How to Transform

By Ituah Ighodalo

If one looks at the world’s ecosystem and the background of creation, one cannot but wonder in amazement at the perfection created by God. As far as I am concerned, the only imperfection in the world today is ironically the creation put in place to rule the earth. I am irrevocably convinced that the source of most of man’s suffering in the world today is man himself (his self centeredness) and his Godlessness. The inability to care about anything but himself alone. For the Black man, the situation is worse; it is very painful for anyone to suffer in a world of outstanding resources freely provided by the Almighty. There is nothing that man needs, that has not been provided; for the Black man it is an absurdity of “water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink”.

I want therefore to share with you a topic I consider important and hopefully life changing. As long as a man keeps limiting his thoughts to himself, as long as he keeps thinking only within himself, he cannot do better than himself, no matter how rich or wealthy he is; he cannot do better than himself and therefore he cannot make giant strides or make outstanding progress in life.

When we limit our lives to ourselves and our thinking doesn’t go beyond self, we literally destroy the lives of other people. No wonder our country Nigeria is going through very critical periods because we are surrounded by people on a daily basis who limit their thinking to themselves and therefore they destroy the lives of others.

About six or seven years ago, in the church, I suddenly got a phone call that one of our sisters was critically ill; so I left everything I was doing and ran to the hospital in Anthony where she was and she was already in a coma. At that time she was a senior member of our Teenage Church about 16 or 17 years old. We took her from that hospital around 8 or 9 pm and rushed her to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). We got there around 10 pm in the emergency ward only to find that there was only one doctor on duty. Initially they refused to accept this girl because of a certain process. However on my contacting a young man I know in LUTH; she was subsequently admitted. She was then dumped on a small table because there was no bed. There was this small doctor on duty running among the 8 – 10 accident cases, sweating profusely. He will run to one patient, fix something, run to the other one fix another thing. I had to call and draw his attention that this girl needed his attention as he did not pay her any attention since our arrival.

This is supposed to be the primary teaching hospital of this nation. This is the hospital we should call the pride of Nigeria and yet there is only one doctor on duty on emergency with no facilities whatsoever. I was wondering to myself about what happened to Nigeria that things went so bad.
When I was growing up in Ibadan, the University College Hospital, (UCH) Ibadan, was a leading hospital in West Africa, it was the 8th best hospital in the entire world and here we are in LUTH with no facilities and no doctors. The nurses were slow and indifferent. They couldn’t be bothered, and couldn’t care less if somebody was alive or sick. Then suddenly, the doctor announced that we needed blood. So we began looking for  blood, and went all over Surulere. We eventually found 2 pints which she used up immediately. Then there was no more blood from the blood bank, so they said: “who will donate blood? We got those who will donate but there was no blood bag. By now, the time was 2 am; we went looking for blood bags. Then one girl said she knows where we can get blood bags. We then drove that night crossing from one barrier in Mushin to another barrier in Mushin, because all the gates were locked for security purposes; we have become prisoners in our own homes. Finally we found the blood bags under one nurse’s bed in her home. We asked her: ‘what are you doing with the blood bags underneath your bed?’ She answered that that is how she makes her own money. We finally got the blood bags and then at 4:30 am the girl died. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life. Then I looked at myself; looked at Nigeria and asked how a nation that can be so blessed yet be so poor.

What is the problem with the Black man? It is the limits of his thinking. Hear what someone called Lord Fredrick Luggard said about the Black man when he became governor general of Nigeria around 1907 or thereabout.

“In character and temperament the typical African of all his race types is a happy, shiftless excitable person lacking in self control, lacking in discipline, lacking in foresight, full of personal vanity, with a little sense of veracity, fond of music, his thoughts are concentrated on the events of the moment and he suffers little of the apprehension of the future or grief of the past.”

A hundred years later and the African is still living in the same way and everybody is wondering: ‘what is happening to us? What is happening to Nigeria? What is happening to the average African person?’ If a man is poor in intellect, it would eventually reflect in his wellbeing and that’s why a lot of formerly rich Africans die extremely poor. The world is always predictable, there will always be good times and there will always be bad times. There would always be times of plenty and times of famine. But if you are in the right place, you discover that famine or not you will prosper.

How are you still thinking and what are you thinking about? What is the total summation and collection of your thoughts? Are you lacking in self control? Are you lacking in discipline? Are you lacking in foresight? Are you full of personal vanity? Do you have little sense for veracity? Are you fond of excessive music? Are your thoughts concentrated on the events and the feelings of the moment? Are you suffering from little apprehension of the future or grief of the past? Are you lacking in organization, deficient in management, deficient in the control of man and resources. Welcome to the world of the African.

I still cannot get over the way that Colonel Moummar Gaddafi died. It was typically African. Typically and traditionally a limited thought to himself, for 42 years he ruled in Libya and within six months everything had collapsed because the man really had neither depth nor substance. What surprises me is the capacity of the African to allow another African to dominate him for 42 years and that’s what frightens me about a lot of us; we have no thoughts, no depth, no thinking and we are willing to be led by the mouth by men not capable to polish our shoes. And we run to these places, run to these men, prostrate before them and allow them to dominate our lives because we are fearful, anxious, ignorant, limited, lazy, incompetent and unable to decide where our future is going. The Black man needs to change his thinking and character.

TIMELESS EDITORIAL - Nigeria’s Homosexuality Bill: Why it is Pro-norm and the West Hypocritical

Nothing in recent times has gripped the imagination, drawn the ire (both for and against) and stirred the soul (and pens and tongues) of a very wide cross section of the public as the Homosexuality Act recently passed by the National Assembly, to await the President’s ratification. With it has come surprising yet predictable threats by Western nations to cut off aid and the collective rejection of the threats by sections of the society. The bill prescribes a 14-year jail term for anyone entering into same-sex 'marriage' or civil union.

Those who abet or aid such unions could also be sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, as would “any person who registers, operates or participates in homosexual clubs, societies and organisations” - a provision that seems to target homosexuality advocacy groups as well. The bill also sets out a 10-year sentence for “any person who... directly or indirectly makes public show of same-sex amorous relationships”.

If as reliable sources hint that the Embassy of the United States in Nigeria is presently wooing local human rights groups with funding with which to jump into the fray to heckle the populace with well-orchestrated anti-norm harangue, it would amount to the Americans meddling in the internal affairs of another sovereign state.

The trumpeters of human rights are in this case the bold-faced hypocrites. It is widely known, for instance, that virtually every jurisdiction in the West does not permit polygamy in their laws. But virtually all African countries allow polygamy, which is against the law in European and American countries.

The question might arise as to why people who are freely consenting and believe it (not that we do) to be the right thing for them should not be allowed to marry more than one partner, particularly since the concept of marriage is being redefined to allow same sex partners anyway.

As for the twin ‘consenting adults’ and ‘nobody is harmed’ arguments, the poser in the preceding paragraph puts to test the worn out argument of two consenting adults being entitled to do with themselves what they like and that law should not regulate what goes on in the privacy of people’s homes.

Firstly, what goes on between two people in the privacy of their homes has always been regulated by law. Conspiracy is a crime in most jurisdictions never mind that the people may never carry out their plans, the mere expressed intention to commit certain crimes is in itself a crime in the law of many societies.

The idea of rendering actions legal because nobody is harmed (in reality, seen to be harmed) is even more tenuous. What constitutes harm is an amorphous subject amenable to various interpretations. While there is overwhelming damning evidence for instance that two adults who mutually consent to divorce happily (that’s hilarious) leave their children scarred for life, divorce remains a very popular and very legal means of handling problems in marriage.

In contrast, there are even amusing examples of harmless (if one were to use ‘their’ standards) activities like streaking, and euthanasia which are still illegal in many ‘advanced’ societies. At the risk of stretching the example, one must also ask how polygamy which is consented to is more harmful than the acrimonious divorces that we see on Jerry Springer and Judge Judy. Clearly, therefore, those preaching tolerance from the burnished but rotten rostrums should be warming a seat in the pew.

And now we come to the issue of Aid. Were it not for the ruling class that has plundered the land for decades, the country would not have been subjected to the unfortunate tragic-comedy of UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s rant as a spokesperson of sorts for the West. The charade of the well-oiled high-stakes Aid industry and its beneficiaries has been rather well documented, but will bear some consideration.

Pre-independence, the West did the stealing by itself, brazenly carting away resources and artefacts most of which are displayed proudly in their museums to date without remorse – imagine paying to go to your neighbour’s house to watch the TV he stole from your house.

Post-independence, they do the stealing through their stooges who have put hundreds of billions of dollars (one authority estimate $300 billion since independence) of our commonwealth in the safe keeping of Mr Cameron and his compatriots. Somehow in the warped logic of Mr Cameron, it is morally upright to rebuke your partners in crime on issues of homosexual legislation but have no problem receiving stolen goods the next day.

Rather than give Africa Aid, the West should repatriate all the money they daily collude with African leaders to steal from their people; return the money to its rightful owners instead of giving us a tiny part of the interest on the stolen money and cheekily calling it Aid. In addition, the West should focus on fair trade rather than Aid. Till date, several Western countries subsidize their economy but instruct our clueless leaders to remove subsidy of every kind.

It would have been comical if it were not tragic to threaten us with the withdrawal of Aid when Nigerians in Diaspora repatriated $10 billion last year alone.

It is crucially important to understand that righteousness cannot be legislated. Laws – those of God and Man – do not on their own make people good. The purpose of the law is to regulate behaviour by suppressing (not eradicating) evil desires and thereby sustain society and ensure its healthy continuance in perpetuity.

With contribution from Wole Olabanji, who works full-time raising a godly family and part-time as an architect in real estate development advisory. He also devotes considerable time to providing Biblical perspective to tackling contemporary challenges in business and governance.

EDITORIAL: 'Sanusi: fanning into flame embers of national discord'

With the controversy over the proposed introduction of Islamic banking still raging, we consider it grossly irresponsible of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi to drag the country into yet another decidedly Islamic organisation.
The controversial CBN boss must have taken his cue from erstwhile military ruler Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida who in 1986 took a similar unilateral decision that constituted an act of impunity to the people of the Federal Republic.

Without the approval of the governing organs of the Federal Military Government, Mr Babangida put together a mission led by a private citizen, the then Sultan of Sokoto, Ibrahim Dasuki, to enlist Nigeria formally into the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (now Organisation of Islamic Cooperation), OIC.

Rubbing salt in the wound, the military honcho of the day set up an obnoxious diversionary 20-member panel to “examine the implications of the country’s full membership of the organisation”.
When Mr Babangida’s deputy, Chief of General Staff Commodore Ubitu Ukiwe, objected to the outrageous back-door move by Mr Babangida, saying he could not recall the matter coming before the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC), the highest organ of government in the land at the moment, he was in effect shown the way out on account of it.

Mr Babangida was not done. Two years later, he again unilaterally made Nigeria a shareholder in the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), whose “basic condition for membership is that the prospective member country should be a member of the (OIC), pay its contribution to the capital of the Bank and be willing to accept such terms and conditions as may be decided upon by the IsDB Board of Governors.” Both commitments remain unrevoked.

The OIC, headquartered in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is in its own words, “an inter-governmental organization ... which has membership of 57 states spread over four continents. The Organization is the collective voice of the Muslim world and ensuring to safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world.”

According to media reports, Mr Sanusi has gone ahead to pay the sum of about $US5 million to the nascent Islamic body as Nigeria’s contribution to the International Islamic Liquidity Management (IILM) Corporation. His is an act tantamount to burning the bridge back to shore when casting out to sea, declaring, in effect, ‘The die is cast.’

Based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that Islamic body’s mission is: “Enabling a future global Islamic finance industry with greater connectivity, stability and sophistication”.

The corporation, which was established in October 2010 by the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) is endowed with the mandate “to create and issue short-term Shari’ah-compliant financial instruments to facilitate effective cross-border Islamic liquidity management. By creating more liquid Islamic financial markets for institutions offering Islamic financial services (IIFS), IILM aims to enhance cross-border investment flows, international linkages and financial stability.”

We consider it an act of gross impunity for Mr Sanusi to have bypassed the National Assembly – in effect the people – as well as the Presidency to unwarrantedly invest the nation’s US$5Million in a self-advertised Islamic body, thus violating the essential character of the federation. Not to see this development as fundamentally wrong is to be blinded by religious prejudice.

While we concede the fact that Muslims have a right to set up Islamic banks should they so wish, we have to state in the strongest terms that government funds may not be commingled with or put to any religious purpose. What is expected of government is the setting up of guidelines and oversight functions as apply to and other commercial banks, whether through the CBN or some other such body. You should put your money only where your mouth is. Nigerians did NOT have a say in this matter.

What Mr Sanusi has done is unconstitutional and highly illegal. His present action (discounting previous ones) seems to suggest that religious (and other) zealots in positions of authority in Nigeria would not be bothered by the sensibilities of the overall populace and hence do not care if the nation disintegrates along religious and similar fault lines.

With the back-breaking brouhaha over Boko Haram ongoing and tearing at the very fabric of the national polity, Mr Sanusi has foisted yet another unnecessary controversy on the nation. His is an example of callous officialdom. The people simply do not need this peppery addition to their plate to chew ahead of an already ominous 2012.

The rights of non-Muslim Nigerian citizens have been infringed upon by Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s brazen and crass action clearly borne out of his religious persuasion and personal aggrandisement. (“H.E. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Governor Central Bank of Nigeria” is listed as a member of the Governing Board, “the strategy and policy making body of IILM”. His deputy, Dr. Kingsley Moghalu, is a member of the body’s Board Executive Committee.)

The share of non-Muslim members of the Nigerian commonwealth has been “invested” in an Islamic Corporation though they are not Muslim and had been guaranteed freedom of religion by the Constitution.

Mr Sanusi, however, seems to be unrelenting as he appears to be a law unto himself. According to him, his plan is for Nigeria to sell its first Shariah-compliant bonds within 18 months as sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest economy. He is reported to have boasted that his aim is for Nigeria to become “a hub of Islamic finance”.

VACANCY FOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

JOB SPECIFICATION/DESCRIPTION FOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Vacancy exists for this position in a media/publishing firm involved in the production of books, magazines and newspapers. A first degree in any field. Fresh graduate or maximum of two years work experience. Female candidates only.

Desired Skills Set:- An excellent command of written & spoken English.
- Must have drive and ability to work without supervision
- Ability to stay calm under pressure.
- A great attention to detail
- Ability to manage time effectively.
- Self motivation and ability to use own initiative.
- Must have flair for reading and writing across several genres.
- Good knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite is compulsory
- Knowledge of any of Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat Reader, CorelDraw, Adobe Indesign will be an added advantage.

Job Functions: support senior editorial staff including acting as a personal assistant to editors
 liaise with writers, reporters, photographers, printers, designers and production staff to negotiate and monitor time frames for stages in the publishing process
 organise and research story, article, book or magazine projects to tight deadlines
 amend and correct articles and manuscripts; summarise written material; update and rewrite material;
 assess articles/manuscripts and make recommendations on their publication to senior editorial staff
 routine and general administrative tasks/duties; including front office duties and facility management/maintenance
 conduct interviews
 writing of own articles and reports
 using your own specialist knowledge to contribute ideas
 source for freelancers or other writers/authors to produce new materials
 assist with the art direction and design of publications
 assist with sales, marketing and advertising of company products and services and deliver sales/marketing targets 
 assist with and help in maintaining and updating company's Facebook Page, Blog and website

Interested applicants should send their CV and a Cover Letter as ONE attachment stating the advertised position as their subject to timelesscourage@yahoo.co.uk. The Cover Letter should be no more than one page in Ms-Word and should be the first page of the CV. Applications not in this format will not be entertained. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Applications closes on Friday December 16, 2011