October 2023 – Page 2 – Dr. Mezie Okolo

Rethinking Decolonization

by Dr. Mezie

As we continue to expand our thoughts and stretch our imagination on ways to decolonize Africa and the face of Africa of our dream, I am reminded of the fact that the African people have a lot to do, both in the decolonization process and the repositioning of Africa in the community of nations. Whilst some of us would blame the colonizers for our myriads of problems, others would rather blame the African people for the ills and aftermath of colonization. However today, I want to focus the discussion on the African people. Have we not been the architect of our own calamities? How? In not one but many ways. We cannot go back in time to change the history, but we can recreate the history going forward by what we do today, based on the lessons of the past.

Africa cannot present a common front on issues that have local and global impact. Everything is achievable but nothing is achievable when we speak in multiple voices. Yes we have many languages but we can speak in one voice – the African voice. There are times when we must speak in one voice, and we have not taken advantage of those times. This speaks of unity. I envisage that was what the founding fathers of our independence agitations had in mind when they fought for political independence. Today we are still far from gaining political independence, don’t even talk about economic independence especially now that globalization has crept up on us. But the way to globalize rapidly is to first globalize locally. How do you get to Lesotho without passing through South Africa either on the land or in the air? The call for independence has become a call for interdependence.

We are too ethnocentric in Africa. Even though we live in multi-ethnic groups, we are too divided along those lines. Africa cannot achieve much divided. All the countries that I refer to as merely ‘states’ of the African nation cannot achieve much fighting among themselves. We spend too much time and energy fighting and dealing with internal conflicts that we don’t have time to articulate common fronts for the external issues that challenge our internal cohesion. When the people are one, not even God can stop them, not because He doesn’t have the power but because He doesn’t go against His own principle. There is power in unity. There is creative ability in unity. Unity is one of the attributes of God. Before man was created, the godhead made a call of unity ‘come let us make man in our image after our likeness’. The African Union which is simply the born again version of OAU was founded on unity. When a people is united, you cannot stop them. Only time separates them from their vision. Remember the Tower of Babel in the Bible.

All these clamoring for segregation or disintegration does not help anybody. What you clamor for will come when you aggregate within yourselves, build your communities, develop your cities, represent values that you want to project, be the change you want to see, think environmental friendly and do not shortchange the next generation by your actions today. A battalion of soldiers with all her machine guns cannot stop your civilization and the revolution it brings.

Does any law stop us from building a rail track that traverses the major cities of Africa from one side to the other? Which European charter stops us from traveling visa free within Africa? Which Chinese treaty forbids us from having one currency in Africa? Which British contract stops us from maintaining a union more powerful than the United States? How many of the countries in African have budgets bigger than California, NY or Texas state? What would happen if we agree on an African language which will be taught in all of African schools from day one so that it becomes the language of communication within Africa and anybody who wants to do business with us long term has no options than to learn such a language as well?

Until we start thinking along these lines, we have not yet done the needful so we cannot expect the desired; only the obvious happens.

@MezieOkolo, Analyst for Public Health & Leadership

07/24/2019

Activity vs Productivity

by Dr. Mezie

In Physics, work is said to have been done when a force moves an object through a distance in the direction of the force. Unless and until these conditions are met, energy is said to have been wasted but no work done. That is what happens when in an organization, people engage in activities or seem to be engaged in activities but achieve little or nothing. So productivity is obviously different from activity. People are paid for work done not for energy wasted or space occupied.

There are productive and non productive activities. Unless and until you understand what constitutes productive activity on your job, you could be thinking you are awesome and you do a great job and there is none like you in the world; only to be surprised when your manager evaluates you and rates you as ‘development needed’. Has this happened to anybody here? Managers and employees are always at variance in their opinions of job performance.

Most people would go home after their evaluation with the conclusion that the manager wants to get rid of them. Of course we live in an irresponsible generation where nobody takes responsibility for poor performance. When things go well, everybody wants a share of the praise. When things go wrong, it is someone else’s faults. People would swear by their dead grandfathers, that they have no part in the error. If it is not that you didn’t tell them, it is that they were distracted by the customer or that you didn’t explain it properly. It’s got to be your fault or someone else’s. Often times you hear ‘ it is not my fault’. This has become a common rhetoric in most of nowadays human societies, unfortunately.

But businesses don’t succeed by making excuses. Businesses thrive when people take responsibilities and ownership of the pieces of the job whether it is done well or not. By taking responsibility, you make adjustments and take necessary steps to make sure mistakes don’t occur again. By making excuses and distancing yourself from error of omission or commission, you arrogate excellence to yourself and make yourself look better than you actually are. A lot of people are obsessed about looking good rather than being good at their jobs.

The other part is this. If you call someone out for making a mess or an error, they come back at you in a vicious manner with a reminder of an error or an omission you made years ago. Instead of admitting the error of the moment, apologizing and making it right and moving on, they spend the rest of the day reminding you how they are better than you are and how you don’t qualify to point out the error that was just made. They turn the blame around and the ‘hunter becomes hunted’. Is this familiar?

Productivity is evaluated using different metrics. Unless you are measuring at or above those standard metrics, you are just making motion but no movement, wasting energy but doing no work; occupying space but being unproductive; increasing bills but decreasing revenue; appearing alive but dead in productivity. With due respects to you and your opinion of yourself, as far as that job or position is concerned, you are wasting that space. Often times 20% of the people do 80% of the job and the rest just do the minimum to get bye and wait for paychecks. They count hours they have put in without asking ‘what value have I added in those hours?’’. Anybody been in those kind of teams?

What to do as a value added employee is sit back and take stock. Rediscover the essential duties of your job and make sure you hold yourself to accounts on how well you measure on those counts that count. If you don’t know what counts or if you count what does not count, only time separates you from that job or position or career. Fasting and praying, meditation and invocation, prophesying and declaring, will not save you on the day of reckoning.

No employer wants to pay for your activities; they want to pay for your productivity. Don’t forget, if you want an employer to pay you $20 an hour, you must be willing and capable of delivering $40 an hour in productivity. The difference pays for the rest of the overhead and your employers profitability. Business is and should be a profitable venture. If all you can make for your employer is what he pays you why does he need you? Think about it, if your employee makes for you $20/hr and you pay him $20/hr you are bankrupt already. Who runs a business like that?

So anytime I hear someone say ‘ I am worth a lot more than they pay me ‘, I say ‘that’s a no brainer’. If you are not worth a lot more and you don’t bring a lot more than your paycheck to the table why would you take your paycheck from the table and who do you expect to pay for the table?

In my 20 years of work across three continents I have concluded that many people misconstrue activity for productivity. Those are entirely two different phenomena. While one is a waste of time and space, the other adds value to time and space. Understand the difference and don’t put your family and loved ones in a bind. More so, we work, not just to be productive but to add value to time. Time wasted is life wasted. Unless you have value for time, you cannot be successful in anything you lay your hands to do. Think !

Respect, Love and peace!

@MezieOkolo Public Health and Leadership Analyst

11/30/2019

The 3A’s of Effective Leadership

by Dr. Mezie

In the fields of leadership, healthcare and entrepreneurship these three words (Availability, Affordability and Accessibility) are of great importance. It is not enough for a person or thing to be available in the market place, he (it) has to be affordable and accessible too. Without affordability, availability profits nothing and without availability, affordability profits nothing. Without availability and affordability there is no accessibility.

In healthcare, any of these could be a major problem, especially to the poor. We have already argued that healthcare for the poor for the most part is poor healthcare. Sometimes the poor have poor health because they have access only to poor healthcare. At other times the poor are poor because they have poor health and poor healthcare, so are either unemployed, poorly employed or grossly underemployed whichever suits your fancy.

The relationship between poverty, poor health and poor healthcare have been amply demonstrated in literature.

Who waits a year to see a doctor and pays him a thousand dollars if there are in fact other doctors you could see within a few days for a couple hundred dollars? Who waits for a year to see a doctor for free if he can readily afford to pay a thousand dollars to see him today? The poor always make trade offs that the rich wouldn’t worry about. So poverty and poor health tend to be in a vicious cycle because of the inability of the poor to afford what they want.

To get some great leaders to speak in a conference or an event could be very expensive. Any or all the three issues under discussion could be a problem. To honor an invitation, (s)he has to be available, affordable and accessible. The problem is that meeting these three conditions in one person at a given time could be unpredictable. The time of the year and the individual’s itinerary may get in the way of access assuming that affordability is not an issue.

A leader who is available may not be affordable and the one who is accessible may not be available and the one who is available and somewhat accessible may not be affordable. How do you navigate these issues given the tight budgets of this present economic situation with many organizations? What trade offs are you willing to make and yet achieve the purpose for which you want to reach or invite this leader? What knowledge, insight, empowerment or strategies do you stand to trade off if you settle for someone who you can readily afford?

Effective leaders are accessible leaders. Accessible leaders are not just available but they don’t build ‘walls’ around themselves. They can be reached as need arises and they are responsive to the people. It is not difficult to differentiate an inaccessible leader from an accessible one. Even then, some leaders are actively accessible while others are passively accessible. While the actively accessible ones reach out to their team and connect with the members, the passively accessible ones maintain some kind of open door policy where members can reach out to them with issues, questions or concerns.

Although passively accessible leadership is better than inaccessible leadership, actively accessible leadership wins the vote every time. Passive leadership misses lots of opportunities to know what’s going on and be able to make inputs before it becomes a crises situation because most employees or proteges would not take advantage of the open door policy.

Every leader needs to be effective and that demands connecting and communicating with your team members, especially those who would ordinarily not come to you. You may be surprised where you would get the greatest ideas on how to move your organization to the next level. A time came in one of our churches that we had a problem. This problem defied the rank and file of leadership until it was brought to the open at a church meeting. A lady who was not taken very seriously was the one that suggested the way out of the impasse to the amazement of everyone. Had it not been brought to the open or had she not spoken up, she would have robbed the church of her God given idea. Leaders glean ideas from followers to become even better leaders. To do that, the leader has to be available, and accessible at all times.

Who wants to work for a leader he cannot talk to? Nobody deserves a snob of a leader who has all the answers all the time and who is always right, even when he is wrong on an issue he knows nothing about. Even Kings get ideas from their subjects on issues. A prophet in the Bible prophesied against a king and one of the overzealous false prophets smote him on the cheek and asked ‘which way did the spirit of God pass me to speak to you?’. The king ordered food of affliction and prison terms for the true prophet until when he came back from the war…did he come back victorious? The last time I checked he didn’t come back. Some advice or idea from an otherwise insignificant fellow could be prophetic, you ignore it to your peril.

One of the things that I like about my profession is that pharmacists are available, affordable and accessible….much more accessible to the community than pastors, lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, name them. So when you come to the healthcare marketplace, you can pick up your phone and call any pharmacist with questions. You can work up to him and you can stop him on the road and ask questions. There is no ‘do you have insurance?’ Or ‘Call my tech and book appointment’ or ‘have you bought a registration card?’. How many hours do some of us wait to speak to our pastor for 3 minutes?

Back in the day pharmacists used to work behind some cubicles and only stuck out their hands to pass pills but nowadays we are community leaders, proactively getting involved and getting results. Some of us are involved in other community programs like chamber of commerce, local school management board, church board and so on.

So I ask you today, are you available as a ……….(fill in the gap). Are you affordable? Are you accessible? Do people have to follow long prompts on the phone before they could leave a message or even speak to someone? Impact is easy when you understand the place of availability, affordability and accessibility in your calling or office. Creating unnecessary barriers water down your leadership effectiveness and undermine organizational efficiency. Building walls make a leader ineffective and irrelevant. Those 3 A’s are keys to successful leadership, which proactively builds bridges and readily extends hands for fellowship.

Mezie Okolo is a leadership analyst @ www.mezieokolo.com

The Force of Faith

by Dr. Mezie

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. Every word in that statement is powerful and remarkable, worthy of note and attention. The real substance and the real evidence of everything not yet tangible is faith. We can hold on and latch unto faith, we can stand on faith, we can sleep on faith. By faith you can go up while others are going down. You can win over the battles of life by the weapon of faith. You can overcome challenges and temptations by faith. By faith, people would seal a deal with a handshake and bet their lives on the agreement regardless of how much money is at stake. Without faith it is impossible to achieve anything. This is because you have to first believe that you can achieve a thing before you devout your time to its actualization.

Faith is a substance…we can substantiate our expectation of the next generation by our faith in them and their future. It is our hope and prayer that the next generation of us will get their acts together and we demonstrate that faith by delegating responsibilities and expecting them to deliver. We don’t have tomorrow to teach, train, mentor, and guide them to become the future we have prayed for. After all, today is the future we prayed about yesterday. Our faith in them and in their ability to deliver substantiates and delivers our expectation of them, today. Faith is now. It requires that you suppress fear and doubt and take a chance, now. Faith expects you to look at the bright side of things and let your decisions and actions reflect your optimism rather than your pessimism, your future rather than your past. This is the only way you could muster enough courage to embark on a task which you have tried unsuccessfully in the past.

Faith is believing and behaving. With the heart we believe, with the mouth we confess and with our actions we affirm. It is out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, so you cannot believe east and confess west yet going south. Faith demands that your heart, your mouth and your feet are in agreement and working towards the same vision and direction. If your mouth is not in alignment with your heart, faith will not produce, and if your feet are not in alignment with your heart and mouth, faith profits nothing. But faith is a very potent force, when it is engaged according to its principle. Whatever the heart of man can conceive and believe he can achieve if he would let his hands and feet engage in the activities that guarantee performance. In physics, we are told that work is done when a force moves a body through a distance in the direction of the force. Faith is a force, and a powerful one for that matter. It attracts and engages natural forces to perform.

Back in the day at the pharmacy school, faith sustained us and faith graduated us. We were so poor and so broke yet so confident that all we needed to do was survive the professor‘s eyeball, and we would become relevant in society. Some days we drank water and went to class. Some of us didn’t know where the next meal would come from. We were so skinny from hunger yet so confident of our future. It has been twenty years now since we graduated yet some of us are yet to see the kind of future we thought we would glide into in our first year of graduation. But faith in ourselves, faith in our future, faith in our God, faith in our certification and training and faith in our knowledge of the subject matter kept us going through one huddle after the other even on empty stomachs. When all else fails, faith fails not.

Faith is the evidence of things not seen. Recently I had told some people somethings and expected them to believe me after all I had no reason whatsoever to tell lies…surprisingly they did not take my word for it. At some point I got frustrated with all manner of questions repeated in different ways, as if I was expected to be telling anything less than the absolute truth. I had to provide the evidence for every claim I made, and the burden of proof was upon me. In the issues of life, faith provides the proof that you need as evidence. There is always the substance of faith and the evidence of faith. The evidence of faith is your action and the evidence of what you are after is your faith that drives you. A man moves fast or slow in life, not by what he drives but by what drives him. If faith drives you, your attitude will show it. If fear drives you, your attitude will show. Sometimes we do things, not out of faith but out of fear. Whatever is not of faith is probably of fear, and most times what you fear comes upon you.

I have seen people pray, not out of faith that God heals the sick for example but out of fear that someone may die. If you listen to the words and tone of their prayer, you could decipher if it is motivated by faith or by fear or a mixture of both. If your prayer is not answered, make sure it is not because faith was not found in it even when you spent hours praying and days going to church. Some people go to church and engage in religious activities yet have no faith even since the time of Jesus. You could be one of those. Religiosity is not faith.

By faith Abraham, by faith Sarah, by faith Joseph…and the list is long. After I have gone to the other side, would they say of me by faith Mezie…? That is the question for today. Some people have not succeeded because they are too afraid of failure. When fear stops you from daring you have failed already. If you could get started, the task is half done. Jesus, for the crown that awaited him, not only accepted but endured the cross. The cross was not palatable, but the crown was not negotiable. When what you want in life or out of life becomes so compelling that it is not negotiable, then your faith can drive you to the finish line. The faith that delivers overcomes obstacles, it bulldozes through fierce oppositions and dares the impossible. The faith that wins must be unadulterated and unmingled. The faith that calls those things that be not as though they were, creates those things that be from things that be not.

But what is most interesting for me in faith is that it is now. Now, faith is. Faith understands the urgency of now. Faith does not procrastinate, and it does not shy away from duty. It has roots and stems, and it must be rooted in something real. Even though some of us are tempted to lose faith in humanity given our experiences, faith believes, faith trusts, faith accommodates, faith builds bridges, faith extends a hand of fellowship, faith defies the weather or season or protocols, faith works within or without tradition, faith invests, faith builds, faith blesses, faith shares…..If you give food to someone who doesn’t have faith, and you want to share the food you gave him with him he would find enough excuses in his mind why he would not share the food. He would be like the proverbial child that put his bread behind so his father would not share in it, only for the dog to take the food from him. Basically, he had no faith that his father wouldn’t finish the bread he so desperately wanted. But he forgot who gave him the bread in the first place. We know how to celebrate the gift more than the giver. Faith demands that I wake up in the morning and create my day by my words and match up with actions.

You can grow in faith. When faith drives you towards your destination it changes you along the way. Growth cannot happen without change. Work is not done without change happening. At the beginning your potential faith suffers some inertia, until your faith builds up to a threshold then potential faith becomes kinetic. This change could be brought about by increase in knowledge. For example, as your knowledge of God increases, your faith in Him also increases and so it is with your team. As you work with and know people, especially the good ones, your faith in them increases and your confidence level also increases in the project in which you work together with them. The same principle is applicable with fear. If you met someone as a pastor and then realize he is a crooked person, your faith in his friendship, his ministry, and his words is replaced by fear and doubt as the case may be. Haven’t we experienced that before? Knowledge modifies faith.

In summary, the force of faith is able to bring to life those things that don’t exist and those things that we want to see. It is the creative power of faith that makes all things possible to them that believe. A mentor that has faith in his proteges pours out himself into them without reservation, and the law of faith demands that you see what you believe and what you say. Be careful what you fear, it could come to you as surely as what your faith attracts. For the fear in man is a snare.. So as surely as faith leads to actualization fear has the opposite effect. Mentors understand the place of faith in productive mentorship. .May God grant us understanding

Mezie Okolo @TheRitePlace

Times and Seasons

by Dr. Mezie

In the holy book, we are reminded that there is time for everything and every purpose under heaven. Today I reflect on the meaning and significance of time and season? A child is not born until the gestation period is over and the time comes. So for that child, a time comes when he is born. Every one of us was born at the appointed time of our birth, and so shall we die at the appointed time of our death.

As we journey through life our time is divided into seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years. With every milestone of life calibrated in time most people celebrate. What a privilege to see yet another day or month or year. Some days are more productive than others, some years come with more promotions than others, and so are the months and the minutes. And we tend to measure our success, not in the privilege of witnessing another day or month or year but often times in the materialistic things we have acquired and the baggages we have picked up over the past time however you choose to measure. What a misplaced standard.

Even in the midst of the times are the seasons. The year in this part of the hemisphere is made up of four seasons: summer, winter, fall (autumn) and spring. Each season has its own characteristics and every year (time) has its own seasons howbeit mild or harsh. For example, winter felt colder fifteen years ago than it feels now. I guess it is me acclimatizing to temperate weather rather than it being the winter per se. But my point is that the seasons come and people who are familiar with the terrains prepare for them ahead of time. You do not buy winter jackets in winter, you pay more for it. Just like you don’t buy your flight ticket on the day of the journey, you pay dearly for it (except you got a last minute deal occasionally). Your time has many seasons. The seasons will come even when you don’t recognize them. As we speak, you are in one season or the other. You must know the time and the season of your life.

Preparation goes ahead of opportunity. You don’t wait until you get job as a doctor before you go to medical school. Every lawyer first desired to be a lawyer, then write the LSAT and go to law school. Then start looking for job after credentialing. It takes a wise use of time to get more out of the seasons.

The seasons don’t last for ever. Some years they last a little longer than expected and sometimes the weather forecasts rainfall only for us to witness sunshine. Although not the norm, exceptions are also normal. What is beautiful about times and seasons is that it is not the times and seasons in your life that matter but the life in your times and seasons. May God give us understanding.

@MezieOkolo, Analyst Public Health & Leadership

Think win-win

by Dr. Mezie

The blessings of God make rich and add no sorrow. That begs the question: would you rather be rich and sorrowful or poor and happy? I know someone would say ‘rich and happy’ but that option is not in the ballot.

The world is so heavily skewed towards the desperation to acquire riches. I don’t have any problem with riches, so long as they are not acquired by all means. If you have to ‘win’ by all means, chances are that you will not play ‘fair’, and I have everything against that mentality.

What happens is that we get focused on winning that we forget the price paid as well as the harm and hurt inflicted in a desperate attempt to win. Every time you win, you lost something. This is important and I want to say it again. Every single time you win you lost something. Sometimes you actually win at a huge loss, that the winning becomes undesirable.

Our people answer ‘Echem azu ogu’ which means I think about the aftermath of war. When we do echemazuogu, we either sheath our dagger or fight only unavoidable wars. In any case, we choose our wars carefully and engage in wars reluctantly. Again this is crucial because most wars or arguments or quarrels are unnecessary and unprofitable.

So you that celebrate yourself for all your wins, be it business, career, political, social or whatever. Have you considered what you lost for each win you recorded? Did you win an argument and lost a friend? Have you won a business contract and lost the trust of your friends? Did you win the promotion at work and lost the love of your children? Again, have you taken time every time you recorded a ‘win’ to evaluate what you lost? What are you trading for what you are gaining?

Think about these. It is a new year and a time to review. Wisdom is profitable fo direct.

(Excerpts from a book in the works: Winning at a loss)

@MezieOkolo, Author & Leadership Analyst

01/04/2020

Go On With One Nigeria: The Lie in “No Victor No Vanquished”

by Dr. Mezie

Without mincing words, Nigeria is still suffering from the policies that predated independence and which were further enforced by the bitterness and hatred that led to the war. Gowon and the soldiers that took over mantle of leadership after him including PMB carried on animosity against Biafra land especially the Igbo nation, so much that it is the concept of self-actualization that has sustained the Igbo nation, having been given nothing but 20 pounds regardless of how much each person had in the bank before the war. So, there was no vanquished, yet all you got for one million pounds was twenty pounds?

Although he declared the infamous and ill-fated no victor no vanquished which was the biggest lie ever told deliberately, nothing shows that in his bid to go on with one Nigeria, he had intended for the Igbo man to ever compete with the other Nigerians in economic terms. Today, just fifty years after, we have seen that the Igbo man competes more favorably with every and any other tribe in all sectors of human endeavor. Igbo people build more houses and own more businesses than indigenous people in any part of Nigeria and beyond. How did they do it?

The Igbo man is a born industrious fellow. In the postwar rebuilding of the Igbo nation, how many houses in Igbo land were built by non-Igbo people? When Gowon declared his notorious No Victor No Vanquished, what else did he do and what did subsequent regimes do to make the Igbo man feel like he has a stake in Nigeria? As an Igbo man, what has Nigeria done for you? We build our own houses, our own roads, our own schools….and the roads referred to as “federal” are only death traps. Why do I need to stake my life for this entity that wishes the richest Igbo man 20 pounds and treats him like a servant, nay a slave? Which mathematical formula did they apply to come by that 20 pounds? Wasn’t that an idea from the pit of hell?

All manners of strategies have been adopted to make other parts of the country feel as though they have a part and a stake. But Nigeria is fueling the agitation for Biafra and the same government will suffer more when this agitation turns into mass action and a total disregard for the Nigerian project. It is a great disservice to herself for Nigeria to think she will make any progress towards nationhood without the Igbo nation. If you doubt me, tell me what Nigeria has been able to achieve without an Igbo man behind it? Even in civil service, there is no parastatal that is not being sustained by an Igbo brain even though you do not hear their names mentioned or given credits for what they do, daily. In academia, in industry, in military the same scenario is seen. I make this claim boldly and unapologetically.

A valid way to tell Gowon his plan and wishes for Igbo people speaks about who he is and not who we are is for our people to Go On Without One Nigeria. The proposed GOWON project does not mean declaring war against Nigeria, but it means focusing all manner of investment and development efforts in Biafra land regardless of Nigeria. We need to reform our education system to suit our people and solve our peculiar problems; and we need to hold accountable people who follow amoral paths towards success. We need to start being the change we want to see in our geographical space. We need to secure our socioeconomic space and develop our technological skills until we get to the point where we can function in all aspects of life as if Nigeria does not exist. We need to reject and jettison the Nigerian way of doing things in its entirety. If we cannot be the change we want to see, we have not learnt anything from the experiences of the past. If we cannot hold our politicians accountable and kick out corrupt individuals from the corridors of power, we have failed ourselves as Biafrans.

Singapore is not bigger than Igbo land…neither is Rwanda. Do you see how Dubai has become the hub for vacations for all people? When Abuja was named capital of Nigeria, she had nothing to boast about. Today Abuja is the place to be. If we make our government provide basic amenities, the people of Igbo extraction could develop Igbo land until we make the rest of Nigeria jealous. There are lots of Igbo people who have money to invest, and who are thinking home but don’t know where to build and where to put their money and be guaranteed security and decent returns. What if government guarantees some investment in Igbo land in some way, maybe that is going to make a change for us. Umu Igbo, murunu anya…. the urgency of now is here with us and we cannot afford to talk the talk and not walk the walk. Our small businesses need better government policies so we can set precedence in Nigeria ahead of whatever else we are agitating for. Enugu, Onitsha, Nnewi, Umuahia, Aba, Owerri to name but a few potential hubs for anything you could get anywhere…we can make it happen.

In Anambra State as is the case in all of Igbo land, we have to show what we want to see in Nigeria with our votes come 2021. Enough of clueless under-performers in all sectors of governance. Enough of abuse of office regardless of job titles. Maybe time will come when an ex-commissioner or ex-governor goes through an audit, and maybe ends up in jail for his activities while in office. How about that? Then the next governor of any state in Biafra land goes through a rigorous process of showing us what he plans to do with the office…not the senseless approach in Nigeria where someone wins an election without a manifesto, how ridiculous! Today I wonder why we wonder that we are in a big mess, with all the drama going on right in Aso Rock Villa. No Victor no vanquished my foot!

Mezie Okolo is a leadership Analyst and a voice from diaspora

Passive Aggression

by Dr. Mezie

Passive aggressive people are stubborn but very very deceptive. They make you aggressive and they want all to see you as the aggressor, but they are the aggressors. I don’t know if anybody has had any experience of the picture I am painting. They are everywhere and they come in different shades. Sometimes we make the mistake of coloring it with race and misclassify it as racism if they have different skin color. But then you realize they do it to people of the same race too. They even do it to family. They are not confrontational, but they are acidic…they eat like the canker worm. They can find everything wrong with everybody but nothing wrong with themselves. They are very suspicious, and they watch your every step with sinister mind. Passive aggressive people can set members of a team against one another and you cannot pin them to it. They can set a house on fire, raise alarm and appear harmless.

What is even worse is passive aggression. Dealing with passive aggression is more difficult, as they are mainly sneaky and snaky…when you think they are going east they go west. Nobody would believe nor imagine the emotional trauma they put you through because they look harmless and peaceful. They subtly make the workplace hostile and even when you go out of your way to make them happy, your effort will be in futility. They avoid holding a conversation and act as if they know everything, yet they do not communicate nothing. They are wise in their own eyes. They are always right because they haven’t given themselves a chance to listen to a different argument. They tell themselves they deserve the world for waking up and they expect that everybody should take their side and celebrate them. They even call truth lies, and you would believe them until you listen critically to the other story. Beware of the danger of a single story.

They walk and behave as if they cannot harm a fly but they would kill an elephant and swear by their fathers. Passive aggression sounds like an oxymoron but that is the problem, and that is what they are. A passive aggressive person could break a bank and you would bet your life for them. They may even start crying as though they are innocent and oppressed until you begin to gather the facts and push emotions to the side. If you start investigating them, they adopt emotional blackmail to ward you off and point you in the wrong direction. You would believe their story even when it was a well calculated alibi, meant to deceive. They are sentimental and they mop up sentiments by their fakeness. If they commit a crime, investigators will earn their wages trying to nail them to it.

Passive aggressive people can set members of a team against one another and you cannot pin them to it. They can set a house on fire, raise alarm and appear harmless.

When you ask them, they give you an answer they believe you want to hear, and then they sneak in to do something different. They may even start rumor and appear as if they have no idea what you talk about if you do ask them. If they pick your slack at work, the world must know it to give them all the credit. When you are not there, they use you to shine but as soon as you come in they fake a smile and appear as though they are your friend. But they do not have genuine smile or laughter. If you want to be their friend, then you realize how cold and boring they are. They are very negative…nothing is done well except the things they did, you don’t know what you are doing unless you do it the way they approve of.

If you have such a person in your network, mark them and watch them. They will not clap when you are winning. They are competing with you and you do not even know it. They are interpreting your jokes negatively, your laughter critically and your friendship gestures derogatorily. You must be someone that pays attention to details to figure out what they do and who they are. In positions of leadership, they are the most difficult to work for. You cannot please them. They are the least hospitable of people.

Wouldn’t you want to work for someone you could tell when he is angry and when he is happy? Every day is not sunshine, and every day is not gloomy….when someone’s day is always gloomy…chances are that they are passive aggressors too. Watch out for them and tread cautiously. They are dangerous and they can ruin your career. I have met them in my twenty years of career. They hate you for being you and they do not want to openly admit it. I’d prefer you and I agree that you don’t like me and I don’t like you, so we keep our meetings and discussions official, especially when and if we have to work together. We can keep our differences at the door when we get to work, then pick them back up on our way out.

Power and Authority

by Dr. Mezie

Recall that we have established the argument that the earth is a colony of heaven and we are representatives of God on earth charged with enforcing His will here. God has empowered us to take charge and have dominion on earth. So we exercise power and authority over all of creation, but ours is a delegated power and delegated authority. For the Christian, I define authority as unlimited power of attorney. We represent God in the absence of God, we are the Jesus that people see and touch in the absence of Jesus. When we show up, Jesus shows up and God shows up. So we have the mandate of heaven to rule and to overrule as the need arises in the affairs and business of life here on earth.

God should not be bothered over everything. A person that has been given authority does not beg the one that gave him authority to do the things he has given him authority to do. Neither does he beg the one over whom he has authority to comply with his directives. For instance, we have been given authority over Satan and all of his works, we have been given authority over sicknesses, diseases and infirmities. So we are not expected to be begging God to heal the sick, when in fact, He has said to us “Go, cast out devils, heal the sick, raise the dead”…When we fail to do these things, we are to blame. It is either we don’t know what power we have, or we don’t believe we have the power; which means we don’t yet appreciate the greatness of His power that is recorded in Ephesians 1: 15-19

“Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power.”

We need to know the exceeding greatness of the power at work in us, the same power than raised Jesus from the dead. If indeed that power dwells in us, why then is our mortal body not quickened by his spirit which dwells in us? Because we have not taken authority and commanded the power to do what it has potentials to accomplish. The power is mighty but unless we put it to work, it will not work. Those who believe should demonstrate their belief by converting the potential power to kinetic power…Dunamis is power at work not power in dormancy.

Problem will always arise when the person who has been given authority does not know what he has. Until a son knows the provisions wrapped in son-ship, he is no more than a servant. There are rights in son-ship but privileges in servant-hood. We have to grow to the knowledge of our son-ship so that we can exercise the authority in son-ship. Without the exercise of authority, power is useless. A car has the power to carry you over a distance but if you don’t have the authority to drive that car, it will not benefit you. In fact, you are like someone that has no bicycle. How do you think your father will feel if he gave you key, and authority to drive his cars and every time you come begging him to let you drive the car that he has given you keys long ago. That is what we do every time we manifest ignorance of the provisions wrapped up in salvation, and the power that saved us from the power of sin and empowered us to rule in a sinful world.

All power in heaven and on earth has been given unto me, go therefore ….that means be rest assured that the power you need, all the power there is, backs you up as you obey me. Go therefore…means you go with a knowledge of who you are, what you have and whose you are. A child who is sent by his father to steal kicks the front door open because he knows who is behind him. He makes no apologies and he is confident. If you meet a child who has been endorsed by his father to fight you, it doesn’t matter if you are the most deadly bully in town, you get ready for a fight…that day will not be your day. I can assure you of that fact.

I know a lady who has the conceal carrier license. Every time she has her gun she goes about in confidence because she believes that before harm will come her way she would be able to defend herself. Have we not seen people die even with their guns? Yet she trusts her gun more than, I suppose, she trusts God. What if we trust and believe God more than we trust and believe our connections and our ammunition? Trust in the lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

When you have authority, not only do you give instructions and commands, you are able to punish those who disobey. Authority gives you that legal right. You cannot have authority without power to back it up, but neither can power work without a channel of authority. When a policeman stops your car on the road, why do you stop? Does he have the power to stop a moving truck?, Maybe not; but does he have the authority to stop a moving vehicle? Definitely; and you stop not so much because you care for the policeman but because the consequences of disobeying him are huge, and if you disobey him you disobey the government that he represents. So, in effect you stop and obey him, not for himself but for the power behind his authority. Even if you cannot stand the police, you can only wish he doesn’t stop you. It doesn’t matter if he is your ex, your junior in high school, your neighbor and in fact, a jerk. Even if you know his family and know how poor they are, it is in your interest to comply with his directives

What is the difference between power and authority? Simply stated, authority is the channel through which power operates. In order for you to be confident in your God-given authority, you must first have a solid trust in the awesome power of God which backs up that authority. I believe that is why the bible in sundry places tells us about the power of God – The dunamis – working through us who believe! But how does that actually happen? It has to do with operating in the authority He has already given us. Why did God have to give us so much power and authority? Because we are here to establish his kingdom…a kingdom is established by power and authority.

When Britain colonized us, they changed whatever they wanted to change not by negotiations or town hall meetings, but by power and authority, delegated downstream from the queen. You disobeyed your district commissioner at your expense. To rule the earth and have dominion over the works of the devil, you better have power, and legality too, else you will be resisted and or molested and harassed. If you claim to have the authority you don’t have, you impersonate, and you be put to jail for that. These things work similarly, and we need to understand the way things work in this kingdom. We cannot rule as kings in a system we don’t understand. So we must consciously pay attention to kingdom principles.

Jesus told us to heal the sick not just pray for the sick. That sounds radical right? But these are the exact words of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this is precisely why we don’t see the miraculous results we are praying for. We are not taking our authority and commanding God’s power; instead we are passively asking God to do what He told us to do. If we don’t take our authority and become commanders instead of beggars, God’s power will not be released. We need to radically renew our thinking on this issue. God wants us to take our authority and command His power. We have begged sicknesses and diseases enough to go away, when are we going to take up and exercise our authority over the elements in Jesus name? Why do we keep praying amiss?

We need to bring our spiritual realm to bear in our natural realm. If truly in Him we live and move and have our being then we must come to that point of realization and full assurance of the indwelling of his power and authority within us. Having power and authority is good, knowing that you have them is even better, but without deploying them you are like one who doesn’t have them. Those who don’t have them share the same fate and experiences as you when you have them but don’t deploy them.

As a child, your father traveled abroad but gave you a box and said to you ‘everything you need is in here’. You probably didn’t even open the box but you carried it on your head and went about looking good. Your rent came due, and you were kicked out with your neighbor who had nothing. You were hungry and you looked for food and begged for bread without knowing you have food and bread in the box. All the money and supplies you ever needed are in that box, yet you had no clue….what would your father do when he returns and finds out you never used any of the provisions he gave you? I am afraid that God will be disappointed in us for wasting his power and authority that he poured in us, when he raised Jesus from the dead. My people perish, for lack of knowledge. In the day of his power his people shall be willing, Today is that day.

Take up your authority, guard up your loins as men, and take charge. The power is within you, and so is the authority. May God give us understanding.

Mezie Okolo @TheRitePlace.

The Conundrum

by Dr. Mezie

The conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and his inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless, chaotic and irrational universe is described as absurdity. Life sometimes gets in the way of living with such nuances that leave the living confused to the extent that they may start questioning the meaning and purpose of life within their space. You cannot find knowledge in ignorance, wisdom in folly or peace and tranquility in chaos and anarchy.

So if your ‘world’ is purposeless, chaotic or irrational then there has to be a conflict between what you set out to seek and what you find, especially when what you seek is not in the options made available to you, but then there is always the option to choose none. But every choice you make has consequences even if you don’t realize the fact at that time. You are responsible for the choices you make, regardless of what excuses you come up with to exonerate yourself and make yourself look good to yourself.

If a child said his mother would not sleep but he sleeps, wakes up and wonders why his mother is sleeping, isn’t that absurd? If an adult expects to get what he wants, when he wants it and how he wants it regardless of whose feet he steps on to satisfy his selfishness, isn’t that absurd in your world?

Isn’t it absurd when you believe nobody tells you what to do yet you apply to work for somebody? Would you let anybody tell themselves how to work for you? What is the rationality in the attitude that I am mature and I know what I want and I do what I want, yet you obey speed limits and check your speed when you see the police; you make sure your seat belt is on and you pay your bills as they come due? Could it be that you don’t really live in your own world, on your own terms? Isn’t it absurd that you sow corn and go back to harvest millet; you drop out of college and wonder why they don’t give you the diploma; you disrespect your parents and wonder why they kicked you out of their house as soon as they could? Are we not doomed to live in a generation where everybody says they know what they want, and they know what they are doing yet they are doing nothing that looks like people who have a clue? Haven’t we lost our sense of value? Our purpose? Our identity? Are we not victims of our own absurdity conundrum?

What is the meaning of life when you lose your identity and your purpose trying to make a living? In the madness of our unilateral absorption in the pursuit of riches and the despondency in finding relevance, we lose our identity and our meaning, we forget our root and despise our time-tested traditions that have sustained our kind. Isn’t that what is called a clash of cultures and described within cultural identity crises?

Although all human beings are similar in their desire for success and the pursuit of happiness, they are different in what success and happiness mean to them. In different parts of the world and among different groups of people within the same geographical space, these differences in purpose and meaning abound. If you take a white person, a black person, a Hispanic person and an Asian person in Dallas and ask them what is their purpose in life and what does success mean to them within their purpose, you will be surprised how differently they view the world and how they are driven by their different ideologies. Remember, a man goes fast and far in life, not by what he drives but by what drives him. What drives you ?

Even among black people, if you take first generation Nigerian immigrant, an African American and a Haitian American and ask them their purpose and what success means to them in the US, then you will realize how differently they are driven and how their outlook reflects their driver. The same differences exist between men and women of the same extraction. When people get confronted with the same challenges, even if it is ordinary mathematical equation, they think and approach it in different ways. For example, you could solve simultaneous equation, and by extension most of life challenges, by elimination or by substitution. I have a problem when we pretend as if the only way to solve a problem is the one way we know to solve it. Then when our way fails, we blame it on the problem or someone else rather than our approach to it. Isn’t that absurd?

I suggest that we need to reevaluate and redefine our purpose then we can challenge our approach to see how it lines up with the purpose given our background culture. When you lose your culture and forget what makes you different from others, you lose sight of why you do what you do, you become a copycat and in the process you lose your identity. Identity is very important. Your identity is you, period.

If you lose your identity you become lost in this pool of conflicting cultures…I am afraid that most of our African immigrants to the US have become so mingled that they have serious culture and identity crises. If you forget whose you are, you lose your place where you belong. You become like a child who was put up for adoption early so much that he doesn’t know his biological parents….Everyman he sees that looks like him could be his father. Can you imagine that feeling of not knowing whose you are? So can you imagine the impact on children who are fostered from home to home, with conflicts of identity?

I don’t like to differentiate between African-Americans and Africans in America. To a reasonable extent the African-Americans are different from Africans in America with respect to their disposition to the American “dream” and their commitment to motherland. Historically, they came here from Africa but most of them have no idea where exactly their forefathers actually came from, and they have been here so long that they don’t know Africa any more than white people know Africa. So the only country they know and now have is the US, fair enough. Their now adopted culture has been modified over the centuries by the external influences of the world around them. Makes sense?

The first-generation African immigrants came here from cultures that they still relate with and sometimes, hold tenaciously. While we expect them to imbibe the American culture in its entirety, that may be a wild goose chase because they are constantly comparing and contrasting, picking and choosing as well as sieving through myriads of conflicting cultural ideologies of their new country. Some people do better at it, others get swept off their feet, unfortunately. Their children are worse off, they don’t really know if they belong here or there so they have this internal conflict.

One way to make sense of this constant battle of cultures is to keep in mind the purpose of coming here, mindful of your peculiarity and your commitment to motherland. If that purpose is defeated, then the journey becomes meaningless, because in the purpose do you find meaning. But how can we find purpose in a purposeless, chaotic, and uncultured space? Do you know why you are here, why you do what you do and why you don’t do what you don’t do? Otherwise how would you know when your purpose is achieved and what next? You see the conundrum?

Some people can tell you what they are doing, but they have failed to know why they do what they do and how it ties together with their purpose here and there. I am yet to be convinced that people who were born in Africa and managed to come to the US have fulfilled purpose if they have not found out why nature sent them to Africa in the first place. It is good to buy houses, cars, go to work, take vacations but people you left in Africa do the same things too? So what is your purpose? When purpose is not fully known or understood, abuse is inevitable. But abuse can be very expensive, dangerous, and time wasting. May God give us wisdom and understanding

Mezie Okolo is a leadership analyst and a voice from the diaspora @TheRitePlace

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Monthly Archives: October 2023

Rethinking Decolonization

Activity vs Productivity

The 3A’s of Effective Leadership

The Force of Faith

Times and Seasons

Think win-win

Go On With One Nigeria: The Lie in “No Victor No Vanquished”

Passive Aggression

Power and Authority

The Conundrum

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