Monthly Archives: October 2023

God is about redemption not destruction; forgiveness not judgment; fruitfulness not fruitlessness; nurturing not uprooting. In life we realize that good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. When a few bad things happen to us in a row we start thinking and wondering “why me”? What offence have I committed against God that karma is catching up with me? We do the same to our neighbors especially the ones that don’t get along with us, as we mock when they graduate from college but couldn’t pass board exam; married but don’t have children; of age but don’t have a husband or wife; are down with some strange illness; and so on. We think they must have done something wrong, maybe their sin and wickedness have caught up with them. We blame the victim as if we cannot be victims or as if we are more righteous or as if things are ok for us because we know what we are doing, and they don’t.

Today we reflect on the events that happened in Luke 13:1-9. There was this breaking news, in fact a couple. Then those events provided a teaching moment, so the lord took advantage of that. In this country every time there is breaking news we get divided in our opinions, and everybody thinks his own view is right. In fact, sometimes we blame God, we blame the victim, we blame the government, we blame the church, we blame the law makers, we blame the president…..It is not new. The blame game started at Eden and has been here ever since. When children don’t do well in school parents blame each other; when a child comes to school with a gun, everybody blames somebody else; when road traffic accident happens, each party blames the other. Ours has become a country of freedom and of rights…everybody is right and everybody knows his right, everybody is the best …and that mindset also has become our undoing.

In the bible story, the tower of Siloam had fallen and killed eighteen people, not long after came another breaking news of the people that Pilate had killed as well. We can imagine the reaction and opinions of people towards these events. Jesus corrects their thinking stating that those befallen by the calamities are not sinners above others in Jerusalem. Then he goes on to speak a parable…a certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came and sought fruit thereon and found none. He said to the gardener, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none, cut it down. It is a waste of land and space (my emphasis). The gardener pleaded …please lord, leave it alone this year also, till I dig around it and dung (manure) it. Then if it bears fruit, well and if not then you can cut it down.

I grew up in the farm so I am familiar with this parable.

In the vineyard of this certain man were different trees but the fig tree gets the attention today. Fig trees usually mature from two to six years of age. It is not clear whether this tree had been planted three years ago or whether it has been three years since it was supposed to have been matured. In any case, it is slow in fruiting and the farmer is tired of being disappointed every time he comes around in expectation to gather fruits. What do we do to trees that fail to bear fruits? So he was not being outrageous for nothing. Many of us would act the same way. He was angry and legitimately so. Sowing and reaping follow natural laws and once your seed leaves your hands, harvest is expected. May you not be fruitless in your season according to the timing of life.

He must have taken time to look very closely on this fig tree to see if he would find even one flower. He wanted to see any sign that his fig tree has any promises of fruiting in the near future. But the gardener pleaded, having come up with a plan. I hear him say “the fig tree has no fruit upwards because it doesn’t have the correct nutrients downwards”. Although we see the leaves, the stems, the branches, etc, it is the root that supplies them with nutrients. Fig trees need specific nutrients from the soil and sometimes the soil is not rich with some of those nutrients. Such nutrients have to be supplied in form of manure or fertilizers and then a bountiful harvest is expected. There was no mention to us about the nature of the soil on which this tree was planted. The suggestion of the gardener suggests that adequate nutrition may be to blame but then he leaves the options open should the tree refuse to do any better after a year of being fertilized with manure. Isn’t it interesting how we get sweet edible fruits from the trees by the provision of dirty stinky manure? Our people say “sandy hands guarantee oily mouth”. When your focus is on the finished product, you don’t mind rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty.

Apparently, the vineyard owner listened to the gardener and gave the tree a second chance. It is not the will of God for anyone to perish but he longs for all to come to full repentance. That is what leaders should be about. They have to train, educate, correct, instruct, but not victimize or set traps for people to fall into. The job of the gardener here is a mediator—he asks for second chance; a correction officer – he wants to correct nutritional deficiency; a leader feeds the people. The gardener offers his service to feed the tree with manure, which contains nutrients for nourishment, hopefully the manure supplied to the root will make a difference to the fruiting process. If you must be a great leader you must learn to give people second chance(s). You don’t fire people just because you can fire them. Nothing stops the vineyard owner from cutting the tree off without minding the plea of the gardener.

In my leadership roles I have had to give someone second chances over and again. In a city where someone told me she is a good worker because she shows up, I quickly realized that my expectations were too high in this little town. People made more money collecting unemployment than they did working so why would they work? Others made more money flipping hamburger at McDonald than they were paid doing jobs that require certification. There was no incentive. When young men made more money working in the oil field than a principal of a high school made then why would they finish high school? You get my point? If you rebuke them for not doing their homework, they quit school and go make money at the oil fields. They say, college is not for everybody and I agree, it is all in the value system.

Someone could argue that every tree should not bear fruit, and that also is true depending on why the farmer planted the tree. If the purpose is for the fruit, then the fruitless tree has fallen short of the expectation and then becomes a candidate for whatsoever the farmer wants to do with it. We are the fruitless tree, in any area we have fallen short of the expectations of God, the purpose for which he planted us where we are. We are expected to blossom where we are planted and any tree that fails to bear fruit worthy of its purpose risks being cut off. The same is applicable to branches of a tree that fail to bear fruit. When you don’t deliver on the job, your position another will take.

The request of the gardener has a time attached to it. The tree didn’t know this conversation happened and that it was on a time clock. Oh, how often we don’t know the conversations they have about us in the workplace, in school, in the community, in the marketplace…therefore we must do our best to exceed expectations at any time t. If purpose is not known, abuse is inevitable but abuse is expensive and risky. In the next year if the fig tree does not bear fruit it will be uprooted and its position another will take. May we not lose our place to another due to unproductivity. A fruitless tree is an unproductive tree and an unproductive tree is an unwanted tree. Whatever productivity means in your situation, I pray for wisdom, knowledge and grace to fulfil destiny and receive commendation instead of condemnation. May God give us understanding

Mezie Okolo @TheRitePlace, Texas

Desperate people do desperate things. Although some degree of hunger for success is needed to sustain and achieve a purpose, one rarely achieves much through desperation. Today I want us to reflect on our past and think about a time when we did something purely out of desperation. What was it about? What did you do? What did you achieve? In hindsight, what should you have done differently? What lesson would you draw from that experience for the next generation? Remember, we want to redeem the time and get the generation next on the highway to achieve in one year what took us 20 years to achieve.

I believe that a major part of the problem of black people everywhere is not just slavery or colonization or poverty in terms of economics but mental slavery, mental colonization and mental poverty that developed over the years of dependency and despondency. Civilization started in Africa, and till this day, Africa has a vast distribution of natural flora, fauna and deposits of precious minerals more than enough to supply the rest of the world with everything needed for man to subdue his environment in the 21st century. But our minds have been conditioned to depend on handouts from elsewhere abroad and the so-called employers and money bags, some of whom are nothing but extensions of the colonial arms and heartless individuals who siphoned public funds into private scoffers and over time the funds became their own. No thanks to these service thieves, and they are in the military, in politics, in civil service, in the academia, in business, in the churches and everywhere. Some of them share the same last names with us, and we probably know them by their first names.

Desperation sets in when one suddenly realizes that time is far spent, and target is not yet achieved. Desperation makes one begin to look for short-cuts, and easy ways to make news headline. Man has a way of comparing himself with others and measuring his success with societal standards. In most of African communities, there are age-groups. The community tends to remind you that your age-mates have graduated from high school, have gone to college, have started working, have bought cars, have built houses, have married, have children, have this, have that. The problem with this mindset is that the life of a man does not constitute in the abundance of what he has. Also, everybody is on a different agenda, different mission, different timing even though they were born within the same period. What tends to happen is that you are reminded of what your age-mates are doing that you are not doing, so the feeling of lagging behind and being left out builds up in you. That feeling is a sucker…it sucks out positive energy, joy, peace, and sometimes sound reasoning. You begin to feel like a failure of some sort. To make it even worse, society rubs it on your face everywhere you turn be it in the church, in the marketplace, in the community; by the way they celebrate those who have those things that you don’t have especially money and what money can buy.

Out of the desperation to be celebrated and validated you do what does not reflect who you are and who you want to be. Some young people end up in jail early in life because of these anomalies. In the American society, similar things happen and once you start raking in those negative and ugly records, your future is becoming mortgaged and beclouded by limitations. First, who told you that you are in competition with anybody? Let’s get this straight, folks, life is individual affair. If you would compete, let it be with yourself so that you can be better than who you were yesterday. This is serious. If you stay in your lane, focus on yourself, mind your business and do what you need to do….only time separates you from those other things that you desire. “Seek yea first the kingdom” is not just about going to church and serving as usher or sanctuary keeper or counselor like most African folks believe. It also means you find out what you can do to make the world a better place for humanity, and all other things will be added to you.

The earth is a colony of the kingdom of heaven and it is the will of God for the earthly kingdom to be a replica of heaven. That is what we say in our Lord’s prayer …thy kingdom come. We are supposed to represent God here and be an extension of his creative hands on earth. God created us in his image after his likeness, right? God created the heaven and the earth and the other things in them, right? But God did not give us cars and airplanes and laptops. Look around you where you are right now and see all the things there that God did not create which we use daily…here now I see fan, bed, clothes, phone, bags, books, shoes, belts, medicine, cosmetics, air conditioner, electric light bulbs and so on. All these things here were created by human beings at one time or the other in response to that same command “Seek ye first the kingdom”. I may not be able to tell you the persons who created all these things I have enumerated above but I can tell you they must have been handsomely rewarded for their innovative thinking and problem solving ideas. Seek you first challenges you to look around you, see a need and proffer a solution and by so doing, advance the kingdom of God on earth. Everything that God made is easy and simple, so much that we take it for granted because of the simplicity. We think that the more complex the more credit worthy…that is not actually true. The problem you solve could be a simple one, but it would get you on your way to where you want to be. Think.

The parable of the talent teaches us about the different gifts and talents. God did not create anybody and left him without some decoration. I consider gifts and talents natural decorations, and you may call them endowments. Have you discovered your own or do you think your own doesn’t count? Whose own counts and why does it count more than yours? Often times desperation comes when we refuse to be our authentic selves and become consumed in our desire to be like someone else. When you be like me, the best you can be is my counterfeit…why would anybody settle for counterfeit anybody? I am not saying that you may not act or sound or think like me so long as you are being yourself and doing you, that is all that matters. When you be yourself, discover your endowments, develop your endowments and deploy your endowments, you can use your endowments to make your environment a better place or make life easier for someone. You will not solve the problem of the whole world, and no one has, but you can advance something or some knowledge in line with that with which nature decorated you. So the next time you hear “seek you first the kingdom” I want you to ask yourself, “what problem was I created to solve?” Find it and solve it and wait for all other things to be added for you….money, fame, marriage, children, cars, houses, whatever. My problem with those material things is that our society looks at blessings as only things tangible….what about joy, peace, happiness, sound sleep, good health, sense of accomplishment etc? Those intangible yet far reaching feelings count too.

When you discover yourself and discover your place in God’s agenda for your generation, the joy that follows is much more than any certificate or diploma you may ever get from Harvard or Yale. Sometimes when we run out of ideas we go back to school to get more diplomas so that we can have longer appendages to our names because we expect that more titles will give us fame and edge over the “competition”. Again, I encourage getting more diploma as means to an end, but the end must be clearly understood. Enough of doing what the society claps for, it is time to do what makes you the solution the world has been looking for in the area of your endowment. When would you look beyond how to perpetuate yourself on the job and think about how you can create jobs for the next generation? Regardless of all the excuses we can come up with, the next generation is expecting us to create an enabling environment for them to step up the stage. You are the provision that God has sent ahead of the vision he has given the generation after you. Do not be a wasted and a dormant provision. St Paul advised Timothy to “fan to flame the gifts that have been deposited in you through the laying on of my hands”. It means that Timothy could not sit idly by and say “Whatever will be will be”. Timothy had to fan the gifts to flame or they will never flame. If you don’t sow your seed, it will never germinate and bear fruits. If you don’t discover your talents, they will die with you and you will account for them when you get to the other side of eternity.

I know that God is a businessman and everything he created solves a problem and brings in profit. What profit have you brought to the kingdom with your 30 or 40 or 50 years of life, lots of diplomas and years of experience? Do not wait until the feeling of “no time” comes upon you. Today, if you perceive a nudge in your spirit to do something or explore an idea, go for it. Don’t say it doesn’t count…who counts what counts? Do not just count years make your years count by your own counting. If you look inward deep enough you will discover relics of your natural endowments that have been left abandoned for years….fan them to flame and you will die happy, having achieved the purpose for which you were sent here. We were all sent here for a season, a reason and a purpose, and if you don’t know your purpose, you mess up your journey here and rob the world of the talents wrapped up in that your small body. You have no idea how long or short your season lasts.

Doing things because others are doing it will only lead to desperation and frustration. We have lots of examples but time will not permit us today to go into details. The only result you would expect out of things done by desperation is remorse and regrets. I know people who married out of desperation, people who traveled abroad out of desperation, people who joined a trade out of desperation, people who chose a career out of desperation….most of them are either miserable or frustrated or both. If you find yourself trying to do things out of desperation, you are either out of the plan for your life or out of alignment with the timing for your assignment. Take a break, reevaluate and if need be, today is your day. You can hit the reset button. Speed counts when direction is right.

It is important to stay on your lane and do your thing diligently…”seest thou a man diligent in his business”, he will stand before kings. I see you stand before kings as you look inwards and refuse to be distracted by the noise around you. May God give us understanding

Mezie Okolo @TheRitePlace

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

Unity speaks of harmony between similar or dissimilar individuals or groups. A people may be different in every area but united by a common goal, a common purpose, a common interest…so unity in diversity demands that the people involved identify and understand the things that unite them and value those things over and beyond the things that divide them. For example, although there is a great difference between human beings and being human, not everybody understands this fact, but we must be united by our common humanity regardless of our diversity. I may look different from you, but I am no less human than you are because of my looks. When I am thirsty, I drink water and so do you. When I am hungry, I eat food, although my food looks like trash to you, it satisfies me and quenches my hunger the same way your burgers does for you. When I am bruised, the blood that comes out from my body is not yellow or green or black…all human blood is red regardless of the color of their skin. Before you pinch me, pinch yourself and see how it feels. If it makes you happy or pays your bills, then go ahead and pinch me. I also want to be happy and I want my bills paid.

Unity in diversity connotes unity without uniformity and diversity without disintegration. It acknowledges our differences but stresses our commonalities. Life would be boring and monotonous if there is uniformity of everything. Everything cannot be white and black. God created the world very colorful, and this evident all around us. Look at the animals in their kingdom, they are colorfully made and beautiful in their natural habitats. Even the different genera of the same family come in different species…that’s nature’s way of abhorring monotony. As you go down the kingdom you see the differences in their diversities, and often times, they don’t eat their own specie even when they are hungry. Although they may fight among themselves, they often unite against common enemies. They fight to prevent extinction of their kind.

Unity in diversity encourages, not oneness of kind, but oneness of purpose, not just based on tolerance but based on understanding of the uniqueness in the differences between people. Different people bring to the table different perspectives to the same problem and different ways of approaching common challenges. A balanced team is often made up of people with some kinds of different lenses through which they view the world and look at issues. In a community, often times a team is made to represent all the possible views out there in a bid to making the decisions and policies inclusive of the different interest groups. This is a leadership issue, understood by leaders who want to be successful. When counsel is needed, as is always the case, the different groups need to be consulted in some ways so that their perspectives are factored into the final deal, otherwise he who is not on the table may be in the menu, howbeit inadvertently. In the multitude of counsel there is safety.

Unity in diversity encourages each person to be authentic and genuine while letting the other person be themselves. This is crucial. When we understand that we all share a common humanity, then we let our diversity be a strength instead of a weakness. Everybody has his strengths and weaknesses, so diversity could be a strength and it could be a weakness. When we identify the different groups in our team, we can leverage on the strengths of those individuals. For example, who doesn’t know that every time the United States wins an Olympic medal chances are that it was won by an African American? Who doesn’t know that if the United States scores a goal in soccer chances are that it was scored by a Hispanic American? There is a place for everyone and when everybody contributes his fair share, we all win. You can be yourself and I can be myself and none of us takes away from any of us by being our authentic selves.

Unity in diversity is not just about accommodation but about adaptation and acclimatization. Unity in diversity may start with accommodation, but it has to go beyond that. We have to accept and adopt diversity into the fabric of our culture. When we win the Olympics, it is the United States that wins not the white or black or Hispanic, the same is applicable when we lose and come behind in science and mathematics. Whatever is not appreciated depreciates, so if we don’t start appreciating our diversity, it becomes a weakness rather than strength, and instead of benefit us it hurts us. This is the problem we have in other countries like Nigeria, where certain people think of themselves as born to rule others. A country that belongs to one group more than the others will lag behind other counties due to internal frictions and strife. Development becomes retarded on all fronts. I wish this weren’t the case in Africa. Have you forgotten “Ghana must go in Nigeria” or “xenophobia in South Africa”? Those policies and mindsets are as retarded as Apartheid which we all condemn as if it was not people that decided and implemented it for so long. Those policies were informed by the thinking around “we” and “they”. At the end, they leave everybody worse off. Every time we create those man-made rules born out of greed and avarice; we all lose. Those are the only time we have true situations of no victor no vanquish. In any case, we have to be tolerant of people that reason differently and talk differently and believe differently or we are not ready to advance to the next level of development. For example, America is a country of immigrants, and she will do well to leave her doors open to the class of immigrants who have skills to contribute to the advancement of the American society. Immigration has probably brought us more blessings than curses.

Unity in diversity admits the differences we have along racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, geographical, sociological, ideological and political inclinations yet demands that these difference act as strength and as forces to hold us together instead of put us asunder and at each other’s neck. This has been said or insinuated in different ways. We may not agree on religious or political issues, but we must agree on morality and good governance; we may not agree on sociological and ideological issues but we must agree on our common humanity and our need for peace, joy and the pursuit of happiness – inalienable rights that must not be taken away from anybody in spite of our differences and similarities. We must come to that stage of development and advancement where we agree that there is something good about the different components of us regardless of our individual inclinations. You don’t have to belong to my school of thought but unity in diversity requires that you be tolerant of my views within the law. Although you were not there when the constitution said “we the people” but you are here now so you were included in it regardless. The next generation of us must go beyond the lousy lines that divide us along racial and religious lines, to more ideological discussions around the core values that not only highlight our common humanity but our commonalities as citizen of a country whose flag we all pledge to defend. This applies to you no matter the country with whose passport you travel.

Mezie Okolo is a pharmacist and leaderpreneur @TheRitePlace, www.mezieokolo.com

Great leaders live into the future. They carry a vision of the future that is better than the present, and they must sell this vision to the followers for a buy in. Such leaders go beyond the regular call of duty because of posterity and their commitment to the next generation. Every tree bears fruits and in the fruits are seeds which preserve the specie and guaranty reproduction after its kind. Otherwise the next generation is in jeopardy, and great leaders understand this principle of the kingdom.

Mentorship is an age long phenomenon that is basically supposed to get the next generation on the highway of self-discovery and engagement in a manner that redeems the time. There is no new problem and there is no new challenge. Everything that is has been and if you stand on the shoulders of people who had gone ahead of you, you gain speed and you cover great distance with minimal effort. So, mentorship is the greatest act of leadership that translates leadership into legacy. Mentorship creates the avenue for leaders to invest in the people, and ultimately prepare for succession. Through mentorship, the leader serves as a model, a tutor, an example, and a counselor to the protege in order to produce one greater than himself. Failure to mentor a successor is failure to preserve your own legacy; you do yourself great disservice as a leader. Therefore, a leader cannot afford not to identify, recruit and mentor people because success without a successor is a successful failure.

Mentorship is about intentionality…it demands that you intentionally transfer knowledge, experience, skills, and information. If you hoard information so they don’t know your secrets, then you are a bad and insecure leader setting yourself up for failure. If you understand that failure of your proteges and your successors is your own failure, then you take mentorship seriously. Jesus told his apostles everything until he said to them, ‘you are no longer servants but friends because I have told you everything’. Jesus did not plan to perpetuate himself and neither should you. Transfer knowledge as quickly as you can. Stimulate your mentees to ask probing questions so you can get them ready to take over from you and make you unnecessary on your present role. Do not be afraid to take vacations and to delegate….when would you be able to play golf and not worry about the business of the company? When Jesus prayed for his apostles, he also prayed for those who will come to the father through their ministry…so he was thinking trans-generationally. That should be your mindset too.

Your successor preserves your legacy. Succession begins with and defines success in leadership. As a leader, you cannot afford to let your vision die with you else you are a failure. Your success is measured after you have gone. Abraham was successful because Isaac continued with the vision. If your focus as a leader is to build houses or walls, or to acquire wealth, you need to remember that buildings get old and out of fashion, money goes away, everything else can perish but succession preserves success. It cannot be adequately emphasized that great leaders invest in people. Have you not heard about parents who struggle to build houses and leave estates behind only for their children to sell those estates for a fraction of the value as soon as the parent passes away? Leaving houses, cars, or properties for the next generation is not legacy, it is called Inheritance. So great leadership is about continuity not about inheritance.

It is not all about you, it is about the next generation. Through succession, purpose is perpetuated. Succession also involves effective transfer of the leader’s purpose, values, and morals to succeeding generation of leaders. Successor never destroys the foundation; he builds on it. Jesus was successful because Peter understood and continued with the purpose.

Moses was a successful leader because he handed over to Joshua, but who did Joshua hand over to? Do you think Joshua was successful? From leadership and succession perspective, I don’t think so. In fact, Joshua was a successful failure because after his death not only did he not hand over the baton, the children of Israel knew not God. If you want to make some leaders uncomfortable ask them about their succession plan. Insecurity makes bad leaders destroy the opposition or people that threaten their comfort zone. Even in churches, the politics of position and rank has made many churches redundant. We have even heard about pastors going as far as trying to poison other pastors to pave way for themselves to ascend positions of hierarchy. How shameful!

Some leaders are afraid of the future success of their successor so they eliminate the potential successor who may likely outshine them….we know several of them who have done things unimaginable to frustrate the next generation or the assistants. If junior pastors tell you what they go through in the hands of some general overseers and senior pastors, you will not believe it. I am not sure if this is worse among black people, even though I hate to attach color to these issues. When was the last time that junior pastor that you like preached in church on a Sunday morning? Does the senior pastor have monopoly of spiritual insight?

Is it not a compliment for your leadership when your successors outshine you? Those people you want to put down and hold down belong to the generation next which is the future and so your job on this relay race is to prepare them for tomorrow. You must plant the seed even though you may not be here when the tree bears fruits. Great men speak long after they die through the voices and ministries of their protégés. Even if they or you do not think they qualify, how did you qualify to be and to do what you do now? Did Abraham qualify for the call? Did Moses qualify? Did Gideon qualify? How did David qualify? What about Samuel? How about Ruth? The list is endless. Great leaders recruit, equip and deploy people to go and maximize their potentials but bad leaders recruit, refuse to equip but employ people to take instructions from them and do their bidding. That is manipulation and dictatorship not leadership.

So, your leadership is not measured by how many people serve you but how many people you serve. Mentorship is about how many people you have made more successful than yourself. Mentorship is not just duplication of yourself but transformation of the other person who needs to beat all your records because they have the benefit of utilizing all your strategies and avoiding all your mistakes. Mentorship is service and that is why black people do not give attention to it. Mentorship is you pouring all of yourself into someone else, so he must be greater than you because he has all of you and all of himself in one vessel. If you brag that nobody has beaten your record, you should be ashamed of yourself. You do not have forever to see to it that certain people are transformed around you by your deposit in their lives ….Jesus asked them ‘ how long will I be with you’? I ask you Bishop, “how long will they serve you before you trust them and show them what and how?

I was privileged to run both sprint and relay races for my school one time, so I understand that leadership is like a relay race not sprint. There are usually four people in a relay team. Normally they know their individual strengths and speeds and they could plan the legs accordingly, but no one wins by the legs, they win or lose as a team. Speed is important but skillful transference of the baton is critical. The window within which exchange of baton happens defines a change in the progress or otherwise of the team. As a runner, you don’t just want to run your leg well, you want to hand over the baton successfully and you want the other persons to do the same. Even if you did everything right and the other person did everything wrong, all your effort and ideas and knowledge and skills amount to nothing. Your team is disqualified, or you do not win the trophy you have prepared for all these years. What would happen if one of the runners refuses to hand over the baton and keeps running into the next runner’s space? Is not that what we see happening in most of Africa where men in their 80s refuse to let young people take over positions of leadership?

Can you imagine that the president of a country and his chief of staff are both in their 80s? What an analog combination? Contrast them with Nelson Mandela who spent decades in prison but only served one term as president and handed over the baton. Leadership is about successful transition. People misinterpret notoriety with popularity…until you pass the baton you are not yet popular. Do not go home with the baton in your hands….pass it on.

If everything you know dies with you what have you achieved? We have families in Africa whose ancestors knew how to heal all kinds of diseases but died with that knowledge unfortunately. You make your exit plan in the days of your optimal performance. You must understand the urgency of now in your leadership role. Great leaders do not always die old, they need to die empty or they have failed destiny. Who is next in your organization waiting for the baton? Do not eliminate him for being ambitious so long as his ambition is not inordinate and illegitimate. Know when you have run your leg and pass on the baton. When your time is over you run out of ideas and if care is not taken you start running backwards to your old ideas and old programs. You cannot solve tomorrow’s problems with yesterday’s skills, and you do not have monopoly of knowledge. Get out of the way! It is time for succession and your successor is waiting to take the vision to the next level. May God give us understanding

Mezie Okolo, Leadership Analyst @TheRitePlace

This word comes from two words put together: team + work= TeamWork. It is the collaborative effort of two or more people for the purpose of achieving a common goal in the most efficient and effective manner. But for a team to work, the individuals in the team have to work the team. Nothing works until you make it work. Some of the ingredients in team work include

Collaboration: The individuals in the team must understand that they are working together to win together. In a team, individuals don’t win, the team does. You may be the force behind the team but you must guard against competing with your team members. Anytime team mates begin to compete instead of collaborate, the team goes down and loses its place. We have seen this happen in soccer teams in several places across the world. But that happens more among armature players, professionals know better.

Purpose: The purpose of the team must be clearly known to every player. When purpose is not known, abuse is inevitable. Most teams fail because the players are ignorant of their roles or are not happy with their roles in line with the purpose and want to play someone else’s role. In a team, you don’t always get to do what you want, when and how…someone makes that call. In a company, it could be the CEO; in a class, it could be the teacher; in a church it could be the senior pastor, in a family it could be the father or in a marriage it could be God based on what His word says. Job roles in a team are usually clearly defined by some authority figure and conflict arises when people overreach or usurp other roles out of ambition, arrogance or ignorance. Whichever be the case, the team could be stalled.

Common goal: Not only is purpose clear, the team members have to subscribe to the common goal and be committed to it. This will ensure synergism rather than antagonism. Everybody is doing their bit every time and in everyplace to uplift the team and meet goals per time. Again in a game of soccer, every maneuver or dribble or pass or shoot out is done with the goal post in mind. Every player brings his talent and skills to play and puts in his best to ensure that goals are scored. Along the line, someone may fall or injure but the game still continues. When they dribble you, you don’t quit, you keep pursuing and attacking or defending as the case may be. Regardless of your position, you all don’t want to concede goals and you all want to score goals. If you don’t achieve that, all the display of skills don’t really amount to much. People will say he only displays but cannot score goals. Which team wants to sign up players who don’t know how to kick the ball into the goal mouth across the goal line?

Efficiency: Resources are limited so teams have to function with budgets. If two people can get a job done why do we need three or four? If your organization can figure out how to get more using less that’s the right thing and the most economically wise option. Nobody wants to hire people to come and play cards and then draw salaries. Even when the team size is right, there is no need doing a chore a certain way if there are easier, faster and better ways of doing it without breaking banks. So the most efficient team wins all the time.

Roles and responsibilities: The place of team role cannot be over emphasized. Team works and wins when everybody understands his roles and responsibilities and stays in his lane. If it is not in your place to tell me what to do please shut up and do what is in your place to do as part of a team. In America we would say ‘why don’t you mind your business?’. Teams win when individuals mind their business and stop trying to be Mr iTK (I too know). So long as you do your part with the understanding that we are all in this together, we are all on the same page and we will get this task accomplished together…that’s the winning attitude right there.

Communication: Team works when team communication is understood and adequate. Without communication there is chaos and there is bound to be lapses. Members of a team have to know what to communicate, how to communicate, when to communicate and, what not to say, how not to say it, and when not to say what you shouldn’t say anyways. This is because lots of people don’t know how to communicate even though they know how to talk…talking and communicating are two different animals. Communication can make all the difference as far as team work is concerned. Irrelevant talks are seen as distractions in a team that has a lot at stake.

Accountability: There has to be clear lines of accountability and everybody has to understand it. There is a team leader and even the team leader reports to some kind of authority. Individuals in a team have to be able to hold themselves accountable and willing to be held accountable too. A lot of people say this nonsense ‘Nobody tells me what to do’ or ‘ I don’t like it when people tell me what to do’ yet they prepared their resume and applied for job and were hired by someone. If someone hired you and could fire you, what do you think will happen if you refuse to do what they tell you? Nobody is ready to accommodate insubordination in the workplace. So get your acts together, roll on the sleeves and go to work or else you will be kicked out of the team and your position another takes. It is that simple and life will continue without you in that team. In this corona season, it is a privilege to have a job and if you still do, better be a seasoned and a reasonable team player. I hope your day goes well. Bye for now

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

Anytime someone talks about winning, you get the impression that there is a contest, a competition, or a conquest. However, the conquest could be real or imaginary. Sometimes people compete with themselves and think they are competing with someone else. Some people say ‘I am competitive’ when in actual sense they are just combative. It makes no sense to fight or appear to be fighting when nobody is fighting with you. Life is not about winning or losing? It is wisdom to understand that losing could be part of winning or a strategy to win big. Life is about give and take. Sometimes you need to lose a battle so you can win a war. If you must win every argument, something is definitely wrong with you. If you are right every time and must have the last word with every person, you need to examine yourself. If you feel inferior because someone has better idea or more compelling argument than you, then you need to be delivered from superiority or inferiority complex. You can disagree with a person without being disagreeable. In this kingdom, you cannot always be right. Wisdom is the principal thing and wisdom is profitable to direct. Direction is key to success. To drive, you need a teacher but to fly you need an instructor. With proper instruction and direction, speed counts and you will not crash-land. Else you waste time and resources second-guessing yourself. Life has lots of lessons to teach if we can pay attention to nature. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? That is winning at a loss. Why would you pass a test and fail an examination? Wouldn’t it have been better to fail the test and pass the exam? If you let the fact that you did well in the test get into your head so much that you forgot to prepare for the exam, you will explain to your parents what you did with your time in school. In making leadership decisions, you look at the short term and the long-term effects of your actions and inactions. In our line of business, we are conscious of audits so that informs what we can or cannot do, it does not matter the immediate gain. You cannot pay us enough to risk our source of livelihood. Why would you make $50 today and risk $500 tomorrow? Why would you risk a career for a job? Is it not better to go hungry than to eat the food of unrighteousness? Why would you consider a few days of pleasure and risk a lifetime of regrets and displeasure? There is a way that seems right unto a man but ends in dishonor. What does it profit a man? Life is a trade-off. You are not a failure because you failed a thing, but because you quit trying. You are not a loser because you lost an episode, and who cares that you lost anyways? Get it off your mind, and don’t let your little ego get in the way of your life. Understand what is important and do not sweat on the little things. There is no shame in that which is gainful…sometimes losing is more gainful than winning. Pride and arrogance have great price tags… unfortunately one act of pride is like a loan you took uninformed which you may pay for the rest of your life. The people you want to please or who are cheering you on will not be there when you pay for the outcome of your stupidity even though they hailed and clapped for you…all because you want to win over a business or a man or a lady or some position or some worthless argument that does not pay a dime of your bills.

Consider the long-term effect and the impact on your overall plan for your life or the life of your business and for posterity and let that guide your actions and decisions. All these nonsense about being ‘competitive’ is leading many down the road of despondency and corner- cutting. How else do you want to know you have lost the argument? If your boss told you what to do at your job and you say no one tells me what to do, what do you think will happen next? Let’s say it is this corona virus season and he fired you or cut your hours to nothing, by the time your bills are due then you know if someone tells you what to do or not. Who lost? I live in my own world and I do what I want is because you are ignorant of the externalities of such unguarded utterances. Nobody gets to that level that nobody can advice, correct or instruct him on what and what not to do. Even if you are the CEO and founder of your company, you do not have all the answers. You have the power to hire and fire, but you do not use those powers irrationally. There are people you would fire, and you win at a huge loss. It is wisdom to understand this and to let that knowledge work in your favor every single time. “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore, get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honor, when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee” (Prov. 4:7-9)

Mezie Okolo is a leadership analyst

The expectations of the righteous shall not be cut off…this is a very common scripture among evangelicals but I am not sure we get the interpretation right all the time. Faith calls those things that be not as though they were.

Expectations are not reality. Your family expects you to do this or that because your mates are doing this or that…but they have no idea how much you struggle to even pay your bills every month. Your friends expect you to do this or that but they are not involved in your daily realities at work or at home. You expected that by now you will do whatever you want, when and how but your reality speaks in the contrary. Your business plan projects that by now you will have taken over the entire market and be the brand everybody talks about but your reality is that your loans are behind, no thanks to corona virus. The gap between expectation and reality is frustration depending on how you handle it. If you don’t have the spirit of sportsmanship that pulls a team through the muddy waters of hard times, you give up before your hour of celebration. The next minute could be the minute you have waited for.

If you can look up you can lift up your hands to the hills from whence comes your help. God is still in the business of lifting people out of the valley of business stuntedness. Hang in there and keep doing everything you know to do. Get up, dress up and show up steadfastly… your pay day is coming. It gets better everyday and word gets out about you and your services over time. Mind your business and refuse to be distracted. When we opened our doors some predicted we will not last beyond a year as was the case with some other group. Fifteen months later we are just getting started…regardless of corona. We are not in a hurry and our doors are still wide open with more products, more supplies and more people coming from even outside the county. The earth is the Lord’s. In business as in life, there is bound to be gap between expectation and reality but don’t you shut the door against yourself before your time of visitation. Don’t be like that city over which Jesus wept because she did not know the time of her visitation. There are seasons in life…winter, summer, spring and fall. Understand the seasons and know that the end of one is the beginning of the other.

When you plant a seed in the ground it does not germinate the same day or week or month depending on the nature of the seed. Understand your peculiarity and know that everything is achievable with time. Do not let your reality today contort the expectation of tomorrow and when there is gap, do not be frustrated….wait until your change comes. Job waited and his change came.

I see your change come quicker than you could ever imagine. One day at a time, God led his people out of bondage and one day at a time he led them into the promised land. They were not stranded and manna fell religiously to feed them. Let this mind be in you. Keep faith alive and keep up with the attitude of gratitude. Natural laws do not give up on someone who do not give up on himself. …for He will give His angels charge over you! Even if the people mock you, wait for God to make you. The earth is His and He is a rewarder of them that diligently go about their business. If you are diligent, look at the mirror and see a man that will make news headline, and a man that will shake hands with Kings, someday. Have a blessed day folks

– MezieOkolo –

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 Biafraland 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