It was John F. Kennedy that said, “The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion” and Adlai E. Stevenson reaffirmed this same position in stating that, “freedom rings where opinions clash.” Unity is not always a function of singularity of opinions or ideology.
In this famous ancient story of the old man and his sons, after so much had been put into settling differences among his sons, this old man decided to teach his sons a lasting lesson, he got a stack of broom-sticks, handing each son one broom-stick, he instructed them to break it. Easily each one could snap it and break it up. He collected about a hundred sticks from the stack, tied it up, he handed it to each man, one after the other, instructing each one to break the stack, they all tried to break the stack of broom-sticks, but none succeeded in the attempt. As he tried to make them understand the purpose for the exercise, he was able to drive this point into the minds of this boys, ‘singly you can achieve so much as your effort can drive you, but to achieve more you’ve got to work as a team – in unity.’

Another way to say this is that weak minds don’t retain big thoughts. A mind is weak when that mind is left undeveloped. My focus in this chapter is on the potency of reading as it pertains to developing the mind and ultimately, the worth of an individual.
Heavy Weights Imagine for a moment that you are watching a game of ‘throw and catch’ between a grown man and a four year old and the object they are throwing happens to be a bag of cement. For the grown man, catching the bag of cement will be possible because he can handle the weight of the bag. However, for the four year old, it will be a different story because he cannot handle the weight of the bag of cement. If the four year old in his naivety tries to catch the bag of cement, he is most likely to get injured in the process.
Relating this to thoughts, ideas and the mind, the adult player is the person with a strong developed mind while the four year old is the person with a weak undeveloped mind and the bag of cement represents ideas. Grand ideas are everywhere. The only reason why they appear to be in short supply is because weak minds cannot retain grand ideas/thoughts. When great ideas breeze into the thoughts of people with weak undeveloped minds, it flows right through because they don’t have the capacity to retain such thoughts for their lives. This is a reason why people settle for less than they should.

Inaugural Speech of President Adebayo Clement Akomolafe
Federal Republic of Nigeria
May 2023
Zuma Rock, Abuja
“Today We Find Promise – Today We Find Ourselves”
Tonight is a night of voices – the voices of aspirations once defeated, the sounds of dreams once conquered, the echoes of hope once lost, and now the melody of a promise newly born. Nigeria, this is your night! Tonight is the answer to the questions our founding fathers posed to a starry sky: the possibility of unity in diversity, the opportunity for prosperity and a better life, the guarantee of a future for all our unborn children. With courageous lines of people stretching past broken-down blocks and potholed highways, with purple-stained thumbs and locally organized movements by our youth, and the daring words of a generation that wouldn’t give up, you, Nigeria, have given the world one more grand reason to believe that even in the midst of crippling poverty, darkness and despair, there is hope!
I congratulate the congresses of cultures here present. Mr. President, I salute your courage and the moral splendor you have displayed before and during my transition to the Presidency of this nation. Your faithful adherence to the wishes of a seeking generation will forever be a monument to the greatness of your administration. To my wife and strength, the beauty and harmony of our household, and to my three daughters, this night is your night as well. Though you have had to miss daddy for many nights, your silent tears and sacrifices of patience will not go unrewarded – I promise you that, my loves! To those who said it couldn’t be done in our time and in our country, to those who insisted that Nigeria is no place for fairytales and ambitious dreams, to those who warned us against spinning wasteful fantasies, this is your night as well!

It is amazing how this global economic recession has become a propagator of tales; tales ranging from misfortunes, financial wreckages, broken hearts, soberness, and more frequently an increased art of prudence. Everywhere you turn you hear stories of how people have been battered and tattered by the melt down around the world. You read new blogs, which the writers were forced to start since they lost their job, chronicling their lives with no pay and how they are attempting to make the best of it. Others share logs of woes that have befallen them, while seeking advice from a host of readers from the corners of the earth. Lives have been touched by the economic travails and many seem beyond redemption. But the stories that amaze me most are how much of a lie many people had been living when the system seemed to have been working fine. As much as the capitalist driven world laid its foundations on mere paper and had a sudden collapse at a little shove from a sector of one country, many people have had their illusionary cloaks stripped from them. Now nakedly they stare at an unforgiving world and wonder what happened.
New York, USA. Damien graduated from a respected Ivy League business school. He landed a job immediately as a financial analyst with a gold chip firm and started enjoying the benefits of doing this. Apart from a juicy salary for a young man of 29, he received wowing bonuses at the end of the financial year. After just six years of working, he drove a Mercedes Benz convertible, lived in a 3 bedroom apartment in Manhattan, bought another house in Stamford, Connecticut, and had a time share in Mexico.

These are some of the thoughts of my mind on the purpose and power of the family; it’s been a while now since it’s come to my mind to write something like this, though in the scheme of things I might not be the right man to speak on issues like this, or the qualification in terms of experience is not on my side but by privilege I have rubbed minds with the all wise one on issues like this one to understand his original purpose for establishing the world acclaimed smallest institution – the family.
LONGMAN Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDCE) defines the family as “a closely related group – a group of people who are related to each other, especially a mother, a father and their children.” In elementary school, we were taught that “the family is the smallest unit in the society, consisting of father, mother and children related by blood” – what an innocent definition, not introducing little ones to the idea of divorce and remarriage, concepts that disproves the latter part of the definition.
Institution as defined in the LDCE is “an important system of organization that has existed for a long time.” This is true of the family; it is one of the world’s longest standing institutions in the world. Institutions provide an organized system of doing things in the society. My assumptions are if the family got the purpose of its establishment, other institutions in the society like the Presidency, Judiciary, State Executives, Local Councils, Legislatures at all levels, Social and Corporate services with get their bearings on doing what they do to benefit the people they serve and not the few members of these institutions and many more.

Following hard on the heels of my recent conversations about moving from mere thought and speech to action, I am confronted with a more interesting but disturbing phenomenon in society. It is often mistakenly stated that evil has overrun our lives because we live in evil times, where men are lovers of themselves, and selfishness is the driving factor in every decision men take.

According to John C. Maxwell, Leadership is influence; nothing more nothing less. Influence is the seed of true leadership. When leadership is void of influence then we’re not talking leadership. That is to say the only major evidence of good leadership is influence (which might be positive or negative). Adolf Hitler led the Nazi Army to fighting a war against other countries in the world because he was able to influence their thought patterns, aligning them to his; so as to realize his goal. Mahatma Gandhi led his people to a peaceful protest for freedom and political change in his country by influencing them in a positive way, paving the way for non-violent protests for realistic change. Leadership is not a function of position, nor a function of power; it is entirely about the people. Leaders are made for the people, to listen to them, work with them and lead them on the path of their dreams to achieve their goals and aspiration.

The book of Jonah in the bible is one of its most fascinating books. As a little child, I and my other little colleagues were particularly fascinated by this story because of the singular fact that he was swallowed by a fish and yet lived to tell the tale. Needless to say, this is one of the reasons why many have also been fascinated by the story of this prophet. However, the book of Jonah unlike other prophetic books of the bible is one that focuses and documents not just the prophecies of the prophet but rather the relationship between the prophet and his God. It is therefore obvious that there is a lot to learn regarding the dealings of God with man through the recordings of this book. The biblically recorded accounts of the life of Jonah (which probably is an account of just a few days of weeks of his life) tell tale of the independence of man in his relationship with God, of God’s sovereignty regardless of this and of other themes such as mercy, faithfulness and love which run like a continuous line of thread through the pages of the bible. Our aim therefore through this series of teachings will be to understand as much as we can from the entire book of Jonah.

What wonderful words that filled my ears over and over again today while I listened to the soul warming song by Bishop Will Murphy. Many things flowed through my mind as the song repeated itself because, I don't know about you, there are times when a song just takes hold of you and doesn't let you go! This is exactly what happened today as I listened to this song. I'll be the first to admit that there is such a wonderful experience to gain in worship. It takes me away from everything that seems to matter to a place that really matters - the place where I have that feeling that my soul is finally doing what it was created to do. What greater way to worship God than through the warmth of His mercy. For me, the best way I could understand the thoughts of God was through His mercy. When I begin to imagine the things I've gotten myself entangled with, the things I have done, I can not begin to express how grateful I am to God for His mercy. I'm trying as hard as I can not to write the clichés you read when any one tries to describe worship! But have you ever thought of worship this way: Imagine you singing your favorite song of worship to God and you are really stuck within the words and you know in your heart that you are in that place where like me, you feel your soul is doing what it was really meant to do. Now Imagine that God is the one singing that same song to you. Oh my God! I imagine God, Almighty God singing to me that 'My thoughts for you (me) are beautiful...'

I have watched with interest how things have really take a sudden turn in the lives of people, including in my family over the last year. What has been dominant of course has been the effect of the global recession, which a lot of countries are experiencing at the same time. It seems no one is spared in any way and those who seem not to have been touched have also seen their purchasing power spiral down dramatically. But most affected are those who have lost their jobs in a market that seems to grow uncertain by the day. About 2 years ago, many never saw this coming, so the preparation for it was nonchalant and little attention was paid to the volatility of the financial system, considering the fact that this is a system heavily intertwined. Today what we see is a terrible desperation on the part of many, and some have their lives come to a screeching halt, with no idea of what next to do. This is because their job was their life, and everything else was tied to it. What’s even more painful for some is not the fact that it paid the bills, but the mere fact that it defined their self-worth and determined their livelihood. So now that the job is gone, heir life is gone. So if your job is your life, when it is taken away, then so is your life. This is what is happening to many today, and who can blame them? It is the way the system operates anyway, and many are inextricably wrapped into it and can only imagine their living within the confines of this worldly system.