Our deepest fear

yhello all,

One way I have discovered to relax after each day's work of seeing inspiring movies. It helps to really relax my nerves. One great actor, director and producer that i am really thrilled by his works is Tyler Perry ( Diary of a mad black woman, Madea's family reunion, Daddy's daughters etc). You get to think deeply after any of his movies. I recently read about him in Ebony magazine (October 2008's edition). Like my last article, He is someone i can also refer to as a contrarian thinker. His method of film production as been compared to that of Hollywood and he is making a cool name for himself. For any movie that would be produced at $50 million in Holywood, He would do the same for $10 million and would still make more profit than his Hollywood counterpart.

Over the weekend, I had to see a movie that I had seen before. The title is "Akeelah and the bee". Its a lovely film starring Lawrence Fishbone. Its about a small girl called Akeelah with her great spelling skills obviously inspired by her dad. Truth is I tried spelling some words along with them but it was not really that simple.I want to share with us a quote that was shared with Akeelah in the film. It got me really thinking and I just got more motivated.
Here is the quote

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
We ask ourselves, who am i to be brilliant, georgeous, talented and fabulous.
Actually, whoare you not to be.
We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us,and as we let our own light shine, We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.


Most of us have looked at the wealthy people in our world today and we have come to a conclusion that they are the only ones suitable to be. The question really is who are you not to be wealthy. Its also funny when we see people drive past us in posh cars and we just conclude that they dont have a clean source of wealth. we even refer to them as the wealthy ones or in Yoruba- "awon olowo" i.e the rich ones. question here is if they are the rich ones, then who are you?

I do hope we can pause here and look at the level where we are and really understand that we are responsible for that level which we find ourselves. The person stopping us from achieving greatness in life is the person we see when we look into the mirror.We can achieve greatness if only we can overcome our deepest fear which is that WE ARE POWERFUL BEYOND MEASURE.
Its a jolly ride at the top and i do hope to see you there.

Thinking on the contrary

Remember that the airplane takes off AGAINST THE WIND not with it - Henry Ford

yhello,

Been a while sort of. Not that i was tired of writing but was looking forward to creating a real big stir. I had been always in support of people who are not too rigid in their thinking.Sometimes, what it will take to get the job done is our ability to think on the contrary. We need to know the difference between been active and been productive.

Let me share this article titled "Two centuries of contrarian thinkers" written by Michal Lev-ram. This articles talks about 8 individuals.

1. Samuel Brannan (1819-1889)
Contrarian insight: the real money's is in the picks and shovels, not the gold
Legacy: the 1st publicist of the California gold rush bought every shovel in San Francisco before he ran through the street shouting "gold!gold! gold! from the American river!" Cisco Systems has become a $32 billion company using a similar strategy, selling th routers and switches that form the backbone of the internet.

2. Aaron Montgomery Ward (1844-1913)
Contrarian Insight: Cut out the middlemen.
Legacy: Ward founded the world's 1st mail order business, Montgomery Ward Co. in 1872. countless othr catalog based companies have followed in his footsteps, including infrmation-age retailers like Amazon.com

3. King Camp Gillette (1855-1932)
Contrarian insight: sell the razors cheap and the blades dear.
Legacy: Gillette's loss-leader strategy has been replicated by countless companies. Hewlett-Packard makes billions by peddling $30 ink catridges for its $100 printers and while Sony losses money on its Playstations, it cleans up on th games.

4. Henry Ford ( 1863-1947)
Contrarian insight: Create a mass market for mass produced goods.
Legacy: in 1914, Ford doubled the standard industrial wage and laid the foundation for today's consumer society, assembly-line production of goods made by workers paid just enought to afford them.

5. Coco Chanel (1883-1971)
Contrarian insight: (Men's) clothes make the woman.
Legacy: back when women wore rib-cracking corsets, Chanel appropriated menswear to dress the "second sex" for the business world. Women snapped up her boxy tweed jackets and pants, and her small Paris shop became an international powerhouse, its runaway success forever changing women's fashion.

6. Leo Burnett (1891-1971)
Contrarian insight: image is everything
Legacy: that's a truism today but when advertising pioneer Burnett got his start, most ads consisted of wordy product descriptions. Burnett created such enduring icons as Tony the Tiger and the Pillsbury Doughboy and proved that it is the picture, not the prose, that really captures the consumer's attention.

7. Juan Trippe (1899-1981)
Contrarian insight: cater to coach class
Legacy: in the 1940s, when air travel was still rservd for industrialists, movie stars, and royalty. Pan Am's troupe started selling "tourist class" tickets for his newly expanded global air routes. he paved the way for mass tourism and generations of discount airlines, from Laker Airways to Jetblue.

8. Mary Kay Ash (1918-2001)
Contrarian insight: sales team sell more than salespeople.
Legacy: the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics put a feminine twist on th multilevel marketing model pioneered by Amway. she championed cooperation, not competition, and brought more than a million women into the workforce to compete for her annual top sales prize, a pink Cadillac

see ya all

CRISIS IS COMING

It seems a bit alarming for the title i gave this piece but i think its the best for now. A simple definition of crisis or synonyms that comes to mind maybe chaos or disarray. I am not particular about about the English meaning but I just learnt about this word from the Chinese. Crisis in Chinese consist of two words namely Wei Ji. this two holds holds a very deep meaning.
Wei means Dangerous
Ji means Opportunity
So to the Chinese, crisis means a DANGEROUS OPPORTUNITY.
What a deep meaning and our world today can say how much this word had impacted the lives of the Chinese. The Chinese have been known to invest in places the Western world would not deem fit and they would succeed in it. to them, its a dangerous opportunity but how do you know which opportunity will pay you till you have tried it out. The Western world had believed that Africa is filled with despair and investing in its business arena is a waste of time, but their views are changing now because some people saw it as a dangerous opportunity and now it is paying them now.
When next you hear the word crisis, what comes to you, is it disarray/chaos or a dangerous oportunity. Dont ask me, i choose always to hear dangerous opportunity.

Excerpt from Leke Alder's book

yhello,

Books have a way of changing lives and one great point I have always noted is that great books are written by great people. I tend to read from some particular author most times because am sure i wont be disappointed.

This excerpt titled 'the philosophy of underachievement" is from a book written by Leke Alder. I have been privilege to go through some of his presentations that I am always looking out for the next one. His style of writing is unique, likewise his personality.

You want to do like me, do visit www.lekealder.com and be amazed to see a Nigerian doing great. It also makes me still remain assured that the best of brain that you can get anywhere are Nigerians.

Enjoyyyyyyyyyyyyy

The philosophy of under achievement
1. The shortest route to underachievement is called Nothing. Just do nothing. This is the first rule of underachievement. Fold your arms and just sit down. Stare into the skies, twiddle your thumbs, tap your knees; and if those seem too strenuous, meditate on Nothingness. Let your mind wander and day-dream but by all means do nothing.
2 Make indefinite plans. And each time you miss an opportunity to prove your worth, remind yourself of your grander plans.
3 Put in half effort into every job you have knowing that the man who said “Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might,” is a pathetic liar who doesn't understand the principle of efficient allocation of energy resources.
4 Always wait for perfect conditions before you start anything. If the conditions aren't right, don't even think of starting.
5 Spend your time hanging out in your friend’s office during working hours, but if that seems a little extreme, spend evenings at your club or your friend's house telling tall stories. The more effusive your stories and plans, the better. Do what Boys do: hang out and gist!
6 Wait for the perfect contract even if it takes 3 years. Why waste your time starting on small jobs when the real ones will soon come along?
7 Love process very much and don't focus on productivity. Indeed, the preparation for the assignment should be more than the assignment. Gather data, prepare to start and shuffle papers. You should indeed be commended for how far you've pushed the file through the bureaucratic labyrinth of your desk.
8 Always take 'No' for an answer. There is no need to argue. You are a liberal and a gentleman. You don't want to be crude.
9 Blame your past and if that doesn't work blame your parents, your wife, your girlfriend, past governments and even Mr. Alder's dogs. It really doesn't matter who; just blame someone.
10 Wait for inspiration to do your work. Always wait to be inspired before you do anything.
11 Do just enough in anything. Don't follow up.

Dynasties Of Poverty And The Education Challenge

Dynasties Of Poverty And The Education Challenge

By Reuben Abati

I spent the better part of Tuesday, April 29, attending the Global Leaders Forum organized by the Oceanic Bank at the Muson Centre Lagos, as part of the bank's Corporate Social Responsibility drive. The attraction was the array of super star speakers: Wole Soyinka (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1986), Rita Dove (1987 US Poet Laureate), Eric Maskin (Nobel Prize in Economics, 2007), and Henry Louis Gates Jnr. (leading US literary theorist, scholar and cosmopolitan intellectual) . There was a certain formlessness to the presentations on the theme of Human Capital Development and Wealth Creation, but all the speakers harped on one essential value as the key to wealth creation, human capacity development and national sovereignty, namely education.
Maskin had spoken about the challenges and the discontents of globalization in terms of disparity between the developed and the developing world. His final recommendation as a means of bridging the gap and releasing the potentials of developing countries is in the area of training and retraining workers to increase productivity, wages and international matching opportunities. And he had asked: who should pay for this education? Rita Dove offered a cultural analysis of the human capacity challenge when she submitted that young persons need to be taught experienced and recorded history, and introduced to the culture of reading/literacy in order to offer them access to the soulfulness of art and communication and doors of possibilities.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. began with the poser that knowledge is important, knowledge about the self, and like Dove, he had emphasized the need to teach young persons the history of their own cultural heritage.. He then went on to tell the story of W. E. B. Du Bois, and how he and others (Soyinka, Kwame Anthony Appiah) managed to publish the Encyclopaedia Africana (1999) after 27 years of trying to do so. Professor Soyinka commented on the human mind as a catalytic force and societal importance of human resource, the primary resource that ties together, and transforms inert, virtual and dynamic resources. He lamented the tragedy of brain drain in the Nigerian economy and the need to develop the local environment and nurture national human resource potentials through education. In the end, the Speakers drew attention to issues of leadership, culture, values, good governance and how education is so important to the building of human capacity.
If this was the only message that came out of the Oceanic Bank Global Forum, I believe the event truly served its purpose. There is indeed an emergency in the education sector in Nigeria which needs to be continually remarked upon. Nigeria used to be praised for its rich natural and human resource potential. The former is being mismanaged because the latter has lost its capacity for performance. Nigeria's rating on the competitiveness index is one of the lowest in the world. National Productivity is at an all-time low. No Nigerian university in the past five years has featured on the list of the best 200 universities in the world.
The situation is so bad that local employers of labour are now reluctant to employ graduates of Nigerian universities and polytechnics. You could cross the hurdle only if you have a First Class or a Second Class Upper degree, even with this, you are likely to be treated with suspicion. Many Nigerian employers now travel to Ghana and to Europe to recruit staff. This is why a large number of graduates of Nigerian universities seeing how so unworthy they seem to be in the eyes of their employers now go abroad, after two or three years in the Nigerian system to obtain a foreign qualification. They return to better jobs and higher positions. The few courageous employers of labour who are still recruiting local graduates really have to look for the good ones, through a series of tests and sheer faith, but even then these rough elements have to be trained and retrained at additional cost. The school to work equation in Nigeria is skewed; there is no serious national manpower projection and planning.
Four separate incidents occurred in the past week alone which would seem to offer an insight into the nature of the problem. At the University of Ibadan, the students had taken to the streets to protest incessant power outage and lack of water supply on campus. They held the campus hostage and then spilled into the Ibadan community. Electricity tariff has just been increased, average national electricity supply is down to about 1, 000 MW. This, in a country of over 140 million people. It is not as if the students were reacting to anything strange. They were just exasperated. The same week, the national union of university teachers, ASUU embarked on a warning strike for one week, the second time it would do so this year, to remind the Federal Government of the need to negotiate some of the issues responsible for the dispute between university teachers and the government since 2002.
This includes the sacking of 49 lecturers at the University of Ilorin in 2001, and ASUU's principled protest that they should be reinstated and should not have been victimised for taking part in a labour strike. In Nigeria, it is not only university teachers that go on strike, teachers at all levels do so, including primary schools. The third incident occurred on Wednesday, a day after the Oceanic Bank event. The Federal Minister of Education, Dr Igwe Aja Nwachuckwu, at a press conference to inaugurate the 2008 Education For All Week had lamented that 11 million Nigerian children of school age are out of school. These 11 million children according to the Minister are part of the 80 million children worldwide who are out of school. With Nigeria having more than ten per cent of the global average of children who are missing out on the opportunity to be educated, it is not surprising that Nigeria is not in a position to meet the six Education For All Goals by 2015. A few weeks before this official declaration, UNICEF sources had earlier been quoted as saying no less than 10 million children of school age are out of school in Nigeria.
Professor Wole Soyinka had laid the problem at the door step of anti-intellectualis m on the part of the Nigerian leadership. He also drew attention to an existing anti-culture of exclusion and its threat even at the infant level, as well as the narrow ghettoes of ignorance and religious fanaticism, by reminding the audience of how a nursing mother was murdered by her own pupils in a school in Gombe state because she had tried to stop the students from cheating in an examination hall. She was accused of having violated a religious tenet, and the pupils turned into a murderous mob. Such stories are familiar within the Nigerian education context.
At the university level, female lecturers are raped, strict male teachers are murdered by their own students, and with violent gangs having taken over the campuses, the students dictate to their teachers how they should be taught and sometimes what they should be taught and how they should be examined. The madness has been reported even at secondary and primary school levels. Again, a few days ago, some staff of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) who were in custody of the examinations papers for English Language in the on-going School Certificate Examination were attacked by armed robbers and dispossessed of the examination papers! We don't get to hear of such stories from Gambia, Sierra Leone and Ghana where the same exam is written. The identity of the exam paper robbers is still shrouded in mystery but it is not impossible that they are students. WAEC has now had to postpone the writing of the exam till May 14. This crisis is the harvest of many years of neglect of the education sector by distracted leaders at all levels who by the 80s had begun to play games with the future of Nigeria.
There is terrible decay in the Nigerian public school system. Public schools lack facilities; they are congested, the teachers are not paid on time; at the university level where the pay has been increased, facilities for quality instruction are unavailable, and generally, governments politicize education and treat the system with contempt. A military officer was once appointed the sole administrator of a first generation university!. In my days as a primary and secondary school student in this same country, Ministry of Education officials used to go onto the streets during office hours to arrest any child of school age, that they found on the street, out of school. It was a thing of shame for anybody's child to be arrested by "Roga" as they were called. But these days, it is taken for granted for children to be out of school. The 11 million children that the Minister spoke about (they are probably more than that) can be found on the streets fully engaged as beggars, pickpockets, and hawkers of all sorts of items including toothpick.
Rita Dove recommended the idea of mentoring and the promotion of a reading culture. But Nigeria is trapped in the age of illiteracy. Young persons no longer want to read. They have since joined the mad rush for lucre. Across the country, the 50th anniversary of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, a major classic is being celebrated. I was in Abuja the other week as compere of an evening of readings put together by the Federal Capital Territory Administration. I was astounded when a young lady, a final year English studies undergraduate, in a private conversation, could not establish the connection between Chinua Achebe and Things Fall Apart.
She insisted that Things Fall Apart was written by Peter Edochie and that the man in fact played the role of Okonkwo on television. She had never read the novel but she had watched the television series based on the novel, and Edochie who acted the lead role had made an impression on her as the author! I had to give her my copy of the Heinemann 50th anniversary edition of the novel, to purge her of her crime. Louis Gates Jr. had recommended the teaching of history to young people. He should be interested in the fact that a few years ago contemporary managers of the school curriculum in Nigeria suddenly decided that history was a useless subject and they had tried to remove it from the curriculum. When the media, and others protested, history was grudgingly returned to the curriculum as an optional subject!. Again at the Oceanic Bank event, Maskin had specifically recommended the education of low-skilled workers to deepen their capacity and by so doing create a competitive advantage for developing countries.
In this regard, there is also a serious crisis in Nigeria today. Nigeria is losing the capacity to maintain existing infrastructure, or develop new ones because its blue collar workers suffer a skills-deficit. Every country needs its machinists, tailors, plumbers, bricklayers, welders, mechanics, factory hands etc. Unfortunately, Nigeria is now saddled with mechanics who function by trial and error, and end up damaging people's cars, bricklayers who cannot read building plans, plumbers who cannot run pipes, tailors who cannot sew a fitting cloth without you having to amend it later. Many Nigerians are now going to neighbouring countries to look for labourers. This country once had Government Technical Colleges and Trade Centres where blue collar workers were trained. There was also under Obasanjo a Universal Basic Education Programme, but there was greater emphasis on the sharing of money.
The ruling class and the emergent Nigerian middle class are trying to protect their own children by sending them to private and privileged schools, which now exist from primary to the university level. The children in these schools are protected from the rot in the public school system. But what is being widened is the gap and the conflict between the classes. The children of the poor who are going to the terrible schools, are likely to end up being poor because they may not acquire the skills they need to survive in a world that can only become more competitive. This replication of poverty, and its social implications, is what Professor Charles Soludo, Central Bank Governor and moderator of the Oceanic Bank forum, referred to as "dynasties of poverty and the bleaching syndrome".
It is society that will bear the cost because the army of poorly educated children, trapped in empires of poverty, together with their cousins, the uneducated poor with attitudes, will make it impossible for the products of the privileged and private schools to enjoy the wealth and the opportunities they may have acquired. The children of the Nigerian rich in the future will have to live in houses with higher fences, stronger window braces, and drive bullet proof cars; they would have to protect themselves against the 11 million plus armed robbers and social invalids who are now being created.
Nor is the life of the rich idyllic in relation to education. The schools to which they send their children at home and abroad are expensive to say the least. Many parents out there are under pressure to pay school fees, or send their children abroad and we find here part of the explanation for the corruption in the land. To prevent social implosion, the signs of which are already here, Nigerian governments, federal, state and local, must wake up, and begin to pay attention to education. The secret of countries like Japan, Germany, Singapore, the United States, Britain, India, and Nigeria's defunct Western region, lies in the careful management of their national education system. The problem is not what to do; it is finding the will to act.

inspiring quotes

yhelo,
day by day, i read different books and am quite xcited by the quotes in them. i have developd the habit of collecting them and reading them over again. today, i just feel like sharing some of them on my blog. feel free to post your comments too.

1. bring ideas in, entertain them royally, for one of them may be king- Martin Van Doren
2. your past is important but it is not enough to control your future - Zig Ziglar
3. doing beats talking everytime
4. its your attitude not your aptitude that determines your altitude.
5. life consist of what man is thinking about all day - Ralph Waldo Emerson
6. the action of men are the best interpreters of their thots - John Locke
7. beware when d great God let loose a great thinker on the planet- Emerson


will still post some more.
take careeeeeee

THINK WEEK

THINK WEEK

note: this article is adapted from john maxwell's magazine.

With Palm Pilots and Blackberries, Bluetooth and Wifi, RSS and SMS, technology gives us access to absurd amounts of information, anytime, anywhere, at amazing speeds. Information bombards us from every angle, and we struggle to escape the virtual office.
With the workplace available at our fingertips, retreat from the demands of the office has become trickier but perhaps more important than ever. Constant connectivity takes its toll on our well-being, and threatens to wear us down. To restore our creativity and fight fatigue, a break from the pressing burdens of work is a must.
In an article for Workforce, Dr. Timothy Butler draws attention to the famed “think weeks” of Microsoft’s Bill Gates. As Butler notes, even Gates, whose genius gave impetus to the onset of the information age, makes time to disengage from the clutter of information around him. Twice a year, Gates disappears for a week to focus his thinking and refine his ideas.
Initially, thinking days strike us as inherently unproductive. We fear a day away from work will put us behind in the game. Yet, as Butler writes, “In the race to deal with the minute-to-minute, the longer term can suffer.” For a fresh perspective, we would be wise to follow Bill Gates’ lead.
As one of the most influential men in the world, Gates wields enormous responsibility, yet, he recognizes the imperative of removing himself from the daily grind. He not only unwinds from ongoing pressures during his “think weeks,” but he’s also able to wade through the opportunities and ideas around him by taking a clear look at the big picture.
Butler outlines a simple, three-step approach by which leaders can escape the vortex of immediacy to renew their outlook.
Stop
Prohibit yourself from checking emails or making work-related calls for a few days. Hone in on the biggest opportunity ahead of you, and free yourself from the details of your job. Dig deeply in a big idea, and avoid letting your thoughts get sucked into the muddle of urgent, yet relatively unimportant work.
Look
See your world anew by withdrawing to a place of solitude. A beachfront hotel or mountain cabin can be an ideal vantage point to look at life from a fresh perspective.
Listen
Attune your ears to new voices. Separate yourself from the usual drone of the workday by consulting with a friend in another industry or a prominent leader outside of your sphere of work.
Information overload can handicap the best of leaders. Getting away from time to time can be refreshingly restorative. Perhaps it’s time to explore a retreat from the chains of the mundane to strengthen your ability to think and act clearly.

To view the full text of “Taking Time to Think: The Irony of Bill Gates’ Legacy,” by Dr. Timothy Butler, visit:
http://www.workforce.com/section/01/article/24/52/11.html

PERSPECTIVES

PERSPECTIVES
This morning on my way to office, I had made it a point of duty to efficiently make use of my time. In the bus, I am either reading a book or thinking constructively. Some thoughts came back to me this morning from a message on marriage by my pastor, Sam Adeyemi. He was discussing about a man and he said to the woman,” Inside every man is a king and a fool, it is the one that you talk to that will respond.” I think most happy men today are always so because their wives have the right address to the king in them. No wonder the wives too are happy because when you address your husband as a king, then she is automatically a queen. Some women only know their husbands as fools and most times get to see their husbands as a school teacher who beats the students whenever they misbehave.
I actually want to use that quote not to discuss the relationship between a man and his wife but to discuss our dear nation, Nigeria. Let me rephrase the quote as this,” inside Nigeria is great opportunities and great problems; it is the one that we see and work towards that we get. Some of us live our lives daily in Nigeria and all we ever see is a country where things are never working. Even we sometimes take a step further to confess that things can never work in Nigeria. We fail to learn that when you see a place where everything is working, it is the people that are working it; nothing works on its own. Such people complain and lament always when things are not turning up for them and the nearest way out is to find somebody to take the blame and guess who they attack – the Government.
In this same country, I have read about some people who when given a cup filled with water to the middle will always see the cup as half filled and not as half empty. They know that Nigeria is a land filled with great opportunities and they have committed themselves to exploit it. Have you ever given a thought to why people from other countries (Americans, Asian etc) are leaving the comfort of their country to come and enjoy the hot scorching sun in Nigeria? No, they know that great business opportunities are in this country and they also know that Nigerians are not seeing them. Most of us are satisfied that a white man should come and start his company here and employ us to work for him. I am looking forward to times when we will be the ones employing the Whites to come and work for us.
My challenge today for you is that what your perspective on Nigeria is. Do you see a country filled with milk and honey or a country where things can and will never work. Remember,” inside Nigeria is great opportunities and great problems; it is the one that we see and work towards that we get.

Abilities or Mentalities

I promised to paste an excerpt from a book by Myles Munroe. Sometimes you read a book and you get to a place that you just have to pause because what you have just read carries so much weight. This excerpt is just like that. I keep reading it over and over again and it really changed my life. I have had the opportunity to show it to most of my friends so that we all can see ourselves in the true light and determine to change.
Myles Munroe in his book – Rediscovering the kingdom, narrated an experience he had. He said, he will never forget one meeting in Malaysia where he spoke to a group of Sony Company. During a meal, he was chatting with some of them- these were all high-powered individuals, each one of them a multimillionaire- when one of them told him the story of how he made his fortune. This individual was a Chinese gentleman who was in Malaysia as a consultant with Sony. After sharing his story with Myles, he asked,” Can you tell me why it is that people of your particular pigmentation, no matter what country they reside in, generally do not quite break through to true financial success? We Chinese usually make money wherever we go.” Myles noticed that the man was not at all vain o arrogant with his question, but was simply inquiring about an observation he had made in his travels. Myles replies that he really do not know and asked the man if he could tell him.
The man answered by saying, “During a trip to America, I noticed in every city I visited that when an Asian comes to town, even if he has nothing when he starts, he owns a business in just a few months. People of your pigmentation, on the other hand, even though most of them are very hard working, have been there for decades; yet most often do not own anything. After studying this for a while and talking to many of your people, I finally figured out that THE DIFFERENCE LIES NOT IN OUR ABILITIES, BUT IN OUR MENTALITIES. More often than not, when your people go into a city, they go looking for a job. It is different with Asians. We Chinese never look for jobs. When we go into a city, we are looking for a business. We may need to hold a job for a while, but that is only until we can buy or start a business of our own.”

My trip to Cotonou

MY TRIP TO COTONOU
I was at Cotonou, Benin Republic on Friday, 2nd May. I was amazed at the car market they have there and was thinking in terms of the country's economy. The first point of reflection was when I had to change the naira on me to their currency; the exchange rate was 1000cfa to N288. The way they talk about millions there might deceive you if you think they are talking about a huge sum of money. Also it looks great when I noticed that they still spend coins there. The highest coin they have is 1000cfas. I thought how it would be if our N1000 naira is just a coin. I really wonder why coins don’t seem to work here. Even little children would reject the coins when you give it to them. I am writing about this trip not actually because of their monetary system or our own but I noticed some issues that did not really go down with me. It kept me thinking how we “blacks” have allowed “whites” to dominate us. We might say we already have our independence from them but are we the ones really on control.
Let me describe the normal scene at the Cotonou car market.
The market is dominated by the Lebanese. They have built in wooden houses with just the roof covering it used as their offices. They are mostly the young guys and some few old ones. They keep puffing cigars as if they run a locomotive train. They enjoy the cool of the air though the normal temperature is killing. It’s as if we blacks are the ones the sun is made for. For every car dealers, they have blacks working for them who are continuously in the sun looking for prospective buyers. When they eventually get a buyer, they allow the buyer to see his car of choice and when they reach an agreement, they lead the buyer to the office to meet the white guy. There they negotiate the cost of the car and they get the cash. When the buyer gets down, you now see other people around asking for settlement. I wonder why blacks settled for the little money you would give them as settlement.
I really wonder when blacks will be
· the owner of the major markets in our country
· initiate great investment ideas that even whites will be interested in
· refuse to get the crumbs that falls from the table of white guys and go for the larger share of the food
· become the people developing our nation and not really waiting for some assistance from anywhere.
I really keep wondering. All these can really be if we all can start to take our stand NOW. Lets start putting our mind and brain to work. We all pray for God’s blessing but the thought that comes to me this morning when thinking about the word of God is that God is going to bless the work of our hands if we obey Him. I wonder how many people God would have blessed if they have something doing.
Let’s get productive and thinking. I would tomorrow put an excerpt from a book by Myles Munroe on his encounter with some Asians and their findings about the black man. It’s a call to stand and take what is rightly ours.
Thanks for your time.

Leadership Course for Busy People@ Daystar

i want to use this medium to invite you for a training programme i attended in march. this version is for busy people because it is designed to run for just 11 saturdays starting from may 3rd.

details are:

DAYSTAR LEADERSHIP ACADEMY (Basic Certificate Course)

Daystar Leadership Academy is a leadership development school designed to fire you up a while helping you discover, develop and maximize your God-given potentials.
DLA offers training for any career field,

there is something that will suit your interest and goals; be it ministry, business, engineering, law, banking, marketing, e.t.c and thats justs just the beginning.
Course module

Personal Transformation

Success Habits

Financial Management

Project Management

System Development

LeadershipLeadership Development

Delegation strategiesEntrepreneurship

The Supernatural

Family success I

Organizational Growth

Excellence oriented organization

Personal Health Management

Dynamics of vision

tuition fee is #7000.

u can register with cash on may 1st between 10-1pm at 71 kudirat abiola way,oregun ikeja.

lecture venue is

plot A3C ikosi road, beside GTBank

oregun industrial estate,ikeja,lagos

lecture time

9.30am-3.30pm

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The Nigerian Dream III

DREAM OR VISION?
WHO’S RESPONSIBILTY: THE GOVERNMENT OR THE CITIZENZ?
At this stage, I believe sincerely we all have the belief that we need a Nigerian dream and we have a better idea of what the dream should be. Like we said, this dream is the picture of our preferred future. The question then arises that who should be the dreamer. For so long, we have put the responsibility on our government to do the dreaming for us. We believe that because they are in charge of our resources, they must tell us how it must be done. To some extent, we are partly right but mostly wrong. The truth about government is that it is an institution that God recognizes and places much value on. For any government to be in power, it has to do with God’s approval. So if the government gives to us the dream of our preferred future, it’s a great idea but where I disagree is that this dream is not the picture of the government’s preferred picture but the picture of our preferred picture. No institution or person can tell us how bright or colorful our future is to be. We, the citizens must be responsible in doing the work of dreaming and then working with the government to actualize it. We need to start dreaming and voicing out our dreams. We need to open up to the government what we want our tomorrow to be like. One funny thing is that it is we the citizens that get into government and most times, we go in without any idea of what out tomorrow will be like. This will forever lead to waste of resources. Our dreams must become our expectation which when they meet with opportunities brings about great results.
Let Nigerians begin to dream of how
Our educational sector should be like – where quality education is free for all.
Our political terrain should be like – where people go into politics to serve and not to embezzle.
Our economy/policy making sector should be like – where our naira will be well valued
The road network and housing schemes should be like – house for all and roads free of potholes.
Our social, arts, media should be like - let me talk on the media. The government has no business owning media houses. It is the citizen’s duty. They should work to say the truth as it is and not adjusted. We need individuals to dream, fight this cause and take over the media from the government. Fact is that it’s only in developing nations that we still have government controlled media houses and when the few privately owned media houses do their work, they either get closed down, harassed or locked up in jail. We must stand against this. But first we must dream of the right situation and then actualize our dream. Very soon, the Bureau of Public Enterprise might be selling media houses that are presently government controlled. We must start dreaming of a day when all media houses are controlled and owned by the citizens so that when the opportunity to buy comes up, it will be the good case of expectation meeting with opportunity. If we don’t dream now, foreigners are doing the dreaming for us and when such opportunities come up, they will be the ones buying them up.

Let’s be free to dream. It’s our responsibility. I am looking forward to when each one of us will write to describe the Nigeria of our dream. These collective dreams will change this nation for good.
IT’S OUR RESPONSIBILTY TO DREAM
OUR DREAMS TODAY IS OUR FUTURE TOMORROW
NO DREAM TODAY, NO PREFERRED TOMORROW
WAKE UP THE SLEEPING GIANTS.
BE FREE TO DREAM AGAIN
I would recommend a book written by Sam Adeyemi titled “The Second Revolution”. It will be of great help. I do hope to review the book one day on this blog.
Also, there are some very good initiatives on a new Nigeria. you can visit these sites for more details

www.newnigeriaclub.net

www.gemstone2025.org

Afolabi, Albert Abiodun
daalberto@yahoo.com
08034424156,07028754801

The Nigerian Dream II

The Nigerian Dream II

I intend in this article to continue on what I started. Day by day, I believe more in the future of this country and nothing gives me that more hope than we, the present generation, who would be the architect of these developments. At this stage I believe we are tired of passing the blame, its time to start acting on all our dreams.
One of the questions I asked in the last article is that what is the Nigerian dream?
First, in trying to define a dream, I came up with these
1. A DREAM OR VISION IS THE PICTURE OF A PREFERABLE PICTURE.
2. Dreams will surely outlive the dreamers i.e. we have the capacity to have dreams that will still be talked about even when we are no more. Thomas Edison is no more today but we talk about him when we talk about the light bulb and many others like that.
3. God created every body with a large capacity to dream.
THE Nigerian dream should be all that we expect in our country. We could try to make a list of our expectations and start working towards the reality.
* Well developed educational sector where the real value of education is cherished.
* Well developed political system where people see political office as a call to serve not as a call to enrich their pockets.
* Well developed family system where good values are passed on from the parents to their children. Most of us suffer today because our parents were never the good examples we could have emulated.
* Well developed economy where every business is worth it. Where our naira is highly valued as it has once been.
* Good road networks which makes travelling at any point in time safe.
* Good security system where policemen would really be our friends and not our enemies. Where at any site of problem, a man in uniform comes in and people are secured because their rights will be protected.
There are still many more, which we can still mention but all we can mention are a product of our dreams. In as much as I believe in a new Nigeria, I dare each and every one of us to start dreaming. Lets then pass along our dreams to others and let’s take positive actions to get them actualized.

The Nigerian Dream

The Nigerian Dream I
This is a project I started for a while now and possibly might bring up a book on it.
FOCUS
Every developed country has a dream and vision through which the nation has been thriving on. This is well described to their citizens. We don’t have a Nigerian dream. I have come to a conclusion that we are to be held responsible for it. We have put too much blame on the government. Let stand up and take charge.
IT’S OUR WORLD
Let me start by saying that where and what we are today is the results of dreams of some people in some past years. Dreams are like the visions to get us into true reality. Without it, our nation has no hope.
Taking a look at an average American child, in built in them is a dream called the American Dream. They have something to look forward to. They have a clear picture of what their tomorrow is going to be like. This, research has proven why their nation is where they are today. They did not get their by sudden flight. A great man said that the great heights that great men have achieved were not done by sudden flight, but they while their mates were sleeping, toiled all through the night. I deduced from this that if all developed nations are where they are today by toiling all through the night, it means Nigerians have been sleeping when others are toiling and the irony is that we feel we should be in the same place they are.
These questions should be ringing in our hearts.
What is the Nigerian dream?
Whose responsibility is it to dream for us?
How do we actualize these dreams when we have one?
I hope to pick up from here next time.

Welcome to my blog

Welcome to my blog.
Just felt great sharing my thoughts online. This blog is called impact because the only reason why we are on this planet is to do just that i.e. impact. Many just impress. Impression can be good but they don’t last. They fade away as soon as they appear. It’s just like a flash in a pan. It’s just for that moment. The sad thing about many people is that their lives are just like that. You hear about them once and that's all about them. To impact, you need take Jesus as your perfect mentor, who came to this world and changed the world. An account of Him in the book of mark chapter 7:37 says "THE PEOPLE WERE ASTONISHED BECAUSE HE HAD DONE ALL THINGS PERFECTLY WELL". That’s impact. I am determined to pattern my life after Jesus, to create an impact wherever I am. Touching people's life is my delight. Bringing solution to this world is my pleasure and doing all that He will allow me do.To start with, here is a thought line –
Where you are today?
Can you think of how many people have been there before?
How many do you still talk about?
How many have never been mentioned at all?
What we do today makes history tomorrow.

Love you all

Albert 08034424156,07028754801