchair to cruise around town. Trust me, you can do it the Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan and Ford’s way.

Finally, the men and women who can ignore Buhari and his change agenda are those that can rebuild Nigeria. And you really never know how much of a rebuilder you can be until you give it a try. Just try; you never know.

On November 8, 1995, Abacha’s ruling Provisional Council confirmed the October 31 – same year – death sentence passed on Ken Saro-Wiwa. 3 days later he (Ken) and 8 other Ogoni activists were hanged in Port Harcourt. Any good student of Nigerian history knows that that raised a lot of dust within and outside Nigeria, including the suspension of Nigeria from Commonwealth.

Here’s what many people don’t know about that episode, and was reported by Ken Jr., his son. Saro-Wiwa actually believed the sentence would not be carried out; he reposed confidence in his public image for which he thought he was big enough for nothing to happen to him; he felt untouchable for being Abacha’s friend. In all, he thought they were at most trying to intimidate his supporters and afterwards leave him alone.

But he was wrong. And he paid for it with his very own life. We can already infer that he would’ve acted differently, he would’ve threaded more cautiously, he would’ve deployed more tact in the execution of his Ogoni emancipation project had he not leaned against the backdrop of those faulty and costly assumptions.

Now, here’s the catch: “presumption is a vice.” Of course, we’re only permitted to play the presumption game when we must’ve exhausted all genuine sources of knowledge, but yet be very open to the shell it could fire at us if we happen to be wrong. For me, whenever I presume I prepare to be more wrong than possibly right. You know why? People’s intentions and motives flow like a river; they change. In the Saro-Wiwa instance, he didn’t know he wasn’t dealing with the same Abacha anymore since his Niger delta human rights activism was the biggest threat to Abacha’s oil business at the time. And he paid for it.

One last word: watch it with presumption.

Come to think of it, how did Bill Gates become so successful that he’s remained the undisputed richest man on the planet for an impressive number of years? “Forbes” is a reliable source. A number of factors could be said to be responsible for that, including hard work, smartness, solid work ethic, shrewdness, and what have you.

However, all the preceding identified factors relating to Gates’s outstanding success count for nothing in the face of the most dominant factor. What is this factor, you may be wondering already. It is this: LUCK (the version of it I personally work with is GRACE). Yes, Bill Gates was lucky. He himself knew about this very well and would say it so often that the producers of one of the biographical documentaries on him opened it with Gates’s uttering of the words: I was lucky. And would you be surprised to know that one of the biographical documentaries on Steve Jobs opened with Jobs’s utterance of same words? Indeed, both transgenerational legends know they owe their success story to luck, far more than they can ever owe it to any other determinant or predictor of success.

This is where Malcolm Gladwell’s OUTLIERS come in. I just ate up the book to its very last word and I’m far better off for it. And the best I can offer you right now is insist that you do all you earthly can to grab a copy and eat it up! You’d be glad you did.

Malcolm Gladwell is not just an awesome writer but a critical thinker and a catalyst for rapid personal and societal development. His ideas are breathtaking and his solutions are revolutionary. Else, who would have thought that “luck,” playing out in as much as one’s date of birth and ethnicity, is the single most important predictor and determinant of success.

How could we have known that the Asians owe their mathematical prowess to their language? How could we have known that the rice paddies of China produced the most resilient human beings in the world? How could we have known that growing children “concertedly” was better than letting them evolve just that way? How could we have known that the Korean Power Difference Index, PDI, was responsible for the repeated crashing of Korean planes – until something was done about it? We really wouldn’t have known until someone gave the whole scheme of things a rethink.

Reading Gladwell’s OUTLIERS, I resolutely came to the conclusion that there is no such person as a “self-made man or woman.” Even Gladwell agrees with me when he concluded, thus: “The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.”

OUTLIERS will humble you; it will leave you more grateful than you already are – especially to unusual events and forgotten people. And, it will make you focus on creating more advantages for people instead of whipping them to work harder.

Who is an outlier? Find out.

*myGratitude: to Obinna Udeh for recommending the book; to Arinze Nwafor for lending me his copy.

I’ve always maintained that my sense of gender, and more so my advocacy for gender equality, didn’t develop in adulthood; the three amazing human beings (mum, Ada and Nne) with whom I spent the first 12 years of my life made me realize that advocacy for gender equality is every real man’s job. And so, I always had it from childhood. To say the least, they so loved me and did next to everything for me that I can only think so highly of them. The thought of going to school without Nne, my younger sister, for instance, made me sick; though quite younger, she was such an equal, and always suggested the next move with facility. Ada is 5 years older and always gave me a reason to put up a fight, and I never won any of those fights; I never lost either since mum always came to the rescue of her dearest son. And then mum was my angel; she loved me thoroughly as all I need do was ask – anything.

While I basked in the euphoria of an amazing childhood, one filled with lots of laughter and love, I didn’t know that as part of his morning prayer, the ‘ancient Jew’ (I’m not sure about now) thanks God that he wasn’t made a woman. There is no gainsaying that this is informed by the no-pride of place women were accorded in that society; a woman was essentially one of her husband’s possessions – ranked with his house, cattle, and stuffs. For them, too, a woman was religiously unclean in more ways than a man can ever be, especially during her monthly period and after childbirth. With all due respect to Jewish rich heritage, those inhumanities meted out to women were largely uncalled for. To call a spade a spade, it was squarely the case of social injustice. Too bad.

The Jews are not as guilty as traditional Africans in the inhuman treatment of women. For me, and for a good number of people, female genital mutilation, FGM, is the biggest social evil. What about sex slavery, what about underage marriage, what about honour killing, what about female-child molestation, what about rape? What about the fact that in some African societies it must always be the woman that killed her husband, and she’s made to swear in the most despicable way – like drink the bathwater of the corpse – that she didn’t do it? What about the fact that she gets to get nothing on the demise of her husband – if there’s no child to show for the marriage? What about the fact that there is a differential payment regime for men and woman – for equal work! These reasons are just enough to trigger and sustain the fight for gender equality.

Come to think of it, it really doesn’t make sense to think that there is anything so special about being a man – over and above being a woman. It just doesn’t make sense. Frankly, it really doesn’t. To say the least, a woman is as special as a man, and since everyone is special, it does us no good talking about it.

However, we must be sure to advocate for gender equality within the borders of social engineering; we must keep in mind the irreplaceability of gender roles. Given that no two different things can be equal in any respect, the ‘equality’ in ‘gender equality’ does not imply mathematical equality, such as expressed in 1+1=2. No, it speaks of social equality such as expressed in 1+1=1. To this effect, we must stop engaging the concept of gender equality wrongly. And one way of doing this is to always make recourse to social engineering.

By social engineering is meant the manner in which society is organized and run so as to stay up and running. One of these ways is the assignment of gender roles, reflected in the fact that men should be this and women should do that. You probably can already see that gender inequality was born here, where, like sharing a piece of cake to two people, one got a lion share and the other got both the left over and servitude. But remember that nobody assigned the woman the role of childbirth and uncommon intuition; nature also assigned gender roles, like who inseminates and who carries, delivers and breastfeeds the baby.

The reality of social engineering thus explained, one can already see that pursuing mathematical equality will put a knife on the things that held us together and we would have fallen apart before we knew it. With this, marriage degenerates into competition and the leadership hitherto supplied by the headship of manhood becomes threatened.

Why not we define gender equality in the following terms: the expunging of inhumanities meted out to women; the empowerment of women to explore the myriads of opportunities that colour our dawn to dusk; the respect and recognition of women in marriages by men and in-laws, wherein the man is only primus inter pares – first among equals; the socialization of the girlchild to aspire to the noblest aspirations possible without conceiving of any barrier whatsoever; to remind women that motherhood is as much a career that demands excellence as are the legal and medical practices; to remind women that no matter how much the man puts into the child’s upbringing, she must necessarily supply the lion share, having received so much in this regard from the Creator…

On the whole,