The Young Christian Brother, The Lady and The Pastor

This young man made one of the best decisions of his life; he gave his life to Christ. He was in his late teens and just in the first year of university at this time. This young man came with lots of swag and style from high school and Christ didn’t take any of the swags and style away. In fact, his style and swag kept growing day by day. Young Christian sisters aren’t blind too; a responsible Christian brother with style and charm is very hard to miss. Before long, more than a few ladies wanted brother for themselves. I don’t mean girls only from church now, I mean girls everywhere.  So, it became mildly challenging for brother to continue following the instructions of Job 31:1. It became standard routine for young ladies to show up at his door on courtesy visits or just to pick his brain on certain topics like academics, fashion and scriptures too.

 He’s managed to keep things under control as expected by every devoted Christian brother, until one day…

It was raining, he was walking home with this girl from class, they have had occasional moments which they have ignored and feelings they have repressed. This day the rain became so heavy they had to run together in the rain to the girl’s apartment which was closer to them compared to the young man's. A boy and a girl giggling at each other while running in the rain is a romantic sight to behold.

Getting to the girl’s apartment, they were both drenched and some features of the lady became more visible and the ripped body of the brother was now easily seen. They were both panting in rhythms at regular intervals, having seconds long eye contacts.

 Finally, the girl broke the silence

“Too bad I don’t I don’t have clothes for you to change into”

Boy responded

“As if I will wear your clothes before”

The girl gently removed her jacket making more features visible and bent to squeeze the water in her soaked jacket into a bucket.

Now, Dear brother was looking at a slim but curvy 22year-old lady in drenched leggings and some kind of white spaghetti silk top. Brother’s training in scriptures was telling him that this was an appearance of the devil, but brother wouldn’t agree because the view was beautiful, and something this beautiful could only be made by the creator. 
The lady heard the brother mumbling some tongues but brother’s gaze was still fixed on God’s creation.

“What on earth are you saying, brother?”

She asked this with all sarcasm, staring into his eyes.

Brother was fully aware of the situation he’s gotten himself into. He had three options, stay, be reasonable and logical enough to talk his way out of the situation. 
Secondly, kiss the lady and leave everything in God’s hands.

Thirdly, flee.

He fled. 
This nigga is a hero and when I see him, I will ask for his autograph. He actually fled. Damn!

                                                  **                                                     

He fled right to his pastor

 “excuse me, sir, I think I need deliverance”.

The pastor was taken aback a little, why will one of the most prayerful brothers in his church say something like this. The pastor at this time was in his mid-forties and married.

“You are not just a member of the church, you are like a son to me, so tell me everything, I won’t judge you”.

“Sir, every time I see dark slim pretty curvy ladies, I get some sort of electrical impulses all over my body. Sometimes, I get confused and lightheaded, my body temperature significantly rises and my pupils become kind of dilated”

The pastor nodded with some kind of smirk on his face.

“So you are saying you have some kind of erection when you see the body of a lady you are attracted to?”

The brother replies

 “Yes, sir." 

and continues in an attempt to defend the physiology he wasn't proud of

  

 "I know a Christian brother like myself shouldn’t be having this canal feeling and…”

Pastor cuts in

“Hey, just hold on a bit, I don’t want us to drag this any further. You are in your early twenties and if you see a naked lady, as in, the type you just described and you feel nothing? Then, you will need deliverance for real, probably deliverance from the spirit of impotence or something. And, just because you are born again Christian doesn’t mean your anatomy and physiology will not function properly. 
So,  I am not going to deliver you from being a healthy young man”.


People that exercise regularly are likely to overcome sexual temptation better than those who pray.
Anonymous

< Code Girl />

Code Girl All characters and scenarios in this post are entirely fictional Because of the partnership between airtel and facebook, it was possible for a young girl in the village of some state in western Nigeria to begin learning how to code. What I mean by coding is writing some set of instructions for the computer in order to solve specific problems, these lines of code packaged together is called software.

The partnership of facebook and airtel in Africa gave birth to something called Free basics. Free basics is a service that allows people to access information on the internet for free (without paying for data subscription).

The little girl began to learn great stuff like the legendary "hello world", variables, assignments, operators etc. She was having the best time of her life or her mama's mobile phone.

She got to an important aspect of programming called conditions. Conditional statements help in decision making.
 For example, a girl wants to separate her black dresses from the red ones. Lol, a funny thought just crossed my mind. Girls ain't the only ones that wear dresses nowadays, some boys also do and they call themselves cross-dressers. I won't mention names because this is not a gossip post. I am sorry for the diversion.

So, the girl prefers to keep her black dresses in the upper drawer of her closet and the red ones in the drawer below.  Writing a conditional statement for this task will look like this:

The simple flow 

 if (dress.color == black){ // if dress is color black  
  push to upper drawer;  
 } else { // since we are arranging only red and black dresses we can assume that if the dress is not red it's black  
  push to lower drawer;  
 }  

One on faithful day, her mom sent her to the next street to buy palm oil and eggs. She said and I quote

buy one bottle of palm oil, and if they have eggs, buy five

This fascinating young coder gets to her destination to buy what her mama sent her. She confirmed that palm oil was available, she got a bottle and she proceeded to ask for eggs. The seller confirms that she has eggs. You expect her to buy five eggs. But her mama said

buy one bottle of palm oil, and if they have eggs, buy five

She bought a bottle of palm oil and when she confirmed that they had eggs in stock too, she decided to buy four more bottles of palm oil to make it five bottles.

Getting home to her mama, her mama was furious. She wanted to spank her because she wondered how a girl as smart as her daughter couldn't run a simple errand. In protest, the little girl in between her sobs said: "Mama, I can explain.. I did exactly what you asked ". She picked up her school slate, hanged it on the wall and began to explain basic control flow to her mama right in front of their little house.

 buy(OneBottleOfPalmOil); //Buy one bottle of palm oil  
 if ( eggIsAvailable) { //If they have eggs  
      buy(OneBottleOfPalmOil * 5) //Buy Five  
 }  

People passing by stopped paid some attention to the little girl's explanation of conditional statements to her mama.
That was how a 7-year-old girl gave the first coding tutorial to half of her community without ever having access to a computer or the Internet.

Thanks for your time.

The Boy who saw Jesus.

This kid was hopping across the church hall with a loose shoe lace. So, a young pastor beckoned and called the boy. “Over here kid, what is your name ?”  The boy answered. The young pastor bent down to tie the lad’s shoe lace and the conversation continued. “ John, always check your shoe laces, especially when you are about to run. Do you know why I am telling you this?”  John responded with a horizontal oscillatory head movement, signifying that he doesn’t know why he should look at his own feet before running.  You may step on stray laces and injure yourself by falling when running . "I am sure we both don’t want that to happen", the pastor said.

The boy gave the typical kid’s nod.

The young man gave the kid a fondly ruffle on his locks and said "off you go John and be care…” before he could finish the kid was pacing again and he was gone to his peers. He swallowed the remainder of his  statement , sighed and continued smiling as he looked at the boy enviously.

How priceless, the view of children playing in peace and harmony without the awareness of race, ethnic background, political affiliations, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or any other thing that tears the whole world apart as we know it today.

 These children will continue  to relate in peace and love  until someone tells them otherwise.

For long parents in the western part of my country corrects their children in this manner:

 ‘Ade, see the way you are shouting, are you an Agatu?’ or ‘Stop spitting all around the compound are you a Malam?’  This creates a certain illusion of superiority in these children's minds , which is the beginning of national disaster.

No  tribe is superior to another.

 I remember how surprised I was when I learnt that the vice chancellor of my school then was Ebira. I couldn’t believe it.  He was a professor of some kind of mathematics I have never heard of before. The Ebira people I met earlier in Ekiti were not so educated.They were mostly local farmers. So, it was entirely shocking for me to encounter an Ebira professor of Mathematics, but I was glad I did, because my ignorance was educated. I met a lot of classy Ebira people during my undergraduate days and don’t let us even get started about their girls, some of them own asses that could change the world.

Back to my story about a boy seeing Jesus.

The service  started and the children departed to the children’s church. After a while, the service was coming to the last phase, it was time for sermon and a senior pastor was the one taking the sermon. Some stray kids were coming back to the main church and of course, John was one of them.

 The sermon was going exactly as the preacher has planned. This man’s kinda sermon is not really one that excites the members of the church. He was not preaching about what members love to hear. He was talking about sacrifice, about members letting go of themselves in service to others. So, at the peak of his sermon, he asked a rhetorical question. ‘brethen, how many of you have seen Jesus?’ No one answered except  John ( the boy with the loosed stray shoe-lace earlier).  He raised up his little hands and said ‘I have seen Jesus. I even saw him this morning’, he said.

Everyone was so confused, there was silence and all eyes were on him.

“Jesus helped me lace my shoe this morning”. He pointed at the young pastor “see, that is Jesus na”. Everyone gave a loud roar of laughter and some kind of relief. Trust me, from what I have read about  the coming of  Jesus, a lot of people are not eager to see him come like a thief in the night as he promised.

The pastor asked the kid “Why do you think Pastor Ebube Emeka Obasi is Jesus?” everybody gave a laugh at the preacher’s sarcasm.

What really happened,

Earlier that day, in children school. The children teacher told them of the story of how Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. And he concluded that Jesus helps people with matters they can't resolve by themselves, especially matters related to their feet because he washed the feet of his disciples, and, that same Jesus helped him with his shoes. Hmmm, very smart kid.

We need to do so much good until kids start mistaking us for Jesus.

Only in a Country like Nigeria

I Captain Nigeria, wasn't born in the 1970s but I do know a little of what happened those days. Thank God for the internet. On the 1st of October, 1979, Olusegun Obasanjo, a  then military head of state,handed over to an elected civilian president. How noble of him.

Just a few year after,  Nigeria thought they have bided Military rule goodbye,  there came another coup d'etat in the Nigerian political history. This coup was supported by Buhari our present democratic president. After the success of the coup, Buhari was selected as the Miltary head of state and Idiagbon his de facto vice president. In my own terms, I am concluding that Buhari played a major role in effecting a drastic setback in the history our political development.

January 1, 1983, Buhari gave his maiden speech but this time he said nothing like "I belong to everybody and nobody". In his own wisdom, he suspended the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1979) and ran the country with an Iron fist with no respect for human rights.

Later in 1985, the most experienced man in coup planning took over from Buhari. He wasn't so tough after all. Major. Gen. Ibrahim Babaginda was involved in the planning of a lot of coups in Nigeria history (From July 1966, February 1976, December 1983, August 1985 to December 1985).

Now I didn't have to google this one because it happened right in front of my very eyes, Abdulsalam Abubakar handed over to Olusegun Obasanjo on May 29, 1999, and the constitution came back to live on May 5, 1999. I was eight years old at this time anyways and I definitely didn't know the true difference between democratic and civilian rule except for the uniforms. All I could tell was that people were happy and called Obasanjo's administration ijoba alagbada

The funny thing is, men that were thorough enemies of democracy, the rule of law and human rights had the guts and audacity to campaign and run to be presidents in a democratic setting. Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Babangida annulled the famous June 12 elections and still felt the entitlement to run  in the 2007 and 2011 presidential elections.

I am confident that it is only in a country like Nigeria that a leader like Buhari could run and win election to become president despite his political history.

WAR HERO

War Hero

Just like every other kid growing up, Captain Nigeria had dreams of his own. Dreams, fantasies and goals, all combined in my little head. Dreams of wanting to be that guy that will make the difference, fantasies of what it will feel like to fall and be in love. The love dream started after watching a few Nollywood and Bollywood movies. The thoughts of being the guy that will champion a cause for significant improvement in the quality of life we live in this country was more pressing. Of all my dreams and their backups, I love this one the most. This is the dream of being a War hero, you know? like the movies? But Nigeria, my country was at peace at this time. It was profoundly easy to dream of my heroic acts of war when we were at peace. Now that Nigeria is technically at war with herself, the dream of being a War hero is easier described than lived. So, I will start with the easy part by describing my dream of being a hero.

Imagine me, leading a classified special unit team of the Nigeria Military on a combat mission against the terrorist sect in the Northern part of the country. As in, we are banging doors down of the sect’s HQ, I am barking out orders to members of my unit and we are in constant communication with command center in Abuja in real time. The president is present with a bunch of potbellied Joint Chiefs, Minister of Defense, National Security Adviser not Dasuki, watching the live feeds of our exploits from the safety of the conference room in defense headquarters. In the midst of the chaos and adrenaline rush I hear this voice that seems so far but clear in a typical northern accent saying “Captain Sola-Ojo, do you read me?” and I reply at the top of my voice “Loud and clear, Mr. President” he waits for a while and says “Son, be safe. Let’s end this once and por all and take no frisoners”. I say nothing except “yes sir”. Just like that, we go in into the dark source of the terror that troubles our nation, fighting with great strength like we were an army of a thousand soldiers and like smoke disappears into air, the end of Boko Haram. We emerged from this depths of dark terror into blossom light of peace which our country will bask in once again - courtesy of Captain Nigeria and his men.

Feeling good with myself now that I have done something important with my life. I just completed a mission to save our country from those who threaten our livelihood and freedom. The president invites my team to White House! Oh sorry I meant Aso Rock!, he says if he had his way he would have given myself and my team medals on National TV but for the sake of our safety and that of our family there will be no such thing. I totally agreed with him because I don’t want Boko Haram sympathizers targeting my friends reading this piece. And Captain Nigeria replies in his baritone “If we wanted applause sir, we would have joined the circus.” He shakes our hands firmly and thanks us on behalf of all Nigerians for our fearless service. Some monies were sent to our accounts but we don’t care about that, the fact that our country is safe again was enough payment.

How sweet, how heroic? Brave me….. I know you wanna paste my portrait on your wall but hold on till you hear the second thought I had about the other way the mission could go.
I imagined again that the story could actually go the other way. My black ass could have just been captured and the General that assigned us to the mission will not even be able to recall my name without checking the list of deceased members of the armed forces that have paid the ultimate price in the service to their country, or worse still, a video is posted online where a man in mask forces me to read some written text that convicts me of being an infidel and enemy of Allah. Blah blah blah

And you and I know what masks men do to soldiers that wants to die for their countries on youtube. Ha! and I remember I may not see my mommy again.

Dedicated to the men and women of our armed forces that have lost their lives in service to our country Nigeria. May God grant their families and friends the fortitude to bear the loss. Amen.

The Apple Situation

 THE APPLE SITUATION

*

I have always feared the end results of choices, situations and particularly relationships. Ladies love to start troubles they weren’t prepared to finish. They got us into the apple situation we are in, in the first place and they have done absolutely nothing to rectify the demise they have put the whole world. But, this does not mean that, I am not putting the whole blame on women because I think Adam should have just followed God’s direct instruction and not eat the damn apple. After he had downed the apple, he should have taken responsibility for what Eve did and appeal to God on her behalf. Men would have been born as heroes if he had displayed this simple act of responsibility and selflessness. But, I won’t blame him so much anyways because ladies have their ways of making young men eat whichever apples they want them to eat.

The classic incident keeps reoccurring ever since. Men are always eager to go to the end of the world on errands with the intentions of putting smiles on these women’s faces. These missions become a do or die affair especially when these ladies are extremely beautiful.

Beauty is relative because it lies solely in the eye of the beholder.

So, when she comes at you with that smiley face, laughing at your terrible jokes, checking on you before you sleep, believing in your unrealistic dreams and probably showing support. Suddenly, you feel you have solved the ultimate puzzle of your life, now you are concluding you have found the one. Then you say to yourself here comes the woman of your dreams.  I am very very sorry for you. Let me tell you what might probably happen.

There are two things involved.

You may be in luck. She is not like all those fancy Miss. Cuties that just want to have a little bit of fun with an eligible young man. Eligible in this case means you are at least what one can call good looking,  you ‘ve got a few potentials which are obvious enough, you are a little bit funny and you happen to come from a reputable family, thus, you are eligible. And now the young cutie making you feel like you are a Nigerian version JFK, in my case I like to feel like I am a Nigerian version Barack or better still Martin Luther King Jnr. Probably, she is right. May be she’s the real deal and she is not into you just to make fellow ladies jealous. She may Love you for real. She admires you, respects you, your words inspire her and all she wants to do is make you proud. You may have just gotten yourself your own Orente. But in reality,  a girl that won’t complain even if you don’t have shelter? Anyways good luck with that girl, because Impossible is nothing. I’m not against the happy ever after fantasy because research by R.Kelly states that  “when a woman loves, she loves for real”. You love her, she’s special, you will climb the highest mountain for her, you will put yourself through emotional torture to prove your undying love for her. The research question you should be asking yourself is will she do the same for you?

On the other hand, assuming you are a responsible guy like Captain Nigeria and at first, all you want is just to make this beautiful lady happy. You love her smile, love the way she walks, the way she talks and she pays attention to you. Her features are inspiring. Our cutie has killer hips, figures entitled only to African ladies which you won’t find in their white counterparts. Oh! we are responsible, remember? Yeah…we don’t care about the hips or the Brazilian figure found mostly on beaches in Rio . We are keen only on the beauty that lies within.  Despite all these specs you were okay with being just her friend. Helping her become a better professional in her field. You even go as far as teaching her the little scriptures of your religion you are sure of. She tells you how different you are from other guys she’s been with before and you feel like a <i>blessed among men.</i>

**

You tell her there is no hiding with you, that you will never judge her no matter what she’s done in her past. She tells the most emotional story of your life. You are so touched; you are now wondering how could guys do these terrible things to this pretty lady? And you vow in your heart you will stop at nothing to make this girl happy. It does not matter to you now, whether you accomplish this pursuit of her happiness as a friend or a Boo.  All that matters to you is that she’s happy and that is it you that made is so.

<p>What a noble task to mend the broken heart of a beautiful lady. </p>

So you are friends with a freaking good looking lady and you are satisfied with just friendship because you are not like those players out there that all they want in a lady is her waist. She starts showing  you sweet loving tender kindness and you assume she is doing this because you are special.

It reaches the stage where she starts putting words in your mouth. She starts getting romantically jealous of the other ladies in your life. She’s asking questions about pictures on your smartphone, getting mildly angry that you weren’t answering her chats on time, telling you “so you are chatting with all those girls now and you don’t have my time abi? anyways it’s all gud”. You feel obligated to explain what you were doing because, you don’t want to make her sad and you tell her it’s either you are chatting with her or you aren’t chatting at all. Hearing this, her cheek turns pink, her eyes glowing and you are feeling like prince Paris  on a mission of  turning her into Helen of your hometown.

On one faithful day you made this statement or a statement that looks like this “you are my friend”. She looks at you funny and says “no wonder you have been treating be like this. After all, I’m not your girlfriend”. You are taken aback and you try explaining to her “You may not be my girlfriend but I do care about you and I wish you to be happy. I can’t stand seeing you….” and she interrupts “don’t worry I get it. It’s all good” and you know it is all everything but good.

You hate to see her like this. So, the thought crosses your mind that if you just profess your love which is just developing and you call it undying, the bright smiles that spun on her face whenever she sets her eyes on you will be restored. After all you will do anything do make her happy, either and a friend or Boo.

You pick your phone and you text her “Bae, we need to talk”. You can sense the excitement in her when she replies “about what friend”. The game kicks in and now you are no longer like Captain Nigeria, you have assumed the character of  a Nigerian Casanova. Your head is  spinning with lines you have learnt from movies and songs. All of them coming back to you at once, but being a good man that you are everything you are telling is nothing but the truth.

 People always have this frost in their voice whenever they are about to confess seemingly undying feeling  to cuties, but not you. It comes to you naturally and you start flowing like Jon Champion. Looking into her expectant eyes you start flowing like an Oracle “I know we have known each other for not too long now. We have been friends and it has been legendary…” she wrinkles her nose and rolled eyes when you mentioned the f-word (friend). To show her disapproval of the word. “…I wanted to be just your friend because I don’t want to spoil the what we have, what we share. Thinking deeply, I have now come to realise that being you friend is good but being your Boo will be great. I want to be that guy that makes you look at your phone and smile. I want to be the guy you tell your fears, I want to be the guy you share your pain with, I want to be the guy that can’t and won’t stop worrying about you. I am not asking for you to love me. I’m just begging for you to please let me Love you”. She gives you a long stare with tears stored at her lower eye lid, she blinks and the twin tears drop uniformly.  After the pause, she kisses you, there and then you have your answer. It has become so certain to you now that you are in Love. - Hmmm Love kwa

The first few weeks you feel like you have a million bucks in your account because you think you have a perfect relationship. Months gone, your growing love is actually becoming undying for real.

Your words are no longer memorized lines from movies but a true expression of your feelings for her. Everything she does is a delight. Her smile is soothing, her approval inspires you and her laughter becomes a sound of reward. And you say if this is not love then what is?

You have let your guards down and you have broken down the walls that protect your heart because you feel this young angel will never hurt you and neither will she break your heart.

***

Suddenly, you discover a threatening fact. She still cares but not as much as she once did. She replies your chat almost immediately once but now it is taking an average of six minutes thirty seconds. Those six minutes becomes the longest six minutes of the day. When she finally replies you see chats like g2g, brb, ttyl8tr. Finally, when you are getting slightly depressed, you call and she tells you sorry that she’s been busy all day. You are an understanding young man at least she once liked that about you. So you do what you do best, you understand. It becomes more alarming you ask her “Bae when am I seeing you” you get what looks like this “not sure yet. I will call you”. You wait for the call for like twenty-four hours. They you call her. Things are becoming fragile now you don’t want to piss her off. So, you are very careful with your words selections, you develop good diplomatic skills overnight.

You lay awake in the middle of the night, you imagine all the good times, you feel like giving up on everything, like giving up on love and you remember who you are. You are not a quitter and definitely not a quitter in Love. The so called love that have been effortless now becomes a task, a task that requires strategy.

Operation win back her love is activated. Making a lady fall in love with you is the easy part, keeping her in love with you is the tough part but making her fall in love with you again is the most challenging part. She knows you so well now.

She’s probably seen it all with you and now, she’s done.

 She’s giving you the good guy courtesy, because you once made her happy and for this reason she respects and adores you for it. You try to replay all the memories you shared to make her feel the love once again, she smiles for a while remembering this feeling and when you are getting confident, thinking you are getting her back, the doze of your charm wears out again and you are back to square one.

So, you realise life is not a bed of roses. You are a good guy, no one disputes that. But a good guy won’t just cut it. You realise the honest truth of the matter. You were just a good guy who was used to pass a challenging and difficult face in her life. Now she is done with that face and your love is no longer required because she is fine. Seeing the lady that could not just stay half a day without you, doing just fine without you could be a real pain in the heart, but if it is worth any relieve, joy in yourself that you once were responsible for that smile you love to see on her face. You should be proud of yourself at least you loved her in ways most guys won’t.

After long nights of staring at the ceiling in your little room, you gradually smile about how naïve you were. You are getting your game back now, listening to those songs, reading those novels of yours, learning new things every day focussing on your ambition. Sometimes she remembers you and you talk. It is almost as if you still care about her, but not in that way. You still flatter  her a little bit and ask if she is fine and when she says she is you reply “good” and you continue with your life.

****

It’s been a few years now. She remembers how good you were. She’s older and a little wiser now. She realises that our breed of guys are not so common out there. Being a fine lady that she is, she often gets want she want. She chats you up “Sup Boo” you are a little shocked and confused like Boo bawo?. You reply “Hi <her name>” and she says “has it turned to that? So I ‘m no longer your Bae now abi?”  you say nothing else apart from “lol”. She offers to see you again. You are a gentle man you don’t want to turn a lady down.

Seeing her in those kind of gowns you love so much, with her short hair, moderate make up and her bright smile. Then it comes to your mind Here comes the Apple again. You are now left with the decision to make. She explaining what really happened why you guys just drifted apart. It was meant to be a temporary drifting. But you were not hearing a thing she was saying, you were looking at her apple lips. You just want to taste that again and you remember the pain that will accompany biting those lips. Explaining your own side of the story and telling her exactly how you felt when she drifter away from you. And she said “Bae, you should have told me how you felt. You know I will never wanna hurt you intentionally”. She has learnt lines from you, trying to use your very own lines for you. But you know better not to get yourself into the apple situation again.

She now sings Hello by Adele.

Dreams or Visions

Dreams or Visions

Let us forget about the stable Past
We should gaze into the volatile Future
Let us forget about the Old emotions and feelings shared
We should let go of them
We can create new ones

It is only this way we can move forward
When we stop dreaming about the life we shared then, we can see visions about the Life that is to come.
Else, all we do is have regrets about the worst past when we can Hope for the Future best.

SOLA-OJO, Nifemi