The Nation Newspaper

Category: Natural Health

Tomato or tomatoes at four for N1,000: ‘potatoes’ have no ‘toes’

Whenever I hear Nigerian women complain nowadays about tomatoes selling for four for about #1000, and pepper almost that expensive, I remember some of my octogenarian acquaintances who are reluctant to go to bed earlier than 3 am every day. They believe that many old people die between midnight and that time due to heart attacks, strokes or related system crashes. They remind me also of VIDA MAXX, a proprietary plant medicine made from a water-soluble tomato extract. The product literature of Vida Maxx promises that one 50mg capsule can resolve blood vessel and heart challenges for no fewer than 24 hours in one straight run.

From these, you may appreciate why, when they were cheaper, I substituted four tomatoes for fish or beef at dinner, eating two raw for their Vitamin C and other vitamins and two parboiled for lycopene, from their heat-broken cell walls, for the health of my prostate gland. And POTATOES? The juice neutralises acidosis, eases the pain of peptic acid and other ulcers, strengthens the heart, and checks elevated blood pressure (hypertension), apart from helping to prevent unnecessary growth, tumours, and cancers. Thanks to Dr. Max Gerson, the German who taught our generation of doctors and caregivers that potassium deficiency in cells causes these abnormalities. Isn’t this worth trying by Nigerian women who, in their hundreds of thousands or millions, are today down with either breast challenges or uterine fibroids?

DAN QUAYLE

On a lighter note, before I proceed, my generation of septuagenarians who were media conscious in their prime time should easily remember Mr. QUAYLE. He was the United States Vice President in the administration of George H.W. Bush (1989-1993). In 1992, Dan Quayle generated a storm when he couldn’t spell TOMATO or POTATOE correctly. Dan Quayle had something to do with the American classroom.

According to a report: “Dan Quayle, the former US Vice President, inadvertently taught Americans that “potato” has no “e” at the end, after his infamous gaffe during a spelling bee at an elementary school in New Jersey in 1992. He corrected a student, William Figueroa, who had correctly spelled “potato”, and told him to add an “e” at the end, making it “potatoe”. This mistake led to widespread mockery and ridicule, and ultimately taught Americans that “potato” indeed has no “e” at the end!

“The school children involved in Dan Quayle’s spelling scandal were led by a 12-year-old boy named William Figueroa ¹ ² ³. During a routine campaign stop at a middle school in Trenton, New Jersey, on June 15, 1992, Dan Quayle called upon William to spell “potato” in front of a room full of reporters. After William correctly spelled “potato,” Quayle urged him to add an “e” to the end of the word (which now made it pota-toe). William complied, and the room erupted in applause”.

School boy Williams Figueroa then wrote on the blackboard the spelling of TOMATOE as TOMATO. The Vice President said he blundered and proceeded to correct the spelling as TOMATO. To worsen matters, Vice President Dan Quayle said POTATOES was the correct spelling of POTATO. The United States erupted in disbelief, if not dismay. It became clear that American leaders were not the perfectionists or angels that society thought they were. Secondly, it became apparent that many Americans were as bad with spellings as Dan Quayle.

Someone came up with a spelling formula that helped many persons. POTATO has no TOES, and so the “O” of POTATO is not followed by an “E”. The plural is POTATOS, not POTATOES, the last four letters standing for “TOES” in the formula. However, TOMATOE is the correct spelling of TOMATOE, and not TOMATO as Dan Quayle taught those school children, and the plural is TOMATOES.

We are informed in the following report about the possibly origin of POTATO HAVE NO TOES:

“The character who said potato has no toe is the “Pobble Who Has No Toes,” a fictional character in a poem by Edward Lear. The poem is about a Pobble who loses his toes and is comforted by his Aunt Jobiska, who tells him that Pobbles are happier without toes.”.

I do not remember who caused the next earthquake in the United States corridors of power. He had been asked to name the capital of Ghana. Why he failed to know the answer, ACCRA, surprised even Africans. Guess what he gave as an answer? NIGERIA! This goof showed that American leaders thought less of Africa and knew less about Africa than they did about other peoples on Earth.

VIDA MAXX

With tomatoes now selling for four for 1,000 or thereabout, and thereby going out of reach of many octogenarians who eat them to prevent heart and related problems, VIDA Maxx offers a helping hand. The origin of this proprietary name from Alliance Global still eludes me. Nevertheless, I swallow one capsule at about 10 p.m., believing I would have protection for the next 24 hours, as the product literature promises. Vida Maxx is a high load of vitamins, especially Vitamin A and Vitamin E. Alliance Global says that, from 11 clinical trial results, it can sustain “normal blood circulation and help maintain healthy platelet function important to cardiovascular health”. LOSARTAN would appear to be a major factor in all of these. It is said to be good for hypertension, heart failure, and prevention of heart attack and stroke. Beyond use for high blood pressure, Vida Maxx “also protects kidney function in high blood pressure patients having diabetes and impaired kidney function (diabetic nephropathy)”. Like other prices, that of Vida Maxx has gone out of the window, beyond the reach of many persons.

Thus, like many septuagenarians and octogenarians who love tomatoes and eat them for health purposes, I am eagerly looking forward to the end of the tomatoe blight in northern farms.

TOMATO BLIGHT

In Northern Nigeria, TUTA ABSOLUTA, a fungus, is wiping out tomatoes on farms, causing a shortage of tomatoes nationwide for which the government is taking several knocks every day. The government is going to ask agriculture experts for a solution. What will their solution be outside of pesticides? These pesticides will kill TUTA ABSOLUTA in the soil so we can have more tomatoes. However, the roots of the tomatoe plant will suck in some of the pesticide molecules and give them to the tomatoe leaves and fruits. That is where we lovers of tomatoes may have health challenges from. Our farmers need money. They will not care much about our health. Afterall, they sprayed pesticides on the fungi that kill such plant vegetables and fruit as carrots, cucumbers, e.t.c and we still eat them.

Gone are those days, it would appear, when our farmers chased away the enemies of their crops and farms using natural farming methods. For everything in Nature, there is a counterpole or antagonist. Thus, in the female human body, progesterone checks the excessiveness of estrogen, the main hormone capable of that. Similarly, magnesium puts calcium in check. Then, for example, too much calcium in the intestine causes constipation, magnesium addresses the lock down, as is observed with the intake of Phillips Milk of Magnesia (a magnesium drink) by persons of my father’s generation. Potassium checks sodium. Zinc and copper work together. For healthy vision, Vitamin A would appear ineffective in the eye, no matter how much is taken or present in the eye, where there is not enough zinc. Premature ejaculation may arise when there is to much calcium and too little magnesium in the ejaculatory nerves.

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On the farms, plants behave somewhat like humans. Friendly humans help one another towards self-fulfillment, while antagonistic humans inhibit one another. There are, also, friendly plants and antagonistic plants. Millie Uyldert tells us about this and more in her book “PSYCHIC GARDEN….plants and their esoteric relationship with man”. Millie Uyldert gives us several examples in this book.

She says: “It appears that woody shrubs like LAVENDER cause CUCUMBER, for example, to dry up…on the other hand, cool plants seem to find the proximity of hot plants such as the HORSE RADISH, SAGE, and the CHINESE SPANISH RADISH very beneficial. What, afterall, goes on in the plant world, a society in itself? By watching Nature, man must discover what plants seek each other out and which avoid each other, so that we do not hinder the plant by making wrong combinations and somewhere disturb the great harmony. Mother Nature knows which plants it must combine, but man makes many mistakes through his ignorance. Man thinks he is saving work in weeding and picking by putting down rows and beds of the same crop, but this is not right. Just like man, a plant also likes to have its friends around it, which complement, and not enemies, which secret something that does them harm. Furthermore, when a crop has been harvested, a different plant must be put on the same ground, taking different substances from the soil and, from the soil, and possibly, itself putting back what was taken from the soil by its predecessor. Furthermore, it is good to know that Mother Nature has already begun to prepare the soil. We need not pull up the herbs which she has allowed to grow on it, for that would be an unnecessary duplication of work.

Millie UYLDERT adds, in respect of TOMATO and POTATO: Tomatoes and asparagus help each other. Tomatoes benefit from stingy nettle and should not be planted near kohlrabi, fennel, potatoes, or apricot trees. The heavy scent of the tomato plant keeps many undesired insects at a distance, particularly the cabbage white caterpillar. Plant your potatoes with BROAD BEAN between them. This keeps the insects away. Border this plot with FRESH MARIGOLD, and you will never have trouble with EEL WORM, which they frighten off. HORSE RADISH at each corner of the plot keeps the POTATOES healthy. … particularly friends of the Potato, giving mutual aid, are the sunflower, which is not only a fine sight but whose seeds you can eat, dead nettle, sainfoi (a fodder clover), nasturtium, cabbage, sweet corn, and peas.

French beans alternating with rows of potato plants seem to keep the Colorado Beetle away. These like AUBERGINE even more, planted around the potato, therefore, they draw the beetle off, and their concentration on the aubergines makes them easy to catch. Orach grows well close to potatoes, but the latter does not. They seem to thrive, orach and goosefoot growing abundantly on the potato plot, are one of Nature’s means of replenishing the soil, which the potatoes have in certain respects exhausted.

ADA MBAMARA

This young woman deserves recognition in this column. Her father, Joseph Mbamara, is a follower of Mother Nature and, accordingly, dispenses herbal medicines. He is from Imo State. Once in a while, Ada literally disappears to Benue State, homeland of her mother, where she learns a lot about the healing arts from those simple folks. She brings some rare seeds and plants from there, either sourced by herself or as gifts from her mother. She came over as I was writing this column last week (13 June, 2024). Millie UYLDERT’s “PSYCHIC GARDEN” excited her. Incidentally, she saw in them the gardening methods of her mother and aunt. Gladly, I do share her experiences. Her father and mother live in Orlu Umuakah Amiyi, Imo State. Mrs. Tabita Mbamara has no idea what she does on her farm. Nevertheless, she has the best yields around, for which reason she is nicknamed “The woman who works less but harvests more.” She used no fertiliser. After planting, she removed only the first growth of weeds. The next time she comes around is at harvest time. Her co-farmers, who go on weeding from time to time, discovered that Mrs. Mbamara’s crops grow better than theirs.

Ada Mbamara’s second story is centred on OJO MILITARY CANTONMENT in Lagos. One day, a friend of her aunt noticed that pineapples and maize were growing together in her home garden, and the maize was dying at three months. This woman said maize and pineapple are not to be grown together. The leaves of the maize were turning yellow and spotting black spots. Coincidentally, maize planted in front of the house with no pineapple around it were growing better and well.

TUTA ABSOLUTA

At this time, many people who cannot do without the taste of tomato in their food will eat infected tomatoes, especially in outdoor cooking and bear a heavy load of toxins from fungi and many others. There will be as many others who would bear as well a heavy load of pesticides. Both groups will need to constantly detoxify their system. Happily, there are many formula for systemic detoxification in Nigeria today. Some of them include Burdock Root, Club Moss, Carqueja, Dandelion, Pure Cleanse, Intestinal Cleanse and Weight Control, Milk Thistle e.t.c. They are in the band A price category. Coming up and not less effective, though much cheaper is Detox Plus. Many persons who can hardly do without tomato taste in their food are evolving wonderful formulas, one of which is the combination of the residues of filtered juices of cucumber and beetroot. As for pepper for its heat, digestive and circulation support as well as a soup thickener the fellowing substitute may be tried.

Good substitutes for tomatoes and peppers depend on the recipe and desired flavour. Here are some options:

Tomato substitutes:

1. Cucumbers (raw or cooked)

2. Eggplant

3. Roasted red onions (sweet and savoury)

4. Fresh pineapple

5. Mango (in salsas or salads)

6. Pawpaw grind Pawpaw seeds (Papaya)

Pepper substitutes:

1. Cucumbers (raw or cooked)

2. Eggplant

3. Carrots (raw or cooked)

4. Radishes (raw or cooked)

5. Okra (as thickner)

Remember, each substitute has a unique flavor and texture, so adjust the recipe accordingly.Happy cooking!

A nutrition report once:

“ Eating rotten tomatoes in food can have several health consequences, including:

1. Food poisoning: Rotten tomatoes can harbour harmful bacteria like Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria, which can cause food poisoning.

2. Gastrointestinal issues: Consuming rotten tomatoes can lead to symptoms like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps, and bloating.

3. Infections: In severe cases, the bacteria from rotten tomatoes can cause infections like sep-ticemia (blood poisoning) or meningitis.

4. Allergic reactions: Some people may be allergic to mold or bacteria in rotten tomatoes, which can trigger allergic reactions like hives, itching, or swelling.

5. Digestive problems: Rotten tomatoes can irritate the digestive system, leading to long-term issues like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

6. Liver damage: In rare cases, consuming rotten tomatoes contaminated with certain toxins can cause liver damage or failure.

7. Kidney damage: Prolonged consumption of rotten tomatoes can lead to kidney damage or exacerbate existing kidney issues.

8. Cancer risk: Some molds in rotten tomatoes can produce carcinogenic toxins, which may increase the risk of cancer with prolonged consumption.

It is essential to handle and store tomatoes properly to prevent spoilage and foodborne illnesses. Always inspect tomatoes for signs of spoilage before consumption and cook them properly to kill harmful bacteria”.

DAN QUAYLE

I do not know where former U.S. Vice-President Quayle is today. I must thank him for the opportunity of the formula we now all have to know if the spelling of TOMATO is TOMATO or TOMATOE, or if a POTATO has a TOE or not.

June 20, 2024
Ajaero’s rabble rousing and Obasanjo’s plain truth

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and many persons, including myself, are rarely on the same page. The trouble is his penchant to assume that all governments, except his, are inept – that is, they have small grey matter or none. Last week, however, we became jolly good fellows when he told Nigerians the plain truth about why the economy is wracked and they are poor in the midst of plenty. That plain truth is that Nature has blessed us with plenty of fertile, arable land, but we are too lazy to cultivate it, are therefore hungry, dependent on less- blessed people in other parts of the earth to feed us, needlessly throwing valuable money away, distressing our economy and currency, the Naira, and creating jobs in other nations.

On the other side of the coin, Joe Ajaero, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President, and Festus Osifo, his counterpart in the Trade Union Congress (TUC), were busy rabble-rousing the rustic population for a #400,000 plus minimum wage for messengers (office assistants, cleaners, and other low-grade workers). They would not settle for less, such as the #62,000 the Federal Government has already considered or the #70,000 outgoing Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State has promised to pay. Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo have said nothing about what happened when the national minimum wage shifted from #18,000 to #30,000 about five years ago. They have not said that, up till now, some state governments, especially in the North, have been unable to pay #30,000. This has left these state governments open to the harassment of local and national labour leaders, formenting work stoppages,and crippling local

economies, which will inevitably impact the national.

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In this design, Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo have failed to recognise or deliberately declined to remember that Nigeria began its journey as a federal country, was degraded into unitary federalism by frivolous soldiers who truncated the “dreams of our heroes past,” and is struggling under the incumbent Administration to return to true Federalism. In TRUE FEDERALISM, there would be no uniformity of minimum NATIONAL WAGES. Each state would pay only what it can afford. If it wished to pay more because its workers are demanding bigger wages, the government and the workers would have to work harder to earn more money. Nigeria’s 50 million households are like that. No government can force me by law how much I should give my wife for housekeeping, how many times a day we should eat beans or bread, or if I must provide money for beef or original titus fish, all of which I can hardly afford these days. Were the Nigerian population not largely rustic, Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo could have been asked: From your calculations, how much more money does the NLC and the TUC intend to earn from a super bumper harvest of bumper check-off dues from workers’ salaries?

FRANKLY…

To be frank, Nigeria is not broke and should be able to pay reasonable living wages,”All things being equal” as economist say. We are not broke, but there is no money on the table. So, blind spending may upset several apple carts. We may disagree with this and ask: How are their Lordships at the Supreme Court going to earn about #5 million every month when the poorest man or woman on the pay ladder cannot earn #615,000 or #450,000 or #100,000 every month? The bottom line is the value of the worker. Can the minimum wage earner, (the messenger or office assistant, cleaner, tea boy or driver)perform the tasks of any of any Supreme Court Justice? Are their jobs not dispensable, as they have become in many private businesses? If matters came to a head, can the Chief Justice not clean his office or toilet? Do we not all do it at homes? Do I not wash my dishes and clothes? There is a mistake many persons keep making about MINIMUM WAGE. It is the salary for the least qualified person in the system, the SSCE school leaver who is under 20 and just hanging on a job to take him out of home before he or she goes on to the niversity or polytechnic. When Labour speaks of a man or woman with three children, this must be a 30-something-year-old person who must have wasted about 10 years doing nothing with his or her life beyond being a messenger or cleaner, in disobedience of the LAW OF MOTION. This natural law compels us to keep moving like the rotating and revolving Earth, the flowing air and clouds, and the waves of the sea, among other examples. A person who cannot add value to his or her life as he or she goes is a parasitic danger to the economy. It is the life of this fellow British Prime Minister Margret Thatcher refused to subsidise. FRANKLY, when I say there is no money on the table for exorbitant minimum wage for fresh school leavers who ideally should be on this wage, the story-line is this:

•Nigeria is the sixth-largest producer of crude oil on Earth and the largest in Africa.

•A mafia still controls the crude oil industry and market, despite the removal of pump price subsidies.

• The Buharia Administration took huge loans speculated to be more than $4 billion to be settled with crude oil deliveries over several years ahead.

• With much of the crude oil traded off, little is left for export.

• About half of the little left for export is stolen every day.

• The government thought of beating the Mafia by making the refineries work. It counted on Dangote Refinery, Africa’s biggest, which has a larger production capacity than all of Nigeria’s refineries combined. Dangote Refinery had been ready for work for six months but cannot get crude oil from Nigeria to refine and bring pump prices down. Even when other Nigerian refineries (Warri, Port Harcourt, and Kaduna) restart production, they would have to buy crude oil from abroad, and this will change nothing in the pump price, making fuel subsidy still necessary. Couldn’t this be what we are experiencing now?

• On the sidelines, several licensed modular refineries say no bank would release money to them to start work since they cannot get crude oil to buy from home.

• The way things stand, it would appear that international oil companies lifting crude oil cannot be forced but only persuaded to give Nigerian refineries crude oil to refine.

• In other words, there is an old song and a new song upstream and mid stream in the oil industry. The old song says we have to import refined oil from abroad because the refineries are not working. The new song says the refineries are now working, but there is no home grown crude to give them. Thus, they have to shut down or import crude. That means pump prices will remain high at present levels, and an underground subsidy racket will protect against excruciating prices caused by global economic disorders.

Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo know this story. Why does Labour not think it is better for it and the nation to force disclosures on what is going on, even go to court if need be? Then, it would be a really fighting Labour, one cleaning up the country and the economy for everyone and not just rabble-rousing for the benefit of a few government workers.

SCALA MOTION

In high school Physics in the late 1970s, we learned that SCALA MOTION was movement without movement. What progress have labour leaders achieved for workers since, say, 1944 under Pa Michael IMOUDU, other than waging war on employers of labour for bigger salaries to better cope with the economic vicissitudes of a society down sliding year after year? Pa IMOUDU led what was then the biggest nation-wide strike for cost of LIVING AWARDS (COLS). From COLS, labour moved on to other humongous general pay rises, including the UDOJI AWARDS, which were meant to be instalmentally released but were unleashed in one go by the Yakubu Gowon military administration with disastrous Inflamatory impact. From then on, other general pay rises pushed prices up. Pepper and tomatoes sellers, like other dispensers of goods and services, being no fools, collected their own “award” from the awardees. Soon, the workers came back crying for more. Each time they got more, prices either rose alone or were accompanied by several job cuts. Is that where Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo are leading them again? If you doubt it, remember that today we have 1.9 million POINT OF SALE (POS) operators nation-wide. There are banking hall jobs outside the banking halls. In banking halls, they would be university graduates. Outside the banking halls, they may be SSCE drop outs or even okro sellers or cow sellers. The banks discovered their salary bills were too high and decided to shed monstrous weight. Before they did that, the banks brought in machines, which swept recharge card sellers nation-wide out of jobs.

Beyond their fortified POS, the banks now employ university graduates as contract staff who can be dismissed at will. Machines are replacing human labour, and there is nothing labour has been able to do other than push up the wage bill and invite more machines. Recently, a confused NLC and TUC have been fighting electricity companies for pushing up tariffs and asking them at the same time to increase wages. Does it not matter that electricity companies buy raw materials to produce electricity and that when producers of those raw materials pay bigger wages, they would transfer the extra bill? The staff of these electricity companies were the first to hammer down the economy. They were like children who did not know what they were doing. They were increasing the cost of production in their company with their demands and pressing for tariff freeze. If electricity tariffs go up, will they not pay more for frozen foods and factory products? Will they not pay their doctors and pharmacies more? Will the school fees not rise? Who will freeze transport fares? How much will they now be paying for gari, tomatoes, pepper, yam, okro, rice, and beans, for example?

NATURE’S EXAMPLE

In contrast to mankind, Nature does not go on strike. It harnesses all the forces animating the FOUR ELEMENTS, namely Earth, water, Air, and Fire. They give back to us what we give to them to cast our environment from. They don’t echo to us what we did not speak to them. Thus, the Earth forever brings food for us. The Air never ceases to flow, purifying itself of our pollutants. Are the rivers not forever productive? Crayfish, periwinkles, Titus, Salmon, oysters, etc have not gone out of circulation despite the immensely growing human population worldwide and their increasing demands on marshland, streams, rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans, and all other water bodies. This should be a serious matter the work stoppages happy worker should contemplate. And FIRE? It is in the bowels of the Earth and erupts occasionally as volcanoes or earthquakes. If it cools off, the Earth would become unable to support human existence. Fire is in the sun and in the stars. If we move too near them, we would roast to ash. If the earth moved too far away from them, we would all freeze to death. An intelligence higher and more noble than selfish human intelligence is behind this Natural order.

Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo are Christians,. I guess in church every Sunday, they say the LORD’S PRAYER, making the following solemn promises thereby… “OUR FATHER, WHO ART IN HEAVEN, HALLOW BE THY NAME, THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN…”. Unfaithful beings we all are. We pledge our lives for the coming of THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH and vow that we are dedicated to HIS WILL being fulfilled on earth as it is done in HEAVEN. Funny enough, THE FOUR ELEMENTS are showing us evidence of this WILL in the unfailing provision of services to human beings on earth, and we humans are not taking a cue from them.

OIL REFINERIES

There was distressing news last week. About 20 potential foreign investors in the small petroleum refineries sector the government has been wooing re-considered their agreements whem the national grid, heart beat of any nation was switched off. Who will be the loser if they ultimately stay away? Capital inflow from other sectors may be hacked likewise. That would mean more jobs cannot be created in the Eldorado Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo wish to create for a few government workers. If the private sector succumbs to the Eldorado, prices will go up. If prices are maintained to encourage sales, jobs would go.

REAL MOTION

Scientists tell us the universe is expanding. Labour should follow the footsteps of Nature and join those forces seeking to expand the economy. Can Labour not bid for modular petroleum refineries in each geopolitical zone and build its own filling stations nationwide? Can Labour not set up model large-scale town or city farms in the forests to create new towns and cities and reduce unemployment? Can Labour not establish model universities and polytechnics which address all its present complaints about higher education? Labour burned its fingers and failed in the Transportation sector. Where are the Labour Mass Transit Buses launched with fanfare?

OBASANJO’S SUGGESTIONS

In his intuitive moments when his intellect vacates the throne for his Spirit, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in the view of many persons, sees right and acts so. All of us are like that when we do not allow our brains to show us the way in any matter. We are not meant to be thinking but intuitive or knowing persons whose thoughts merely implement wishes of the Spirit. This, the former President would say last week that the major problem of Nigeria is that the food import bill is too high. In other words, he was knocking the heads of advocates of free or open borders and saying we are poor and hungry because we are too lazy to feed ourselves despite an abundance of arable land and one of the finest weather on earth. I agree with him. I salute also the incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who last week promised that Nigeria would grow 25 million trees just about anywhere by 2030 and that schools must be involved.

Since the inauguration of the Tinubu Presidency, I have been publishing suggestions on this page and posting on FACEBOOK at JOHN OLUFEMI KUSA on how Nigeria can produce trillions of pawpaw fruits and farm also trillions of rabbits every year to replace cow meat. Before I return to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, I wish to say President Tinubu should not limit the 25 million trees to ornamentals otherwise, they would not address the food question, reduce the food import bill, and make money available for important activities in the economy. In those FACEBOOK posts, I mentioned plantain and bananas as well. We are told yam and potatoes should be cheaper next year because many households are growing yam in empty and cleaned cement or rice sacks. Thanks to Udeme James, the front and back of my house are now like a mini-forest. We have yam, cocoayam, plantain, banana, vegetables. We are working on snails and rabbits. If Nigerians can see the Minister of Agriculture and his family working on their home garden, the revolution would roar. That was what former Head of State Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo attempted to achieve in the 1970s with OPERATION FEED THE NATION, which later grew into the GREEN REVOLUTION. We were not all hungry then. Today, the population has grown from 55 million in 1963 to about 220 million, while lands for land tenure and subsistence farming have given way to housing, and banditry, kidnapping and killing on farms have significantly silenced farming.

Back to former President…

Check the natural blessings of Nigeria and Ukraine, one of the countries which feeds Nigeria

• POPULATION (Nigeria – 229 million, Ukraine – 41 million)

• ARABLE LAND (Nigeria – 34 million hectares, Ukraine – 32 million hectares)

• IN PEACE or AT WAR (Nigeria battles internally with kidnappers, Jihadists, and bandits, while Ukraine has been in full-scale war with neighbouring Russia, a super power, for more than two years). The picture is clear. Nigeria is a lazy country. Consider also the following:

• Lagos State alone consumes more than 100,000 cows daily, most of them imported at an average cost of #300,000 per cow. This amounts to #30,000,000,000 daily, #900,000,000,000 monthly, or #10,800,000,000,000 yearly. This is homongus money exiting the borders. Can we not farm trillions of rabbits and millions of goats nationwide every year to cut the import budget, as former President Obasanjo suggests? The recipes are in the FACEBOOK posts at JOHN OLUFEMI KUSA. They come from the review of the work of an NGO I was involved with in the early 2000s. Former Bendel State military governor Brigadier Samuel Ogbemudia was the chairman, and former President Shehu Shagari the life patron. Can the NLC and TUC not present a budget on this to the nation to force down meat price, rather than rabble-rousing for inflation?

June 13, 2024
Nigeria we hail thee…se eyi l’okan…? e lo f’okan b’ale…

Gold is gold, whether in the palm of a king or in that of the slave or beggar. Thus, it does not matter to me if the lyrics of Nigeria’s first national Anthem were written by a foreigner, Lillian Jean Williams, who was thought to be a Mistress of Lord Frederick Lugard, Governor- General of Nigeria, and the music was composed by Frances Benda   or if it was home grown. What touches me is the effect on my spirit, what its makes me do. I must be frank. I cannot recite ARISE O COMPATRIOT beyond the first stanza. Young persons say many old persons like me are like that… that we even have a computer phobias. They may be right in respect of some oldies, but not about me. I try to be objective in every matter. When some Nigerians reject NIGERIA WE HAIL THEE simply because it was written by the European mistress of LORD LUGARD,Governor-General of Nigeria who combined about 252 ethnic nationalities, languages and cultures into a geographic space she called Nigeria, why do they not reject European made motor cars or refused to fly in Europe aeroplanes.? Why do they accept European and Asian rice and reject Nigerian rice? Why do they prefer European pharmaceuticals to theirs? Why do they wear European dresses and bear European names, accept European education and religion,go to work and live in Europe, and hunger for European nationality and passport? If I may ask another question: why do they not live in village mud houses but in hall mark European architectured houses? We can go on and on.

One of my grouses with ARISE O COMPATRIOTS is that it was a Nigerian military imposition, just like the 1999 Constitution of Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar and his supreme military council(SMC) which does not carry the entire country along. The Ibos, who were defeated in the Nigeria-Biafra civil war, still cannot accept that they are “compatriots” of Nigerian outside the South-east region of five Ibo states. They expressed it as recently as last week Monday ( May30, 2024) in their attempt to celebrate Ibo soldiers who were killed in the civil war. Five Nigerian soldiers keeping order at a road junction in one of the Ibo states were killed by unknown gunmen who were enforcing the Biafran celebration. In my view,the “compatriots”that ARISE O COMPATRIOTS sought to rouse to   love Nigeria are Nigeria’s military who fought and won that war and other Nigerians who believed in the forced unification of about 252 tribes, cultures and languages.

When ARISE O COMPATRIOTS says”the labour of our heroes will never be in vain” , some Nigerians may ask: WHOSE HEROES? Was Chief Obafemi Awololowo the hero of the Hausa/Fulani or of the Igbos? Did the Yorubas accept the Sultan of Sokoto, Sir Abubakar Ahmadu Bello or Prime Minister Tafa Balewa or Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, ceremonial Republican President, as their leaders? Still this day, do they accept formal President Olusegun Obasanjo as their leader? Were the Ibos not antagonistic to leaders from the North and from the West? In the 2023 Presidential election , did the Igbos not still vote “one-way” for Peter Obi? Was the election not the most bitter, most ethnicity polluted in Nigeria’s ethic jingoistic elections? Could Joe Ajaero not be rooting for 2027 with unnecessary labour strikes? Could Peter Obi be reading the hand writing on the wall by trying to vacate Labour Party and team up with PDP and ANPP? So, where are the “COMPATRIOTS”? And did they “ARISE”? Did they “OBEY NIGERIA’S CALL”? Thus, can we not see that ARISE O COMPATRIOTS was a mere wish with no spirit of reality driving it?

Conversely again, this is my view, NIGERIA WE HAIL THEE is a REALIST Anthem. We have no other land but Nigeria. Our tribes and languages are different. We are, nevertheless, related by historical experience. Do we have a better option than mutually respecting one another and peacefully working together for optimal benefits? No, we don’t. Any other option would be calamitous.

The third stanza recognises the existence of an Almighty Creator Who is Ruler of all the Worlds. Isn’t this another Nigerian reality of a land with, arguably, the largest number of churches and mosques and, probably, traditional religion shrines than any other place on earth? Easily,the mention of His name in our national anthem should awaken positive and noble responses in our spirit if, truly, we recognise Him and wish that His “kingdom come” to the earth as the Christian religion, for example, beseeches Him in The Lord’s Prayer. It goes on to request that the Almighty Father “…help us to build a nation where no man is oppressed”. This is a great prayer that would have been well answered, if we knew what we were doing.

Colonisation by the British helped to do away with the oppressive rule of monarchies and human sacrifices, for example. Literacy and superstition were social oppressors. Education came as lighting. Foreign religion may not have taught us what we did not already know. It was, nevertheless, a re-enforcement of our traditional ideals and sense of justice. What we ought to have done with this part of the anthem was to have held our leaders accountable to the promise that “ no man would be Oppressed in the new sovereign land”. We did not. Rather, the tribes engaged in offensive political wars, the North and the East combining in an unholy alliance to destroy the fast growing and pace setter West. The Mid-West region was created for minority peoples in the West,whereas the Eastern Region continued to oppress its minority peoples. The Northern Region did the same. What was good to do with the goose was not good to do with the gander. Elections became nightmarish. The Western Region was broken, and its leaders, notably Chief Obafemi Awololowo and Chief Anthony Enahoro who especially moved the independence motion in 1953, were sent to jail of up to 10 or 15 years on treasonable felony charges by the same country they helped to liberate from colonial Great British, when the Northern Region was not ready for independence. Was this not the oppression the anthem beseeched the Lord to help us overcome? Treasonable Felony, compared to treason, is like sleep compared to death. Today,Boko Haram is pure treason and we heard of no celebrated trials like the treasonable felony trials of Chief Obafemi Awololowo and Chief Anthony Enahoro. Did Chief Awololowo and Chief Anthony Enahoro fire a single gun shot at Nigerians? Did they bomb, kill and maim? Do we have two countries in one? Do we still not live with oppression? On January 16 1966, Nigerian soldiers attempted to erase the oppression but, unfortunately,ended up in ethnic tentacles of Eastern Nigeria which opportunistically hijacked their military coup against oppression by the North,to bring power to the East for the purpose of subduing the weakened West and the illiterate North and oppressing them. Major General J. T. U Aguiyi- Ironsi aborted their plans, clamped them into detention and then placed the country under UNIFICATION DECREE of 1966 which put the North and the West under the jack boots of the East, worsening the “oppression” the Anthem opposed. The North responded to the East in July 1966, six months later, followed with the unpardonable mass murder of Ibos in the North, a terrible human carnage which led the Ibos to the declaration of secession and inauguration of their own country called BIAFRA. Unfortunately, the Ibos dragged again minority peoples along with them to enslave in Biafra. Nigerian promises of freedom for these oppressed minority peoples led them to ditch Biafra in their search for freedom during the civil war. The changes in Nigerian political structure from three regions to four , to 12 states,19 and 36 reflect the battle against oppression, a Nigerian reality captured in the anthem. Why did the Obasanjo Administration make Nigeria behave like an Ostrich, forsakening REALITY and living an SUBTERFUGE in ARISE O COMPATRIOTS? Under Gen. Obasanjo, progenitor of ARISE O COMPATRIOTS, generals cheated peasants of their land for personal farm lands, Chief Awololowo and Chief M.K.O Abiola were denied Nigerian Presidency and an attempt was made to financially strangulate Lagos State for challenging oppression.

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The second stanza is a committal to Nigeria: “Our flag shall be a symbol that Truth and Justice reign” we are to “honour it in peace or battle” and “hand over to our children a banner without stain” .Truth and Justice did not reign in the First Republic. The flag was not honoured, otherwise there would have been no civil war, and the banner handed to us generation of “children” was badly stained with blood from all over the country, especially Ibo blood in the North. The Ibos have been blamed for firing the first shot by killing politicians all over the country except their own politicians in the January 1966 coup. We should have learned useful lessons from all of these, and NIGERIA WE HAIL THEE should have make more meaning to us. No one held our leaders accountable to the promises of the anthem.

SE EYI L’OKAN?

Wherever talk about NIGERIA WE HAIL THEE pops up, the follow-up talk is a question: SE EYI L’OKAN? that means: Is this the priority? I muse to myself: Every-one sees everything according to his or her frame of reference or perceptive capacity. Some persons are far sighted, others narrow sighted or short sighted. We came out of the Biafran war in 1970. In 1978 we came up with ARISE O COMPATRIOTS. This Anthem’s authors and patriots were Nigerian soldiers who defeated Biafran soldiers. Were Biafran Soldiers their compatriots? They merely submitted to superior fire power. Submission cannot endure because it is un-natural. What distinguishes the human spirit from the animal souls is the FREE WILL inherent in man as a gift from an Almighty Creator who did not design that man be His slave. This is why, all over the earth, submission of a people to another can only be temporary whether in battle, in economics or politics. Who would have thought UKRAINE would stand up to RUSSIA for more than two years in the battle field? Did Bangladesh and Pakistan not leave India? Is Scotland not seeking freedom from the United Kingdom? What of Eritrea and Tigris from Ethiopia and South Sudan from Sudan? The Cze and the Slovaks not similarly dissolve Czehoslovakia. “Iron Chancellor” Otto Von Bismarck took Germany out of the Astro-Hungarian Empire. African South Africans not recover their land from minority   white oppressors. The Yorubas stopped the Fulanis Jihad.

No-one can force another to be his or her compatriot in any matter, especially in nation-building, if they have no shared values. To worsen matters, the opening of ARISE O COMPATRIOTS is military drumming which generates a victor-vanquished atmosphere Gen. Yakubu Gowon de-emphased in Nigeria’s post civil war psychology. The Ibos still feel under Nigeria seige, especially in the matter of elusive Presidency. They are looking forward to 2027 from two prongs… PETER OBI dislodging ATIKU ABUBAKAR in the PDP and JOE AJAERO capitalising on the poverty nation-wide which he does not mind to worsen through devastating labour strikes or a jumbo pay rise not matched by productivity. The poor will be glad to have more money in their pocket and blame the government, not AJAERO for the consequences. Inflation could worsen. Jobs could be lost directly through retrenchment or just indirectly when companies replace man power with machines. More machines will mean more dollars going abroad and the Naira depreciating. Huge wage bills may force businesses to relocate to Ghana where wage levels are friendlier to capital investors. Retirees like me will me worse off. The unemployed and the jumbo wage earners will buy peppers and tomatoes in the same market. The labour leaders have no pity for the unemployed. In no time, the jumbo wage earners will cry again,like Oliver twist, for more money.

NIGERIA WE HAIL THEE underscores vengeance against a bullying President Obasanjo who, for 22 months, sought but failed to financially strangle Lagos State by denying it federal income. Lagos survived the brutality. Now, the “Lagos Boy” is showing the egocentric,garrulous and loquacious Obasanjo that a David can still efface a Goliath with all his “gragra”. I pray Chief Awololowo, and Chief Abiola have gone far beyond earshot from Nigeria, otherwise they may be having a rounded laugh. What about Chief Olu Falae and Co? To re-build a wobbled and simultaneously cracked people they must subscribe to a reasonable and workable contract. They must see and feel this contract at work. The promises of the NIGERIA WE HAIL THEE are easier to see and to feel than those of ARISE O COMPATRIOTS. Whether the impact will be held will depend on the people themselves if they hold their leaders accountable to the anthem. Is anyone stopping us from living in “brotherhood”? Who is impeding “pace and Justice” from reining among us? Who stains the “banner” we are to hand “ our children”?. Who is oppressing us, precluding, obliterating peace and the prospects of “plenty” or abundant life?. Will our court mention in their judgements which ever parts of our anthem has been infringed by any public officer they are to send to jail.

THE POOR

Definition of Nigeria’s poor is always difficult for me. I number myself among them,but many persons pull me out of the queue simply because my skin appears fresh, a profit from avoiding naked sugar, fats that kill, salt, bread and GMO foods in the diet . I live strictly on what I earn from the opportunity of writing for a newspaper. Joe Ajaero is right that journalists’ salaries are disgusting, but uniformising them in all organisations, as he suggests in his minimum wage for journalists, is not the solution. Newspapers and the electronic media earn incomes based on their dexterity in the market. Proprietors are not government or Father Christmases. To check how my pockets could be, I spoke to a woman about 20 years younger than I am who roasted and sold corn and plantain for sale by the road side near the entrance gate of the housing estate where I lived. She sold about 500 cobs of corn every two or three days. She purchased them from Ifo, near Sango Ota, under 45 minutes drive from her operating base. Each cob cost about #20 from peasant farms. I suggested to her, and she agreed, that transportation of each cob to Lagos could cost no more than #10 and another N10 for charcoal to roast a cob. So should “gifts to keep Kal officials at bay and “ #10 on every cob for LAWMA ( waste disposal) and for “public relations”.All of that boils down to #70 on a cob which sells for between #150 and #200. Transportation of 500 cobs must be cheaper than our budgeted #5000. Perhaps 2,500 will do. Kal cannot demand more than #5,000 every week. Ditto charcoal and public relations. In another words, a cob may return a minimum profit of #100 to post #50,000 net gain on 500 cobs in a maximum of three days. That could imply about #16,500 every work day. This woman is semi- illiterate. She told me she was a “poor” Nigerian who lived in a single room apartment with her six member family a standard Joe Ajaero’s poor Nigerian family. I told her she was not. I do not earn that kind of money. I doubt if my editor does, or if the manager of my bank branch earns it tax-free.

The bottom line of this story is that many of the persons we look down upon on account of their dressing and road-life are financially better off than many of us are. The only major difference between us is that education and corporate life experiences and practices make us look better, think better and act better than they do. If you are not careful, irrespective of your cutting edges, you are likely to follow them into SE EYI L’OKAN swamp. A National Anthem is a MISSION STATEMENT. Every serious business needs a mission statement as a compass to chart its way through the jungles of business. So, a country or nation without a mission statement its citizens can easily relate to and with, is like a sheep without a shepherd.

E LO F’OKAN BALE

Calm down, the government keeps telling us as we too, often say. We should believe the government if the Minister of Information speaks the right language to us, and regularly, too. We blame even tomatoes shortages on the government when the Agriculture Minister should have been educating us about havocs wrought by pests on the farms and of plans to freeze dry tomatoes into powder as soon as possible. If we are told by the Central Bank that cyber tax will be expended on the recruitment of 200,000 cyber police officers and other ranks under their own inspector general, shall we not agree? Will that not mean better policing of the banks and the internet space? Will it not reduce the job queues and free the regular, general duties Nigeria Police to do other things better with its 400,000 officers and other ranks?

June 6, 2024
Milnapath wins Bayelsa, Abuja & Lagos…Live Pure returns

Whether an economy is livid, languid, tumultuous, famishing or azure, lively, healthy, peaceful, uplifting and up-building, whoever will drown or float in it will do. It is not a question of the wickedness or of the friendliness of an economy. It is the degree of the heaviness or of the lightness or the player in it. Heavy persons tend to see no way out of harm’s way, whereas every way is an escape route from trouble for light persons. From this premise, I want to tell two stories today. One of them appears to still be legally immature and, therefore, unsafe to tell. So, about it I say… Hush! The other concerns a Nigerian company which has successfully replaced many foreign herbal medicinal supplements with local ones in Bayelsa State and, from that humble beginning in Nigeria’s choking economy, has made a brave go for Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and Lagos, Nigeria’s economic and commercial nerve centre. That smacks of the proverbial mortal man fearlessly treading over where angels fear to fly. It is still about heaviness or denseness, that is sinking or drowning and lightness or floating and soaring and fluttering like a butterfly. Something is prompting me to tell a third story, to compensate for the first one which flew out of the window.

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The second story is about Milnapath. The compensatory story is about Live Pure, a food supplement company from the United States, which had been here before, but, proverbially, put worms and maggots in the stomach of many of its affiliate distributors, threw them away like dirty, old socks or bras, and went back to America, only to indirectly return to Nigeria for business through Ghana, thereby making Ghanaians business bosses of Nigerians!

MILNAPATH

Milnapath recently got my attention in Abuja, where it had just celebrated one successful year in business, handing brand new cars to key players in its multi-level marketing business. Car gifts may dazzle new market players, they do not turn the heads which have voyaged on many lagoons and oceans. Business durability is what matters to old cargoes. Milnapath’s success wasn’t surprising to me. Its products are made from local raw materials and were, therefore, not intensely dollarised, making them cheaper than pharmaceutical products which were costing about 10 times more than they did a few months ago. Besides, many of the pharmaceutical products are now fake. Already, the authorities have shut down more than 300 patent medicine stores and pharmacies in Jos, the Plateau State capital, over this syndrome.

Neither the climate nor the weather is faring well for the foreign herbs and food supplements’ sky-line. I could never have believed that Neprinol, the tumour breaker, which cost between N20,000 and N30,000 last year, would hit more than N200,000 this month. Only last year, my favourite tea, the world’s first Alkaline Coffee made by Nature’s Way in the United States and marketed worldwide by Alliance in Motion Global (AIM GLOBAL or ALLIANCE) from the Philippines cost N6,000.But today, it goes for more than N20,000. What about Ubiquinol which rose from about N40,000 for 90 soft gels to more than N100,000? If I may describe as “shylock” economic forces behind Neprinol and Ubiquinol of today, I would describe as “prodigal” the directors of the once-thriving foreign company, Live Pure, who are trying to stage a return to the Nigerian market they once bastardised.

MILNAPATH

The plant medicines from Bayelsa State made by a company named Milnapath, an acronym (Milellum Nature Path) is said by the company to be a “new way to nature’s abundance”.

There are seven medicinal proprietary blends/products in its kitty, namely:

GYNOCARE…

For…”Female hormone balance, yeast infection and irregular menstruation”.

NAKOM OIL…

For…” Asthma therapy and to dissolve ovarian cyst”.

DETOX PLUS

For…”Body cleansing”.

GLUCO CARE….”To keep pancreas active, to increase metabolism, for heart care and blood glucose level”.

REJUVENATE STEM CELL

For …”Wrinkles and stress, mental clarity, fight cancer, immune boosting, weight loss and to relieve arthritis pain”.

CARDRDIO CARE

For…” Brain health, blood circulation, Parkinson’s disease and seizures, heart attack and stroke and for cardio issues”.

D-MAN

For…”To boost sperm count, libido, handles impotence and arrests premature ejaculation”.

I hope that, sooner than later, it would be possible to review contents of these products, for the hood does not make the monk. In natural medicines, it is the content, not just the name, which tells us what a medicine may be up to.

FOREIGN SUPPLEMENTS

We should not deceive ourselves. Foreign food supplements companies are in Nigeria for enlightened self interest, not on charity or on humanitarian grounds. They price their products well above market values at about N2,000 to the U.S. Dollar, pay their affiliate marketers bonuses rated at about N1000 to the USD, instead of about N1,400 or more on this publication date of May 23, 2024, keep the balance for re-orders or future import budget, thereby making no additional investment to keep the business running. When there is going to be a hitch, they quietly leave the market as Live Pure did about one or two years ago. That is why the products are scarce and shelf prices are outrageous today. The trend was predicted towards the end of the 1990s, when I began my newspaper reports promoting multi-level marketing (MLM), a job creator for a growing army of unemployed Nigerians. We had been dependent on government and multi-national companies for jobs which were no longer forthcoming. Now, we had to learn to become independent workers. Many MLM companies trooped in from abroad. Among them were G.N.L.D, Tianshi, Forever Living Products (FLP), Tasly, Green World, Nutri Health, Kedi, Fohow, Longrich, Norland, Edmark, Tahitian Noni, Dynapharm, Nature’s Gift For Life (NG4), and Eternal, among others. Some of them, like Tiansh, sold small dosages for the price of larger dosages. I still recall my shock at discovering that I had to swallow 12 tablets of Tianshi Zinc for only 15mg of this mineral whereas Nature’s Way, a direct sales company from the U.S. sold one 50mg of zinc capsule or tablet for a price much less than Tianshi’s 15mg. Alliance products were often no more than 10 capsules per blister pack at prices that, equated to 90 capsules or softgels for one month’s order, far exceeded the prices of standard packaging.

My defence of such anomalies then was that we had to pay a price to learn, to grow and to become our own masters. I gained this insight from my first visit to Europe in 1979. I was lucky to visit the site of a stone storey building where Bethoven was said to have written his music and directed his orchestra. I visited, also, another building where Handel was said to have written and directed The Messiah between August 22nd 1741 and September 17th 1801. These were great classical musicians. I thought about the state of housing in my village then. Had the missionaries not come, would we have been able to live in the types of houses in which we live today? In Lagos today, there are houses better than Buckingham Palace, home of the King and Queen of England, and 10 Downing Street, official residence of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I was privileged to live on Femoy Street, London, where two bedrooms shared an only bathroom and water closet. I haven’t lived in such a house since 1990! There is no doubt forces of religion, business, and politics exploited the civilising mission of the envangelising missionaries and fighters of slave trade such as William Wilberforce. The bottom line, nevertheless, shows a profit balance in the ledgers of our people.

That was how I foresaw the onslaught of MLM in Nigeria of the 1990s. It taught us to remember our traditional medicines and to build our own MLM around them. It took me almost one week to register with Katine Communications under the bridge at Ikeja, Lagos, to sell cosmetic products called Carrot, which were made from Diatomaceous Earth (DE or Diatom). Katine Communications, a previous recharge card selling business, took Carrot products all over Nigeria, selling a million units of the products every day, before differences with the producing company killed the business. After Katine and Carrot came several others, including Friends of Nature which was domiciled at Gowon Estate, near Ipaja, Lagos. The CEO killed the promising business in my view, by reneging on agreements. One of them was that a distributor could earn the moon, even the sun, with the personal purchase of only one product every month.

One of the affiliate distributors, Edith Njoku, had no marketing gift but was a great organiser for recruiting marketers…. She disappeared as it were to the Southeastern states and to Port Harcourt in the Southsouth and grew down-lines by the thousands. When the cheque for her bonus was written and the CEO discovered she bought a product valued at only N200 for the month, he developed cold feet about paying her almost half a million naira. I remember him asking if anyone had heard of N200 yielding N500,000 anywhere on earth. The woman, a house girl all her young life, became agitated, tampered with some computers, and the police were called to take her away for a few days. All the affiliate marketers quit in protest, and the company failed.

MILNAPATH HOPE

My hope is that Milnapath will not let us down. Nigeria is a huge traditional and alternative medicine market. There are many plant medicines in the bushes, thickets and forests than we can identify for generations. Diatom is abundant in Bayelsa State and in the Southeast. It is not purified before it is eaten, and that is dangerous. It is called Nzu. In the days of the Goodluck Jonathan administration, this column suggested this would be a great gift he would give his people if he helped them to set up factories to conveniently mine and purify Nzu, which could then be marketed world-wide. At that time, the Canadians wished to sell theirs in Nigeria. I declined to be a party to that. All that we lack in order to seize the initiative is technology. Money is abundant. The only trouble is that politicians who are afraid to invest in Nigeria, money that they stole from Nigeria, believe other thieves like them will consume their investment. I once toyed with the idea of a small freeze drying machine in the U.K. It cost about €3 million then. With it, anything can be turned into powder with long shelf life and marketed everywhere. Name them – orange, orange peels, plantain, plantain peels, tomato, corn, okra, carrot, garden eggs, yam, mushroom, bitter leaf, ewedu (jute mallow), vegetables, peppers, cassava, nuts, etc. Are the governors listening?

Live Pure returns

Live Pure never really came to Nigeria, although it was in this country and did business with us. It ran on a business model which many MLM companies employ to minimise cost and maximise profit, The Independent Business Developer (IBD). This fellow is like the ‘Property Developer’ we are familiar with. He develops your property, shares the rent with you for a while and then goes his way when his purse is well stuffed. Ben Peter may have been an IBD for Live Pure in Nigeria.

An IBD in Nigeria protects the business owners far away against capital risks in an unknown terrain. He sets up the “company” with his own money. He is not a stupid fellow though. He appoints stockists of his products among Nigerians. These are the fellows who really fund operations. He gives them mouth-watering commissions for interfacing as wholesalers between him (and the company abroad) and the retailers (independent marketers or distributors). The IBD receives commission on every item sold in the country. He may lower business terms to speedily achieve his goal or, hand the business over to his principal and move on to open newer national markets. In Nigeria, the Live Pure IBD omitted Annual Subsciption in the terms of business to quickly grow the business. The subscription is compulsory in many Euro- American MLM businesses. At the end of the business year, the independent distributors “drop something” as we say in Nigeria, to continue to be in business with the company for another year. This may be as little as $100 USD. It may be a little drop of water in the U.S. where many of them make a “mighty profit ocean” but it is a big deal in a poor country. Imagine a company with one million distributors worldwide. $100 a year will amount to $100 million or N1,400,000,000,000 at Nigeria’s current exchange rate of about N1,400 to one USD. This is “profit after profit “or second-level profit.

Live Pure IBD let go annual subscription in the business to encourage business growth and hammered it into the business when the “cooking” was done with. It was a third major blow for independent Nigerian distributors before the company crashed out of business in this country. The first major blow was the abandonment of foreign tours for high flyers among them. The IBD did not envisage rapid business growth. About three times more distributors than were anticipated qualified. Happily, for the IBD, this was in COVID 19 season which was an opportunity to down scale foreign trips of the value of more than N5 million per person in cash or travel expense to about N500,000 per person. “Hungry” Nigerians jubilated nevertheless and enjoyed the crumbs. The next major blow was the abandonment of the STtockist business model. I am aware of a stockist who invested about N10 million on Live Pure warehousing. Imagine about 1,000 of such persons nation-wide. That must have meant about N10,000,000,000. That may have amounted to N10 billion cheap business capital provided the IBD by stockists.

Suddenly, the IBD abrogated the stockists’ position to directly interface with the market on an electronic platform backed with a grandiose motor bike courier delivery logistics programme. Stockists were stuck with stocks that could expire in their warehouses should they not drop prices. On top of all those financial problems for stockists, the IBD suddenly packed bag and baggage, and was gone. The Live Pure business in Nigeria collapsed. Surprisingly, the IBD tried, but failed, to introduce to Nigeria new products from another company believed to be theirs.

Now, the Live Pure business is on a rebound, however, from Ghana. It is possible the IBD has gone to open the Ghanaian market which is expected, through remote control, to drive the much bigger Nigerian market and make commission on every Live Pure product brought into Nigeria. This would also make Ghanaian up lines of Nigerians who would have to reregister under Ghanaians to do Live Pure business in Nigeria. Worst still for Nigerians, Ghanaians, buying and selling less in Ghana, would now earn biggers bonuses from the labour of Nigerians. In order words, Nigerians are going to be financial slaves of Ghanaians. This will be one of the drains on Nigeria’s U.S. Dollar earnings and push down the value of the Naira. As of today, the old-time Nigerian stockists are heading to Ghana to stock up Live Pureproducts from Ghanaian stockists, making the head become the foot, as we are wont to say in a YORUBA adage.

LOCAL PRODUCTS

It is against a background such as this that I found exciting the information that a sprouting of local Nigerian food supplements has erupted again, with MILNAPATH appearing to take the lead. I asked my wife, who lives in Abuja, to watch many of them, and give me an idea of what is happening up there.

She reports:

1) The Spice House Ltd, Olive Estate, Satellite Town, Lagos:

•Bay Leaves •Ceylon Cinnamon •Moringa Leaves Powder

2) GOTEA, Ilupeju Industrial Estate: •Cholesterol Reducing Tea •Immunity Tea •Eyebright Herbal Tea •Arthritis Herbal Tea

•Blood Sugar Balance Tea

3) Jamdah Worldwide Ltd, Sharada Phase 2, Industrial Area, Kano: •DAHIR Curry Powder •Black Seed Powder

4) Off Abacha Rd, Nasarawa State: •DIOGO Pure Soya

5) Rice Mill Rd, Gboko, Benue State: •Turmeric Powder

6) National Technology Incubation Centre, Farm Centre, Tarai LGA, Kano State: •Thyme

7) Toa Agro Allied Services Ltd, Dawanau Mkt, Katsina Rd, Kano: •Black Pepper Powder

8) Little Mayfield, Jos: •GOTEA-Antidiabetic Tea •Organic Kidney Tea

9) Vital Quest Nigeria Ltd, Yusuf Doma St, Kaduna: •Premium Black Tea

10) Home Affairs Organic Products, Mbubu Industrial Area, Imo State: •Mistletoe Tea

For this column, I thank my wife for linking me up with Zainab Ademola who works with Milnapath in Abuja. Zainab is herself a distributor of the products. This is indeed a critical time, hopefully, for an opportunity to monitor the growth of these new Nigerian plant medicines MLM company at a time we seriously need many of them in the economy. We should encourage them.

May 23, 2024
Uterine fibroids: Agitation from ‘pillar to post’ for a cure

Tomorrow, May 17, is the 65th birthday of a Nigerian woman who never experienced period pains, menopausal hot flashes and uterine fibroids. I received the idea for this column when I remembered her birthday last weekend, and my gaze was flooded with images of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Nigerian women running helter skelter or, as we, also, say, rushing from “pillar to post” in search of a cure for uterine fibroids. I am acquainted with many women for whom such enervative shadow chasing at huge financial costs has been a life-long project from the mid-30s or thereabout. For these women, a huge uterine fibroids cure market has grown nation-wide with many recipes which are either fake medicines or simply target wrong cause(s) in a long list of potential culprits, thereby earning a bad name. I mentioned this rare Nigerian woman who would be 66 years old tomorrow at a seminar on menopausal problems to which I was invited as a speaker some months ago by Mrs.Sola Sowemimo, lawyer, farmer and natural health care advocate, who organised it.

Before I proceed, I would like to paint a small picture of this lucky Nigerian woman. Since my association with her in 1983, I have not observed her cook with any brand of Monosodium Glutamate (MSG), a water loo of the health of many women and men. MSG is pure sodium. Food crops come with natural sodium content. Some have additional sodium content from fertilisers used on the farms. Sodium is added to raw fish and beef (meat) when they are boiled. Sodium is added to rice, beans and yam when they are cooked, and to stews and soups. Some people add sodium chloride ( table salt) to cassava flakes ( Garri) when they soak it in room temperature water to drink. To what is MSG, a taste enhancer, not added nowadays in the cooking pot? I do not know how many of Nigerian women have heard of Dr. MAX GERSON. I mentioned him and his works to women I counsel about how they can employ herbs and nutrition to confront practically all health challenges, especially breast cancer and uterine fibroids. Dr. Gerson was a German doctor who successfully employed organic fruit and vegetable juices and “organic coffee enemas” to cure some turbulent cancers and tuberculosis. Gerson’s ideas are preserved in THE GERSON THERAPY which is taught by the GERSON INSTITUTE and is available on the internet.

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He taught that all tumours( cancers, and uterine fibroids inclusive), occurs when the interior of the cell loses POTASSIUM, a critical electrolyte, and SODIUM, from the interstitial fluid which surrounds the cells,invades the interior of the cell, displacing or replacing Potassium. In other words, whenever a tumour develops, potassium defficiency must have first occured, either through consuming insufficient potassium rich foods or by consuming foods laden with sodium. Dr. Gerson made us realise that cells are placid, pale, rumple in a state of potassium deficiency and that   they soon begin to exhibit other abnormal lifestyle and features. From others researchers, we have since learned that Potassium, higher in the ELECTROCHEMICAL SERIES of Potassium, Sodium, calcium, Magnesium, Aluminum, Zinc, Iron, Lead and Hydrogen in that order , is what extracts oxygen from the blood plasma into the cell. Sodium inside the cell cannot do this. Hence,a Potassium deficiency cell is a dying cell. That is why uterine fibroids challenged women look lean and pallid. For its survival , therefore,the Potassium deficient cells alters its existence from an oxygen-using cell (oxidative lifestyles) to a non-oxygen dependent lifestyle( fermentation). Thus,I encourage women challenged by uterine fibroids to consume lots of organic fresh leafy vegetables, fruits, some tubers and their juices such as from Banana, unripe plantain and their peels, Avocado pear,Golden melon, water melon, pawpaw, kiwi, tomatoes, potatoes, yam, beans, , pumpkin, carrots, eggplant, kale, spinach, cucumber etc.

The importance of Potassium in the cells is emphasised by researchers and physicians in other areas of health. Potassium is the essence or heart of the valuable work by Dr Richard Moore titled THE HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE SOLUTION, NATURAL PREVENT and CURE WITH THE K FACTOR. Among Chemist, K is the symbol or formula for Potassium, Na is the one for Sodium, while Mg stands for Magnesium and Ca goes for Calcium Al is for Aluminum, Zn is for Zinc, Fe is for iron, Sn for Tin, Pb is for lead and H represent hydrogen.

Many persons do not know that banana peels and unripe plantain peels are richer, nutrient for nutrient, especially in Potassium, than banana and plantain they cover. Banana peel may be eaten raw with Banana or diced on foods such as rice, beans, pap, porridge e t.c Unripe plantain may be grated with fruits and cooked as plantain porridge. Diseased peels should be avoided. Healthy peels should be soaked in saline water or cider (white) vinegar as solution for sometime before they are prepared for eating.

Different views

There are as many possible causes of uterine fibroids as there are research groups which are studying them. In this case,they are like the proverbial elephant whose features are being described by blind persons examining different parts of the body. Thus,while some researchers put the blame for developing uterine fibroids on the over consumption of naked or white sugar or on the deficiency of bitter principles in the diet or on calcification and poor blood circulation in the uterus, some see the culprits as free radicals and oxidative stress damage, blockages in the blood circulation capillary and vein networks, poor nerve energy flow to the uterine from the Autonomous Nervous system hampered by subluxation, obsessive worries fora “fruit of the womb), second chakra energy loss or shutdown, that is energy flow disconnection between the over-self and the physical body in a spirit- soul- body matrix or network. It was this latter point I emphasised at the talk on menopausal challenges which I said earlier Mrs Sola Sowemimo organised in Lagos sometime last year for upswinging women she was grooming for business, women’s roles in the home and for women’s health as well. From the foregoing, it should be obvious why many uterine fibroids proprietary formulas tend to fail, and challenged women keep spending more money on new ones as they move, seemingly blindly, hither and thither, from pillar to post in search of a cure for several of the formulas they had been on, or are on, may not have been right on the mark of the trouble makers. For example, anxiety over the fruit of the womb may not feature in every case. I was privileged to observe some mothers of three or four children with fibroids.These cases were cannot caused by emotional damage from grieving over a lack of the fruit of the womb. They were hypothyrodic women. In 1984, I had the case of a woman with a pseudo or false pregnancy. She and my wife attended the same antenatal clinic. Her breast grew preparing milk for a supposedly coming baby which had caused her womb to appropriately enlarged however a scan in the fourth month found no foetus in her womb. In her book WOMEN BODY WOMEN WISDOM, American GYNAECOLOGIST DR. Christiane Northrup said serious emotional ferment or prolong emotional damage may cause this kind of condition and even uterine fibroids. In order words, the uterus in compensating the woman for her dream which are not fulfil. Accordingly, a uterine fibroids remedy will miss the mark if its was designed for a curative agent outside this “mind over matter phenomenon”.

Sugar and bitters

Many women love sweet things and dislike bitter principles. Both are opposite ends of a pole. Sugars give energy, especially as brain food. Bitters stimulate the cleansing powers of the body, especially through the liver. In their wisdom, Yoruba forebears advise that ORE ENU, OTA INU( friends of the month , enemies of the organs). Likewise they say OTA ENU ORE INU( Enemies of the mouth, friends of the organs). This saying encourages the striking of a healthy balance in the consumption of sweet and bitter things. However, few women respect the bitter. Our 66 birthday reference point for this column is “bitters” for woman even at 66. Any wonder that, as of this date, her weight has averaged 52-55Kg, rising only to 60 about two weeks from the birth of a child, since her days as student union leader at the then University of Ife (1975-80), first as a chemical engineering university scholar before political activism dragged her into political science. That is a whopping 48 years! Sugar may be good for the brain as brain food, but too much of it can also be a poison. It may not only thicken the blood, slow oxygen circulation, procure a favourable environment for bacteria, viruses and fungi to overgrow their populations, cause attention deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD),mental confusion and behavioural imbalances, including aggressive behaviour and all of that. There is ample evidence that it disorient the pituitary gland. This gland, also known as the master gland because its controls many of the body’s system through hormones, is situated in the brain. It is often call the “Choir Master” or orchestra band leader of the reproductive system because its exercises a great deal of control over its organs. When the head is out of wack, what is left of the rest of the body? S state of imbalance of course! This could be the origin of the hormonal imbalances associated with ESTROGENERATION, which has been well linked to uterine fibroids,cervical and breast cancers, and ovarian challenges. Estrogeneration simply means that estrogen, a hormone, is nominating other hormones, especially progesterone, instead of existing in harmonious balance with them, thereby causing the uterine lining to grow fibriod or polyps. This is why there is often disharmony among organs of a woman’s reproductive system. Helps such as Vitex, Mecca, Ashwaghanda may lock the ovaries into line but only for a while if the pituitary gland remains disoriented. Hands up, any woman who is not a SWEET TOOTH!

Energy defficiency

Power is the starting point of everything. I am not talking about “impelled” power, which Scientists also mistakenly call “primordial power” when they speak about machines. I am speaking, rather about LIFE, i.e GOD. Power or Life or God are inseparable, need nothing to exist or to be and is the source or origin of all that exist. From Revealed Knowledge, we learn that God is LIGHT, that THE LIGHT Radiates, that the species of everything capable of existing exists in the Radiation of THE LIGHT, that the Radiation generates pressure, that pressure produces warmth, that warmth generates Movement, that Movement produces heat and heat Produces White Heat, that the human spirits cannot exist in this environment and, as spirit seed germs, had to be lowered into the depth at a measurable distances from White Heat where the pressure of the Radiation of the Light has been made to reduce well enough for this entities to sprout, flower and fruit before they can return to their own home in Paradise which is still far, far below the region of White Heat.

In respect of uterine fibroids, there is an apparent loss of energy in the pelvic region due to several observed factors, some of them auxiliary or co-factors. We human beings are sparks of energy from the Radiation of God who are expected to develop these sparks into luminous human spirit beings. We are not our physical earth bodies. Rather, each of us is the “breath of Life” in his or her own body which we are to continually energise through our own radiation. Thus, heavy microbial presence in uterine fibroids specimens,like calcification,blood circulation, blockages, incomplete menstruation discharge, pseudo or false pregnancies may be mere accompaniments of an energy crisis in the pelvic region of a woman which, nevertheless, the aforementioned may complicate.

In the pelvis, energy problems may come from two major sources. ..the diet and from the second chakra( please see second chakra literature in the internet).For a long period, the diet may have been deficient in living foods with high quality life energy that SEMUYOR KIRLIAN discovered in his photography experience ( please see SEMUYOR KIRLIAN photographic techniques in the internet). Food-less foods such as poultry chicken and egg and naked sugars, will produce lifeless health and meso. In their RAW ENERGY and NEW RAW ENERGY, Deborah and Leslie Kenton invited attention to how Potassium-rich foods , especially fresh vegetable juices, reverse this trend. They also reported experiments in which high amount of beta carotene in the blood prevented menstruation in a group of women who , nevertheless, were more fertile and easily became pregnant! Dr. Karl Folkers( see internet ) had been educating us since about   1952 about how Co enzymes Q10 (CoQ10) or its better form, UBIQUINOL, increases energy yield throughout the body to the point that they even helped to reverse some recalcitrant breast cancers. This good supplement is well recommended especially for mental health, heart, kidney, liver and cancer challenged persons.

The second chakra may seem difficult to appreciate , but it is not from the stand-point of the question: WHAT IS MAN? To answer the question, it is better to begin with the starting-Point of everything as already discussed above. …LIFE that is GOD, the Almighty Creator. He is LIGHT. The Light Radiates. The Radiation of THE LIGHT is not THE LIGHT, but merely a quality of the Light which is that the LIGHT Radiates. In the Radiation of THE LIGHT are many creatures which are capable of personal existence outside the immediate vicinity of THE LIGHT where Pressure, Warmth,Movement, Heat and White Heat and that have been stepped down to convenient voltages. The human spirit is one of those creature species. It was brought down to the Earth as a spirit seed germs. Only here was the soul and environment most suitable for its sprouting , flowering, and fruiting before it can return to its home, Paradise,where its acquired energy can withstand the stepped down Pressure and Energy streaming down to the higher spheres of existence. Thus, on Earth, the human body is not MAN, but the vessels in which MAN,the HUMAN SPIRIT, experiences existence on Earth. The other vessels acquired by the Human seed germ on its way downwards here in Earth, and itself but without the Earth body, is THE SOUL. The Earth body has no life of its own. It is ignited and brought to life when the soul connect with it. The point of connection is called THE CHAKRA. It is like the socket in the wall and the plug of, say,the electric fan, television set or the refrigerator or computer. There are SEVEN CHAKRAS, each concerned with the powering of a different part of the body. We are concerned with the SECOND CHAKRA which powers the PELVIC where there are organs such as the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus,the cervix and a woman secret place.

When this region cannot connect properly, with the second chakra, an energy “ black-out” occurs, the organs wilt and may degenerate, even malfunction. The disconnection may because by several factors including , especially, emotional damage which leads to negative emotions.

The female specie of human is meant to be the “DECIDING FACTOR” in Creation . However, many factors have conspired to deprive it of this leading role. One of them is her own decisions to function like the male specie, which hampers her role of “the deciding factor” for certain reasons. Thus, in matters concerned with seizing control in marriage, office and business space, money, sex e.t.c,many women do suffer emotional damage from not being able to achieve their dreams. Emotional damages shuts down the SECOND CHAKRA and placed the disconnected organs in health jeopardy ( please read on the internet the book THE CREATION OF HEALTH by Dr Norman Sheally, an American Surgeon,and Carolyn Myss, a spiritual intuitive). They healed many ailments,including some cancers, by teaching the sufferers to unblock their blocked energy chakras.

From the foregoing, it should be easily to appreciate why only one herbal remedy may not be able to resolve the wide matrix of uterine fibroids. Eating the right kinds of foods, drinking the right kinds of drinks, keeping emotional damage at bay would appear to immensely help, as our birthday woman has discovered.

To help the energy profile of the PELVIC region among men and women with health questions in this area of the body, knowledge of QUANTUM ENERGY MINERALS is growing nowadays. So, we now have different gadgets made from these minerals which, when applied to specific areas of the body, improve the energy content of these parts of the body through their own quantum energy radiations. In the pelvic region, a QUANTUM ENERGY BOXER is now available for men and women’s health. It may complement efforts to naturally solved uterine fibroids and other female malaise, and prostate gland questions in the case of men.

Thanks to Dr. Matilda   Adedayo Oluyemi Kusa for exemplary healthy living at 66 which inspired this column, always above the weather, body and soul, in thunderous emotional storms which damage and drown many women.

May 16, 2024
Joe Ajaero, Yahaya Bello, bedroom horrors of father of six

I have just been acquainted with a father of six who flees from the bedroom to the bathroom almost every night, his wings dropped and his spirit depressed because his doctors appear unable to help him. You may wonder: What have Labour Leader Joe Ajaero and former Kogi Governor Yahaya Bello got to do with nightly failure of Romeo and Juliet affairs in another man’s bedroom? It is all about stress in the Nigerian economy which is making almost everything, everywhere, comatose.

When doctors cannot readily tell the cause of a medical problem, they say it is Psychosomatic (in the mind) and of Idiopathic (unknown) origin. My new acquaintance said he had been told this for months and wondered if two proprietary plant medicines he read about in one of my Facebook posts (@ johnolufemi kusa) could be of any help to him. These medicines have exciting names. I am not going to dwell on them today beyond saying that they are Long Jack and re-fire. Long Jack appears designed for overcoming limping and Re-Fire for reloading of the rifle for another fire work.

About two weeks ago, a woman in her 50s had a stroke which defied all the popular trappings of hypertension, blood clots, calcifications in the brain, atherosclerosis, diabetes etc. Just about then, a father of six, four of them of his gender, said he had lost so much steam he seriously felt concerned for his marriage. He has not hung his boots, but his libido was on the canvass, his turgidity virtually gone and he despaired a lot in the bedroom. Even when he managed to try to prove he had not become a cold fish, he soon discovered to his dismay his body was merely responding to urinary urgency.

Once he was done with voiding in the small room, he was flat out. This man said, that being unable to help him so far, his hospital visits have begun to bore his doctors. This may very well be one of those psychosomatic problems doctors say have idiopathic origins when they cannot track them beyond the mind.

For understandable reasons, I have played down the language and anxiety of this man, and I have begun a conversation with him. As many men face similar sexual tribulations in the bedroom, I will share some of our discussion here, before I move on to what I said I suspected may be the outset of a new season of psychosomatic diseases in the making. Can our friend be under stress…psychological, financial, environmental (air pollution, noise etc), food poisoning (additives, heavy metals, estrogen from poultry egg, chicken and cow milk), bedroom terrorism (when a dis-satisfied wife bravely strikes the sharp edge of the knife with her knuckles) etc?

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We cannot avoid stressors and their triggers. A marriage may not be a bed of roses that is made in Heaven. House rent, like school fees or feeding allowance, may be a problem. One’s job may constantly be on the line. What of the upkeep of old parents, of other family obligations? How well are the children fairing educationally? Is Madam a nagging wife? Literally speaking, there are a thousand and one obstacles a man must overcome everyday when he is on his feet before he retires to the bedroom at night, especially if the couple shares one room. There may be nothing wrong coming under stress once in a while, and for short periods. Mother Nature had provisions for that. Different organs make and pour what we may call anti-stress chemicals into the blood circulation that are right for the occasion.

Additionally, our bodies are wired with two major nervous systems which originate in the brain from about 100 billion nerves cells called neurons.The first is the Central Nervous System (CNS). The second is the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS, which comprises the neurons and the spinal cord, controls our voluntary actions, such as sitting, talking, standing, running, boxing, walking etc.The peripheral system branches from the spinal cord into all tissues and organs, bringing signals or messages from the brain and taking feedback from them to the brain. This system subdivides into the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PSNS). Together, they form the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), which is parallel to the CNS. None of us would be alive or able to do anything without our nerves.

Many of us know little about the ANS. It deals with activities we cannot control such as digestion, breathing, detoxification, immunity, libido and sexual response etc. As stated earlier, the ANS sub divides into the (a) SNS and (b) PSNS. The latter two are crucial for overcoming the havoc of stress. The SNS really sympathises with us. When we are terrorised, it provides us with the “Fight or Flight” fuel or energy, and courage. We confront a gun-man if we have the guts, or flee from him. The SNS shuts down digestion, urination, libido, causes anorexia nervosa (an eating disorder), while its quickens the heart and enlarges blood vessels to supply the muscles with more blood, glucose and oxygen for “fight or flight”. In the bedroom, we can admit inadequacies and, like a man, face the consequences. One woman’s poison is another’s meat. There will always be someone whose standards we surpass.

Mother Nature does not intend the SNS to be at work for too long in any condition, otherwise some havoc may arise. Do the Police stay on perpetually in a household they came to free from armed robbers? The SNS is expected to soon give way to the PSNS. This is the cleaner of the rubbish outcomes of a “war”. Unfortunately for many persons, the SNS stays on at work for too long, causing damage. One organ we should always pity and rescue from the stressors is the Adrenal Gland. There are two of them. One is located at the top of each kidney. The Yoruba say Ohun to ba oju ba imu (That which affects the eye, affects the nose). Among others reasons, the adrenals exist for removing stress from the system. Thus, they produce stress hormones for this purpose. In their work, they are like the shock absorbers of a motor vehicle. When the vehicle is driven over bumpy roads for too long, the shock absorbers wear out or are damaged.

Similarly, the adrenals may become overworked, weakened, fatigued and burnt out. In this situation, the brain decides whether to let the ravaging go on and kill the system or to call in reinforcement for the adrenals so the system can go on living. The brain always decides on the side of life. It mobilises Sex Hormonesfrom the genitalia for conversion into stress hormones to save the adrenals and ours live.

This saves the system from further ravaging via stress, but leaves the genitalia without Libido, Turgidity – two important elements of all of male sexual virility. What happens to men in this regard also happens to women. How to use diet and nutritional plant medicines to overcome the loss of sex hormones and other causes of the libido challenge will be our next conversation.

Other triggers

Our friend is now aware he has to tackle stress and other triggers or causes of erectile dysfunction (ED), which may include hormonal imbalance, heavy metal toxicity, blood circulation blockages between the heart and the penil shaft, and nervous system redundancy, among others. Regarding hormonal imbalance or low levels of testosterone, the male hormone, some men have more of the female hormone, estrogen and prolactin, in their bodies than their wives or spouses have in theirs. This may be because they are under- producing testosterone from inadequate dietary or nutritional support for their testes or because they eat more of foods produced with agricultural estrogen inputs such as poultry eggs, chickens, cow milk or cheese. The feed of the chickens is fortified with estrogen to make them lay eggs almost every day by over stimulating their ovaries. This is unnatural. The same is done to cows for their milk. The estrogen enters the egg, chicken flesh and the milk and the cow meat. Even women who consume much of such stuff may easily become estrogenated, that is suffer from hormonal imbalance, period pains, pre-menstrual syndrome and infertility.

The bodies of many of us are laden with heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and cadmium from food, water and air. We do not use nutrition to remove them. Omo ina ni a n ran si ina, the Yoruba say (it is the child of the fire we send after fire). Heavy metal poisoning may cause cancer. It may also impair nerve function. If a man sees a nude woman beside him, and the eyes dutifully tell the brain and the brain sends out the relevant messages for necessary action, what would happen if the hormones and the nerves cannot perform their functions? Their involvement is critical to success in the four-stage response to resolution. Even if the heart beats faster with excitement and pumps out more blood to fill the penile shaft and cause erection and turgidity with staying power, but the blood vessels are blocked and gradually shut down on the way due to inadequate nerve flow, isn’t all the effort a waste of time? All these and more were discussed with our friend. In later conversations when he would be advised of dietary and other measures that should make him overcome the challenges, the foregoing should help his condition. So will a discussion of the The Second Chakra and yet another quantum energy medicine support.

Ajaero, Labour, Yahaya Bello and the rest of us

This subhead is an offshoot of the headline above. What business do Joe Ajaero and Yahaya Bello have in the bedroom travails of a father of six?

Actually, that was the question in my mind until I remembered how political stress almost mangled the brain of an airline passenger heading from Lagos to Abuja just before May 19, last year. Like someone in stupor, he rose from his sit, yelling at other passengers: “What are you people doing here when Tinubu is about to be sworn in as President?” Even today, it is apparent that many persons still cannot accept that Tinubu became the President of Nigeria, in which case they may be undergoing psychosomatic affliction from an unrelenting SNS.The 2023 general elections were about the hottest and most dangerous in Nigeria’s history from several parameters. We barely had respite in the first year after inauguration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as President. It would appear, that, from now on, the stage is being set for the General Elections campaigns of 2027 even if the electoral umpire has not flagged it off.

Joe Ajaero

There is no doubt, any more, that he is gunning for President, Vice President or Governor if he misses the President. His weapon is the firestorm economy and the belief of many workers that they need a mountainous salary driving in bus loads to get by. They do not wish to learn from the lessons of Nigerian history that more money does not necessarily solve money problems. Accordingly, Joe Ajaero is pressuring the Federal Government to pay the least paid worker N615,000 every month. That is a whole lot in a minimum wage basket. I guess everyone knows the least paid worker in Nigeria is the Messengers (Office Assistant/Janitor/Cleaner). Karl Marx may have been right when he said Religion is the opium of the masses.

Today, I guess he would say Money is the opium of the masses. Is religion not merely their access road to miracles, which would bring money? If the messenger and cleaner earn N615,000 every month, how much will a General Manger or a Director or the Chairman agree to earn?

The poor are likely to flock after castles that are built in the air for them as Paradise on Earth. Joe Ajaero has told us of how a family of four persons, for example, can hardly survive on N615,000 a month as Living Wage for the least paid worker. He made serious blunder, though in his analysis which many persons who should stop and correct him have let go, and this is what I wish to do.

Minimum wage

This wage is for the secondary school leaver who is employed as a cleaner, messenger or clerk. He has no family. He is aged between 18 and 20 and looking forward to higher education. He is, therefore, like a bird of passage in a work place, who is just looking for something to do so that he or she is not idle – the idle hand is the devil’s workshop

In 1969, I came out of Higher School Certificate (HSC) in one year of a two-year programme. In January of 1970, I took a book seller’s job with Odusote Book Store on Herbert Macaulay Street, Ebute- Metta, Lagos, on the minimum wage of 16 Nigerian Pounds a month. In March 1971, the following year, I took a trainee Sub- Editor’s job with the Daily Times on 36 pounds a month. The university Arts graduate earned 60 pounds and the Science graduate 72 pounds.

In 1973, the Naira replaced the Pound as Nigeria’s currency. In 1974, the oil boom brought Nigeria’s minimum wage to N60 a month. I do not remember how much I earned then, but life was so good that, on my savings, I sent myself to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka for three years. Some of my colleagues were business inclined and made more money from side hustle. I groomed my professional skills to earn more than the university graduates. I graduated from the university in 1977 and earned N180 a month in National Youth Service. From this, I sent N5 home every month to each of six persons, kept myself and bought shares in some Nigerian companies. When I was building my house from my gratuity in the latter part of the first decade of 2020, I sold half the shares of one company for N1.5 million to raise money for the roof.

Back to the daily…

By December 1982 when I resigned my job as Deputy Production Editor, my annual salary was N7,000 and my housing allowance was N4,500. As Assistant Editor of The Guardian newspaper, one month later in January in 1983, my annual salary rose to N11,000 and the housing to N7,500. I bought a plot of land immediately from the difference. The fresh or greenhorn university graduate was on N4,274 yearly pay. Money wise, Nigeria was a more peaceful country in those days.

I tell this story to expose one serious flaw in Joe Ajaero minimum wage campaign.

•Youngsters who have just left school and are living with their parents, being fed by them and clothed by them, are the Minimum Wage persons. Their jobs are messengers and cleaners. They have no serious skills to offer. They have responsibilities over no one. The minimum wage is sometimes too much for them that they have substantial savings from it. At Odusote Book store, I opened a saving account with the then Cooperative Bank of Western Nigeria.

•A married man with four children who is on minimum wage is a Sluggard in the race of life. This type of man must be over 35 years. He must have begun work at about age 20. How did he spend 15 years stagnant without acquiring skills that would help him to move on and upward? Did I not upscale my book seller skills within one year? Would I have been able to earn higher, save money and send myself to the university if I didn’t? There are many Nigerians whose stories are more fascinating than mine.

Joe Ajaero should teach stagnant members of the NLC how to upscale their life rather than asking society to stuff their pocket with humongous salaries. His minimum wage dream will cause job losses, terrible inflation, loss of foreign investment, social mayhem, stress, and many a bedroom problem.

Yahaya Bello

He is 48 and an embarrassment to the campaigners for young persons to take over the country. An institution of state accused him of stealing money when he was a Governor of Kogi State and invited him for questioning. Rather than oblige investigation of his records, Yahaya Bello went into hiding and had to be declared a wanted man. Now, he is indirectly trying to say President Tinubu wishes to get him out of the way of 2027 polls. Fighting back, he says Labour Party’s Peter Obi won the Presidential election in Kogi State but he, as Governor, rigged it in favour of Bola Tinubu.

Yahaya Bello should know this is volatile statement for which he may go to jail if he has no proof beyond reasonable doubt because his conduct is capable of disturbing public peace and releasing many stressors into an already delicate polity.

May 9, 2024
Nigeria, Africa CDC sign agreement to host West Africa Regional Collaborating Centre

Nigeria and the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) have signed the West Africa Regional Collaborating Centre (RCC) Hosting Agreement, it emerged on Saturday.

With the agreement, Nigeria will host the Centre for the West African region.

The RCC of the Africa CDC is expected to support the execution of the strategic work plan that will result in “Africa CDC without walls’ which will support the continent at the point of need, rather than from a centralized, distant location.

The agreement signals a significant collaborative milestone in the efforts to enhance health security across the African continent with a vision to protect the continent from health threats closer to reality.

The signing ceremony conducted by Jean Kaseya, the Director General of Africa CDC, and Professor Ali Pate, Nigeria’s Coordinating Minister for Health and Social Works was held on Friday during the 25th Ordinary Meeting of the ECOWAS Assembly of Health Ministers in Abuja.

According to Keseya, the strategic importance of RCCs in decentralizing What’s Your Vanessa health support and resources across Africa remains critical in health interventions towards making healthcare delivery more accessible and efficient.

Noting that the establishment of the West Africa RCC was a testament to the proactive leadership and Nigeria’s commitment to regional health, Keseya said, “The RCCs are designed to support Africa CDC’s strategic work plan, reinforcing health security from a decentralized point of need”.

On his part, while noting that the agreement was a critical opportunity to enhance the region’s health, Pate emphasized that the hosting of the RCC by Nigeria underscored its dedication to strengthening continental health frameworks and responding robustly to health emergencies.

According to him, the day’s event was the culmination of Keseya’s 2023 visit to Nigeria where the discussion was opened about a collaborative effort aimed at bringing Africa CDC’s vision of a continent protected from health threats closer to reality.

However, the establishment of the Africa CDC was endorsed at the 24th Ordinary Session in January 2015 (Assembly/AU/Dec.554(XXIV)), with a request for practical modalities for its operationalization.

The Regional RCC will focus on five key areas outlined by the Africa CDC, including enhancing Disease Surveillance and Early Warning Systems; Improving the ability of health systems to detect, monitor, and respond to disease outbreaks through advanced surveillance technologies, data analytics, and healthcare worker training.

In addition, it will aim to Build Resilient Health Systems; Develop robust healthcare infrastructures to manage diseases, improve access to essential services, expand immunization, and ensure sufficient medical supplies and personnel.

This is in addition to promoting Research and Innovation( Support scientific research and innovation to tackle health threats in Africa by encouraging collaborations among research institutions, academia, and the private sector to create new diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines.

Also, strengthening Regional Collaboration and Coordination; Enhance cooperation among African countries to harmonize health policies, share best practices, and coordinate responses during health emergencies through regional networks and joint training exercises.

Community Engagement and Health Promotion; Empower communities to participate in disease prevention through health education, communication, and interventions that promote healthy behaviors and address misinformation.

By concentrating on these areas, the Africa CDC aims to safeguard health, strengthen health systems, and contribute to the overall development and prosperity of Nigeria, West Africa, and the continent.

In a similar development, as part of its efforts to build public health capacity, Expertise France, with support from the Agence Française de Développement, has committed €4.5 million to the RHPH West Africa project for the West African sub-region.

The Human Resources in Public Health (HRPH) project, to be implemented by the West African Health Organization (WAHO), aims to reduce gender inequalities and mortality during health crises in French-speaking ECOWAS countries by 2030.

Addressing gender issues which is a primary objective of the HRPH strengthening project has two specific objectives: establishing robust and resilient RHSP development policies in West Africa that cater to the needs of sub-regional organizations and French-speaking ECOWAS countries concerning ISS/One Health/Gender.

In addition, the project aims to enhance training for public health professionals in French-speaking ECOWAS countries on IHS/One Health/Gender, in line with World Health Organization (WHO) quality standards, by providing increased support to the NPHIs in the target countries.

Currently, Benin, Guinea, and Togo are benefiting from this phase of the 4 year-project before expansion to other countries depending on the availability of funding from partners.

While launching the project on behalf of the French government during the ongoing 25th Ordinary Meeting of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Assembly of Health Ministers in Abuja, Jean-Francoois Hasperue, the Charge d’Affaires, Nigerian French Embassy, said the project was a perfect illustration of the key priorities of the French Global Health strategy that was launched in October last year: health security through a One Health Approach

He said: “The shortage of health workforce is a global issue but is nowhere more felt than in Africa. By 2030, the projected global shortage is about 10 million health workers (WHO).

“This is why France has made it as number 1 priority of its global Health strategy. The project is a new testimony of our willingness to support the efforts of regional institutions in their essential mandate

Read Also: Africa CDC boosts Nigeria’s immunization with $3.5m cold chain equipment

“It emphasizes France’s priority to support the development of quality human resources to support resilient and strong health systems for the benefit of the West African people.

“As you all know, threats linked to environmental degradation (climate change, biodiversity loss, microbial resistance, pollution etc.) affect all countries in the world with a rising frequency and severity. We not only need to build resilient health systems but also strong systems for health”.

Xavier Muron, Country Director Nigeria, Agence Francaise De Development (ADF) noted that the COVID-19 pandemic shed a brutal light on the weaknesses caused by the lack of investments in health systems.

For that, he said that was the reason ADF, the second largest agency in Europe had to be involved because “There is a crucial need to support the development of resilient health systems, able to anticipate, prepare and respond to public health emergencies.”

May 8, 2024
Senator Ayogu Eze, the Flagship and the River of Life

In the chat rooms of the FLAGSHIP OF THE NIGERIAN PRESS, we are still bidding bye to Senator Ayogu Eze, 66, who has just been taken away by vicissitudes of the River of Life The “river of life” is another name for human blood circulation. It is a river that must ceaselessly flow, not too light or too thick, and without impediments or cataracts. It is a “river” naturally well equipped with substances, including water, which dissolves or nutralises other substances likely to make the blood too thin or too thick or form blockages or cataract. If the blood is too thin, it leaks out of blood vessels. This may be causing tiredness. We may not know what is going on until the gums in the mouth begin to bleed when we brush the teeth, or when we run some laboratory blood tests. When the blood is too thick, we may experience pain and aches and even heart problem and stroke, which may also occur when the blood is too thin. Therefore, blood circulation must always be on a neutral or even gear. We are informed Senator Ayogu Eze had a stroke!

A “flagship” is the leader in commerce, marine carnival or battle. The “Flagship of the Nigerian Press” is the nickname of The Guardian newspaper which it earned right on the starting block at its debut in January, 1983, overwhelming other newspapers it met in the trade. Ayogu Eze, as he then was, was one of the young men and women who brought this glory to Rutam House, home of The Guardian Newspaper. To be on board, the Flagship of The Nigerian Press of our days, a reporter had not only to have sound academic qualifications of which Second Class Upper University Degree, or Upper Credit Polytechnic Higher National Diploma (HND) were the barest minimum. The reporter had to be, also, reportorially picturesque, be monothematic, avoiding meaningless verbiage. The reporter should link the event to its past species and project it to the future in both astute back-grounding and interpretative writing. Additionally, he or she must have a long nose for news, and be an investigator. Ayogu Eze was all of these. So were the likes of Goddy Nnadi, who could have a file on the table of the Education Minister surreptitiously delivered to him at home in the evening and returned to the Minister’s desk before work began next day, or Jullyette Ukabiala, who could walk past security around President Ibrahim Babangida on a parade ground just to obtain confirmation of some assumptions in her copy, or Etim Etim, who made the Central Bank of Nigeria headquarters in Lagos a leaking basket, not just a basket, or Jide Ogundele who rattled the banks to submission or Shaibu Adinoyi-Ojo who discovered the smuggling in of 53 suit cases of money at the Lagos Airport during the change of currency under the military government of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. I cannot forget, also, Oseni Yusuf, a.k.a Zoom Lens, who brought to us the live picture stories of those 53 suit cases and of the faces of the men in military uniform and Agbada who helped money crooks defeat a government plan. This is an excellent photo news by all standards against the background of Africa’s tightest airport security. Of them all, only Adinoyi-Ojo has departed.

The departure from the flesh of Senator Ayogu Eze was, for me, the third transition in one week of persons who were close and dear to me in one way or the other. Only last Thursday, March 25, this column reported the surprising exit of “Auntie Nurse” (Mrs Inemesit Ekanem), aged 51, through a chest pain from which she did not recover. Just about then from my village came the news that our oldest paternal auntie, Mummy Idowu Adebola (nee Ogunnowo) left us at the age of 90. These events reminded me of The Law of Motion, which prevents stagnation in creation. Everything must keep moving, opening one cycle after another and closing them, including the cycle of birth on earth which terminates in the death of the physical body and birth of the soul into the world that is beyond the comprehension of our physical senses.

Every day I hear about The Guardian Newspaper or of persons who helped to form its formidable link of friends and work men, I remember the admonition that wherever we are, and whatever we do must suppor the purpose of our existence. So, what did Ayogu Eze (as he then was) and persons like me come to fulfill at The Guardian Newspaper? For many persons, the answers would be relative. For me, it was for both personal and group development, ending in the flowering and fruiting of the individual. The name of the newspaper, The Guardian suggest the answer. It was to be The Guardian of its society and, beyond it, of mankind. To understand this guardianship, we must proceed with the question: WHAT IS MAN? since it is man that the Guardian was meant to guide. If we succeed in finding the right answer for this question, we would recognise that man exists and he is proceeding from one point to another in his existence. Man therefore needs guardians in order not to miss his goal. What does it mean to be a guardian of this man? I do not wish to elongate this aspect of the purpose of man’s existence as regards the story of The Guardian Newspaper when it made its debut on the news stand in 1983, for not all members of its staff knew what attracted them to Rutam House. Simply, a job had to be done for which they carried deep within them ability to perform. Only later may the spiritual bandage over our eyes, which separates the past from the present and the present from the future give way to permit conscious understanding of where they were and why they were there. They had to have been inwardly homogenous with the mission for them to be aboard The Flagship, going by the adamantine laws of Nature, including THE LAW OF ATTRACTION OF HOMOGENOUS SPECIES which in every day speech we mention as “birds of a feather flock together”, attracted kindred souls. What was important was for THE GUARDIAN to have a rotating top of goal-conscious leaders who drove the gears of other machinery below it towards the end goal. I was privileged like every-one else to belong to this great Flagship family. So was Ayogu Eze. Oyinlade Bonuola was the first Editor. I succeeded him. Dr Stanley Macebuh, though not a Journalist, was our boss. Bonuola and I hid in the trenches and fired arrows into the society. The arrows were the greenhorn reporters we were incubating in-house, who pursued the goal beyond The Guardian. Our mission was three-fold, aimed at the body, soul and spirit of the readers and humanitiesl. First, we had to develop an editorial product which, in language, content and quality, was second to none. Having captured the market, we were to turn society’s gaze to higher realms, that is to lofty goals.

Ayogu Eze was one of the vibrant stars of the flagship. He worked with Mr. Ted Iwere, founding Features Editor. Mr. Iwere, passed the baton to Mr. Tommy Odenwingie, he to African American Mrs. Harriet Lawrence, the wife of a well-known Nigerian journalist from Edo State.

The Features Desks of those days were designed to wage war on weekly news magazines published on Mondays…Newswatch, Tell and Newbreed. They were merely amplifying our news breaks, pretending with high sounding prose to be giving the market something newer and better. They made more money every week from tiny investment in four publications a month. They made much more money than The Guardian made in one whole month and lured to themselves our brilliant staff, thereby piling on us the pressure of training and retraining of new staff. Chief Chris Okolie was Chief Executive Officer of Newbreed Magazine. He was son-in-law of the Ibru family and was on the Board of Directors of The Guardian Press Limited, owners of The Guardian Newspaper. He recognised that the market battle was instalmentally killing Newbreed. Mr. Chuks Okuwa, former Editor of the Nigerian Observer in Benin had just been removed from office by military Governor Tunde Ogbeha and gone to work at Newbreed, from where, without resigning his appointment, he came to work as Production Editor at The Guardian. As Secretary-General of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), Mr. Onyema Ugochukwu, NGE President, and I had met Governor Ogbeha in Benin to request a review of the termination of the appointment of Mr. Okuwa. The mission failed. Mr. Okolie asked Mr. Alex Ibru, Publisher of The Guardian, to fire Mr. Okuwa. Mr Ibru was in a fix. His sister was Okolie’s wife. He expected me to show understanding. I could not fire Okuwa who did nothing wrong. That would be contrary to spiritual ideals we were struggling to propagate. I had to be a diplomat. I got the Night Editor, Baba Mac Alabi, now of blessed memory, and Mr Razaak Adedigba, Chief Sub Editor, to accompany me to the home of Chris Okolie one evening during the Christian Lenten season. Mr. Okolie welcomed us warmly. When he later learned of our mission, he was wild with anger. Baba Alabi, a Moslem, was the first to prostrate, begging for mercy for Mr. Okuwa. All of us followed. I was Secretary-General of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) then. How would I explain to the Guild that I fired a fellow member who did his job right only because I was under pressure to save my job from the matrimonial problems of my bosses?

Mr. Okolie agreed to let go if Mr. Okuwa would admit guilt in writing and apologise. He did. Mr. Okolie requested that I help train Newbreed staff like Guardian Features Desk staff. For the sake of peace, I agreed. So, most weekends, he and some of his staff came to my house where we discussed and planned the Newbreed cover stories for one or two weeks ahead. As part of the compromise, The Guardian kept out of these areas.

Ayogu Eze was a critical element in these features fireworks. So were Tommy Odemwigwe, Abel Oshevire, Felix Abugu and Mike Asuquo. What was so special about the strategy of this team? They belonged to what Editor Oyelade Bonuola called the INSIGHT TEAM. He missed industry plums such as Onyeama Ugochukwu and Dele Alake, now a Minister. The News Magazines merely popped up on Mondays to feature or opinionate on exclusive stories which any newspaper broke during the week. The Guardian was the leading EXCLUSIVES newspaper. Some of these stories which Seun Ogunseitan has been trying to bring back to our memory through WIKIPEDIA are (1) Olusegun Obasanjo’s failed bid to become United Nations Secretary-General (2) General Ibrahim Babangida’s formation of two political parties out of about 28 applications i.e the SDP and NRC (3) The 53 currency suit cases scandal (4) The American toxic waste dump discovered by Seun Ogunseitan. Once the exclusive story was broken, Ayogu Eze and his colleagues dug up “the news behind the news”. In today’s Dollar embattlement with the Naira, they would have told us which Nigerian was hoarding how much Dollars? They would have gone into the Dollar business, stripped it bare by working with the lords of the manor, learning the game and playing it with them as investigative journalists. They would have been in the forests, filing reports from there, telling us who and who were behind insecurity and for what purpose. What would they not have told us?

Thus, every day, The Guardian Features Desk made nonsense of cover stories the magazines were planning, and hence weakened them in the market.

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I noticed Ayogu Eze was showing more interest in events in Enugu State of today and I am not surprised that he became the Senator who represented Enugu North constituency. All good things, like the bad ones, have an end. This is in the lawfulness of THE LAW OF THE CYCLE. Nightfall must give way to daylight, rainfall to sunshine, war to peace, work to rest, death on earth to birth in the beyond, death in the beyond to life on earth. Thus Ayogu Eze had to leave The Guardian someday and start a new career in the political minefields, for which work in The Guardian had adequately prepared him. The trigger was a training programme in Germany by INTER NATIONS. The Guardian was so good that three of its editorial staff were honoured with this programme. They were Ayogu Eze, Wole Agunbiade and Niyi Obaremi. Incidentally, they were the three persons who had become custodians of The Guardian’s news writing style developed by and restricted for some years to Lade Bonuola and Femi Kusa. Femi succeeded Lade Bonuola as Editor. All three told the Management of their intent to travel. The Management appealed that they go in turns under a company-brokered agreement with the sponsors. They declined and went. It was a dare the management knew would cause other dares if it buckled. Our hearts were in our mouths. It was like the structures of a beautiful house was going to give way. Razak Adedigba, Chief Sub Editor, and Gbenga Omotosho, Senior Sub Editor, now Commissioner for Information in Lagos State for five years, were handed the batons. I hid my face somewhere when they mounted the saddle, expecting a rough day and perhaps several night-outs as well in the office. To my shock, however, there were no dents anywhere in the work process, either in home style quality or deadline schedules. It was the beginning of a new era in newsroom quality management. On their return, Ayogu Eze went into politics, Wole Agunbiade to Chevron and Niyi Obaremi to IGI. This was the Law of Motion at work. One door opens as one closes! Mr Gbenga Omotosho (as he then was), would become editor of GUARDIAN EXPRESS, The Guardian’s afternoon newspaper from where he became Editor of The Comet newspaper and , later, Editor of The Nation Newspaper from where he became the Commissioner for Information. I did not know Senator Ayogu Eze had a stroke. Our skin hides a whole world of events going on inside our bodies. Elevated blood pressure (hypertension) may have foreshadowed a stroke. Hypertension itself may have been foreshadowed by atherosclerosis (hardening of the blood vessels), caused by Calcium deposits on their soft muscles, hardening them, or by atherosclerosis, (blockages in the blood vessel system by fat and other plaque). Important organs such as the liver, pancreas, spleen and the kidneys may have been getting blocked and hardening as well.

We cannot rule out constipation either. It is not for nothing that it is said that DEATH BEGINS SLOWLY BUT SURELY IN THE INSTESTINE. Simply because they move their bowels at least once a day many persons believe they are not constipated. They may have a rethink if they realise that the transit time of any food in the intestine should not exceed 24 hours. Eating three “square “meals in one day should warrant three expulsions each day. Sometimes, it may be a question of the tendency of the blood to easily clot. Diet may help, instead of prescriptions such as Hesperidin, Aspirin and Warfarin, if it is rich in turmeric, garlic, cranberry, cayenne, orange peel, Lecithin, soyabeans, Vitamin E, Vitamin C, Selenium, Black pepper, Ginko biloba, Gotu Kola, Vida Max a proprietary extract of tomato which in eight clinical studies guaranteed freedom from blood clot for 12 running hours per dosage.

Constipating foods should be avoided. Digestion aiding foods are important for bowel health. One of them is PAWPAW LEAF. It has all the enzymes required for the digestion of all the classes of food. . The leaf and the seeds, have a rich supply of an enzyme named PAPAIN. This is a chemical cousin of PEPSIN, the enzyme produced by the stomach to digest protein. Pawpaw fruit has less papain.The stem and the unripe fruit are papain-rich. Another proprietary product called BETAINE-HCL is worth trying, too. So is the APPLE CIDER VINEGAR brand by BRAGGS (WITH MOTHER). Diatomaceous Earth (DE) DIATOM for short is equally good. However, it has to be the “food grade”, never the “pet grade” which would be harmful. It loosens the stool. We cannot forget MAGNESIUM, whether oil or capsule or powder. Nor can we ignore fiber food supplements. Orange peel pops up again in my mind, as Banana peel, plantain peel grated and cooked with the unripe fruit as plantain porridge. Psyllium husk is always at my beck and call when it comes to proprietaries.

Good bye Senator Ayogu Eze. You cared for your health. You remembered your friends, low or high in the Flagship under the trustee chairmanship of Fred Ohahawa. All shall remember you always. May you awaken to joyful life as you continue your journey home to the luminous garden of Paradise…Aaamen.

May 2, 2024
Aunty Nurse, blurry vision, quantum energy

Aunty Nurse, as we all called Mrs Inemesit (Happiness) Ekanem was a simple Florence Nightingale from Akwa Ibom State who made hospital visits somewhat unnecessary for many residents in her neighbourhood until she passed on two weeks ago.

She lived at No. 12 Emmanuel Adekanmi Street, off Emmanuel bus-stop, Old Abeokuta Road, Oko-Oba, Agege, Lagos, where she ran a successful patent medicine store and offered some maternity clinic services for several years. Ironically, however, as the Yoruba say, Alatise O Mo Atise Ara Re (The fixer of other persons’ problems has no remedy for his or hers!) And, so, the Good Samaritan Auntie Nurse, as we all knew her, gave way two weeks ago to a pain in the chest which had all the portent of heart failure.

Auntie Nurse and I met about three years ago in my home, courtesy of Mr Michael Adenola who wanted me to speak to her about some quantum energy devices in which he was trading online. She was trading in them already through one of her childhood friends in Uyo, but was not obtaining robust business education and information.Thus, encouraged by our discussion, she sought to switch to Adenola’s group. I advised her against this, advising her not to deny her friend the fruit of her labour, and continued to give her all the support she required. We interacted often soon after. My last engagement with her involved the pregnancy of a 15-year-old which the girl had concealed from her guardians until then. I sent her to Auntie Nurse to prove or disprove her innocence. Auntie Nurse placed some fingers on the abdomen of the girl, looked at her guardians straight in the face and pronounced: “FIVE MONTHS!”. To make assurance doubly sure or to exonerate the girl, she was sent immediately to a lab which confirmed “FIVE MONTHS!” . Auntie Nurse was well known for her primary health care services which had the hallmark of A ta Ma Ta Se (right on the mark) that her home became something like a mini-hospital.

Her sudden death from a seemingly innocuous or simple condition as a chest pain was, therefore, a shocker to many of her clients, friends and neighbours.To doctors who look after the heart and the blood circulation system, however, the problem might have built up over many years and probably neglected or under-rated like many other health challenges.

Before her passage through a health malaise from which she had delivered many of her patients, Mrs Elizabeth Kafaru, doyen of Nigeria’s herbal medicine in her days, said this often happened because health care givers were too busy helping other persons, that they hardly remembered their cases well enough. Am I not guilty as charged?

All around me, men of my generation are complaining of such troublesome conditions as prostate inflammation, enlargement and cancer of the prostate gland and we are working always around and against them but I have done nothing beyond checking every morning the colour, volume and weight in a clean white drinking glass, ensuring there is no foaming and that nothing impedes a free flow! In matters of the heart health as well, my blood pressure checks are months apart, even if at 74 I should have graduated from a 110/70 blood pressure of many years under hectic work hours of 11a.m to about 3a.m.

Today, I am still content with the satisfaction of a 10,000 steps workout with my aides on some days with no complaints of a pepperish chest, palpitating or murmuring heart, breathlessness or shooting pains in the left arm, some of which may be signs that the heart needs some help. Irrespective of these credits in the ledger, however, I believe nothing should be left to chance, that we should see our doctors as frequently as they recommend we do. This cannot take anything away from our responsibility and right to be our own doctors since our bodies belong to us, anyway.

WARNING SIGNS

Every one can be his or her watch dog over his or her heart and the circulation system by observing some simple home checks, some of which are…

TIREDNESS

Many persons cannot climb a stair way or a foot bridge over a highway without easily becoming tired, breathing hard and rapidly feeling dizzy or experiencing palpitations of the heart.These may be signs of heart problems on the way or already established. However, these signs may be warnings about other problems such as low blood sugar, diabetes or high blood sugar or low blood pressure. Cough in the elderly could be due to congestive heart failure, adrenal gland weakness, fatigue, burnout, low blood count, anaemia, especially megaloblastic anaemia due to Vitamin B12 deficiency or even of a kidney or bone marrow challenge.

METABOLIC SYNDROME…

When the abdomen begins to bulge, a group of disorders known as the Metabolic Syndrome may be going on. This means the body is becoming de-energised, its functions are not running smoothly, the poorer metabolism is leaving backlogs of waste everywhere and these, as a syndrome, will create problem(s) someday, suddenly or progressively. Some of these problems may be hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, clotting blood, hardening blood vessels (arteriosclerosis), blockages in blood vessels (atherosclerosis), elevation of stress hormones in the blood, thickening of the blood, venous insufficiency (incomplete out flow of blood from the blood capillaries and veins, damaged on return valves in the blood vessels, swelling and pitting in the feet, lower legs and so on).

SWELLINGS

These are sometimes confusing as they may be produced by weak or enlarged heart, or by de-energised and underperforming kidneys. A doctor often relies on expensive laboratory tests to sort out the culprit. Some rely on a simple question: Does the swelling disappear when the challenged person lies on a plane surface, raises the legs on a surface or at the level of the hips or higher or overnight when the patient goes to bed? Does the swelling fail to abate under these situations? If the swelling would not go away, the kidneys are probably the causes. If they go away under these conditions, the heart may have become too weak to pull back to itself the blood it once pumped out, or there may be blockages of sorts on the way. Additionally, non-return valves in the leg veins may have become too weak to prevent up flowing blood from falling back or certain organs, especially the liver, the kidneys, pancreases or spleen may be inhibiting blood flow in one or diverse ways. Sometimes, too, a Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) may be at work. This is a blood clot in the deep vein. For this condition, doctors often prescribe blood thinners such as Hesperidin, Aspirin or Warfarin, which may cause minor or serious side effects or go down well with the patient. In Alternative Medicine, nutritional food supplements are employed. Notably, they include Cayenne, Nattokinese, Omega-3 fatty acid, Apple Cider Vinegar, Vitamin E( D-Alpha, not DL-Alpha, mixed Tocopherols and tocotrienols).

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ANGINA PECTORIS

This is yet another sign of heart trouble. This is often an electric pain which may arise from the scapula or shoulder blade in the left arm and travel down the arm or abate somewhere on the way.This is a signal that the heart is not receiving enough blood, oxygen and energy to perform its task.This is often because the arteries which supply it with blood are blocked by fatty or other plaque or deposits, or that excess calcium under a regime of Magnesium deficiency had infiltrated and settled into the soft muscles of these arteries, hardening them.The arteries cannot in this condition dilate or widen enough for blood to easily flow through them. Tension is elevated in the vessel. Without adequate blood, oxygen, nutrient and energy supply, some of the muscle fibers of the heart may begin to die, causing the heart to enlarge in compensation until its reaches an elastic limit and it gives up. By now, many readers of this column should be aware of the popular prescriptions in Alternative Medicine for these conditions such as Hawthorn Berries, Vitamin B1( Thiamine), Co-Enzyme Q10 or, better still, Ubiquinol, Vitamin E, Beta Carotene, Garlic, Kyolic, Lecithin, Nattokinese, and Vitamin B-complex.

DIABETES

Many challenged persons do not always link it with hypertension which may cause heart disease and heart failure. When insulin cannot cross from the blood into the cell because of the absence of Chromium in the diet due to the ingestion of refined carbohydrate foods., this causes insulin resistance. Insulin accumulation in the blood vessels, rather than in the cells, may stimulate the smooth muscles of the blood vessels to mushroom and overgrow upward, downward and sideways, reducing the lumen or blood flow space and thereby making the blood vessels become Muscle Bound. This type of resistant hypertension may be more difficult to challenge, upset or offset.

Like all of us as we age, Auntie Nurse may have gone through some of these developments in her heart and circulatory system without realising that something amiss was going on. Her diet may also not have favoured her health. How many of us as we age have eliminated bread( white or wheat), milk, poultry egg, margarine, butter, fries, red meat or beef, white flour foods, sugar in all forms and monosodium Glutamate (MSG) – which are all causes of diabetes. I bounced them off more than 20 years ago! Goodbye, Auntie Nurse!

CLOUDY VISION… CATERACT OR GLAUCOMA

I AM still not surprised that most of my mails this month are about cloudy vision and that the writers are aged between 60-something years and over 80. I rejoice with the over 80s who still bounce about with eyes unprotected in the scorching sun and heat. It means their vision may still be superb. However, it would be better for them to protect these eyes which are not only old and prone to weakness but may easily succumb to oxidative pressure. Some of the enquires were on three herbal eye drops which Ophthalmologist Professor, Mrs. Bukola Adefule-Oshitelu, had developed from her interaction with Alternative Medicine or if you like, Nigeria Traditional Medicine (NTM) to make it indigenous.

One of them is Garcinia Kola( Bitter Kola) eye drops which she developed to reduce high occular tension. One of the enquirers reminds me of those days, long ago, when I thought there was no answer to this problem. His internal ocular pressure (IOP), was 24 in one eye and 31 in the another, a dangerous swing towards optic nerves stress, damage and blindness when these nerves would do well on a 12-21mm Hg tension.

The second enquiry was in respect of Chanka Piedra, a multi-purpose herb which fights hypertension, gallbladder and kidney stones ( she strictly recommended it for fighting Cateract of the eye lense), germs, Staphylococcus aureus, elevated blood cholesterol levels, etc. Prof. Oshitelu offers the Chanka Piedra eye drop specifically for Cateract.

From her stable, also, comes Pinth, a popular Yoruba herb, for cateract. To them, I suggest inclusion of eye anti-oxidants such as Bibery, vitamins A, C and E, Gingko biloba, Lions mane mushroom, magnesium, selenium,CoQ10 or Ubiquinol, Plasma tissue or cell salt, Beta carotene etc. Each of them has a good history to its name. I will mention only a few. Calcium wreaks havoc in the body when there is not enough Magnesium to pair with excess of it. In the brain, it can cause a stroke through circulation blockage. In the blood vessels, excess calcium may cause hypertension. In the joints, the trouble may be arthritis when it “cements” bone structures and in the Spondylitis of spinal bones.

This condition often ends up in the removal of damaged vertebrate bones, their replacement with plastic forms and a bent in the gait afterwards. In the eye, the lens, an otherwise gelatinous substance is hardened. Many sufferers of calcium havoc either are magnesium deficient or consume Cheap Calcium supplements such as Calcium carbonate, the class-room chalk, which is not well absorbed and utilised. The eye drops for glaucoma are sometimes Calcium Blockers, to prevent free calcium from infiltrating and hardening delicate structures of the eye.

Alternative Medicine offers Magnesium to dislodge calcium’s insolence in the eyes and elsewhere. That is what Milk of Magnesia ( a Magnesium remedy, does in the intestine to unlock the Calcium lockdown of nerves which cause constipation and encourage intestinal flow)! While CoQ10 or Ubiquinol may energise the eye and Lutein, Zezanthin and Astazanthin from Carotenoids may protect them against damage by the blue spectrum of sunlight, lion’s mane mushroom is always very exciting to me. It was discovered by a female Italian doctor during Second World War to help in the repair and revival of damaged or mangled nerves. I followed her till we lost touch after she was 103 years old, still writing and presenting academic papers. This remedy is used orally. I eagerly look forward to when eye drops of its extracts will be developed for damaged or mangled optic nerves. There is cheering news from Japan where persons said to have been medically certified blind for upward of 10 years can now see as clearly as though nothing happened to their vision. I believe we are moving from the realms of bone marrow surgery and transplant to newer possibilities.

One of the new realms may be quantum energy health which this column reported two weeks ago (April 11, 2024) on the Nigerian market. It was a good opportunity for me to replace my Chymall quantum eye glasses, the frame of which had broken, with that of Double Plus, and water my eyes with a new Quantum energy water bottle spray. The cost is not a laughing matter for a purse such as mine at this time, but I believe it is worth it. Not only does it energise the eyes, promoting circulation, the lens blocks damaging rays of the sun to which many persons expose their eyes and against which they inadequately protect them with only darkened lens. I suggest that any-one who spends long hours watching television or working with cell phones or laptops endeavour to protect the eyes with quantum energy eye glasses.

QUANTUM ENERGY ENERGY HEALTH RESOURCES

The following responds to that column on Quantum health of April 11, 2024 which was entitled: Quantum Energy Health Market: Double Plus Tracks Chymall came from an engineer in Port Harcourt. He says:

“Well done, dear brother.

‘‘Though very long discourse, well-loaded with very useful information.

‘‘I’m very happy and proud to be associated with you, dear brother.

‘‘The knowledge of Quantum energy is the key to managing almost if not all health related issues.

‘‘Thanks immensely once again for this very illuminating discourse.

‘‘Finally, dear brother, could you please give your final update on ‘Double Plus’?

I hugely appreciate your work, brother.

Emma Nwandu.”

SOME DETAILS

Thanks, Sir, for following this column.

Surely, the details will be provided as the possibilities unfold. For example, the Quantum energy eye glasses may help the brain as well. They are in the region of the sixth chakra and the brain is in the seventh, the last of the energy vortexes of the animating soul or the Astral body, going by the traditional Asian energy conception of medicine. I have heard some people say too much energy in the brain causes conditions such as insomnia, depression or possession. Therefore, it may sound ridiculous to suggest quantum energy for clearing this energy mess.The picture of such a therapy may get clearer and cleaner, however, in the differentiation of dirty energy from clean energy. Dirty energy suppresses normal brain function, creating dysfunction while clean energy establishes natural functions. Therefore, quantum energy will not necessarily stoke the fire of dirty energy challenges in the brain.

However, the opposite may become the case when the cause of wakeful energy is tracked to impurities which the brain cannot excrete, leading to poor blood circulation and brain chemistry imbalances. These may even block brain capacity to convert Serotonin, day-time neurotransmitter, to Melatonin, night time and sleep time neurotransmitter. I have kept awake to 3am to conclude this column and will head to bed right away and…to dream land!

April 25, 2024
April 18, Bobrisky, Junior Pope, peace and happiness

I remember almost as though it were only yesterday this day 31 years ago. It was the first time I would be in Auchi, the land of the Otaru. I arrived the day before on a bill to give a public talk at Auchi poly technic on the subject: The Key to Peace And Happiness. My hosts were Mr and Mrs Osiki, both engineers, and lecturers at the polytecnic.

Being human, one part of me kept remembering home in Lagos, because my wife and I were expecting a baby next day. And, as sure as day, he came. If you wonder why I was far away from home when I had fore knowledge of such an important event, I would say April 18 is one of the most important dates in the Gregorian calendar for humanity on earth and elsewhere in the universe, and that I made the necessary arrangements back home for the coming of this baby.

Very April 18 reminds me of the purpose of human existence on earth and rekindles me to not pursue tinsel in the place of gold, chaff instead of wheat, perdition for life. All of us are helped in different ways for better and clearer understanding of the purpose of existence, particularly on earth, but we are too sloppy to catch the lifelines. How many persons remember their dreams, or understand them? I was lucky to have an Out of Body Experience ( OBE) at 24. Psychic researchers now call it OBE or Extra Sensory Perception (ESP), if it is only being able to sense or to know what the average person cannot.

Please permit that, before I proceed, I recall a psychic case from the book Conversations With God, which was a gift from an acquaintance, Mr Jocob Akindele, who is also restless in ever deepening his recognitions about existence, peace and happiness and how to achieve them. One of the highlights of this book is a school boy named John, if my memory serves me right. He is reserved, hardly mixes. His class teacher noticed him but most probably always shrugged her shoulders until one day during lunch break. She asked him why he was sitting in the class and not out-door for recreation. His reply was court and shocking:

“ John has an Accident”

The teacher has a son named John, but it did not cross her mind that this John was talking about her son. Soon,the class re-assembled from break . Soon, the headmaster accompanies some strange persons into the class-room. They conversed with the teacher who gathered her books and hand bag and left with them after managing to bid her pupils bye.

When she returned a few days after, and was alone in the class again with this boy during another lunch break,she humbly asked…

“How did you know John had an accident?”

I do not remember the rest of the story. I remember my first OBE, though. From deep sleep, I found I was not the person deep asleep in bed…that deep asleep in bed was my body. I was the one awake and walking about in the room. I was not hallucinating.

It was a real, day conscious experience which has occurred more times and helped me to understand that life goes beyond being born, going to school, graduating from the university, getting a job, chasing and making money, getting married, raising a family, becoming a grandparent someday, dying someday and becoming lost in the memory of succeeding generations of humans.

As a litmus test, ask your children if you are over 70….who were Adeola Odutola, Obafemi Awolowo, Rufus Giwa, Ernest Shonekan, Tafawa Balewa, Michael Okpara, Denrus osadebey, Joseph Tarka, Isac Boro,Malam Aminu Kano, Ahmadu Bello, Margaret Ekpo, Olu Onagoruwa, Dick Ihetiu (Dick Tiger), Hogan Bassey and Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle. Many Nigerians have faint memories of them today. Many do not know them. Yet they made waves in their time. Was their existence circumstantial?Where may they be now, if there was a purpose for their existence? What is this purpose? What is the key for unravelling or defining it ? I discovered from my OBE that we all exist in a world governed by natural laws which brought it about, and that peace and happiness are guaranteed only in the recognition of these laws and unconditional observance of them. It is in this light that I seek to address some of the major events of last week in Nigeria highlighted in the headline. Bobrisky and Junior Pope.

Bobrisky

Society has wise ways of bursting the balloon of its deviants who beat their drums too hard and too loud for the comfort and safety of everyone. That was what happened to a man, 33, born and named Okuneye Idris Olanrewaju but who has chosen to call himself Bobrisky and is applauded by the public as “Mummy of Lagos”. Recently, kindred souls decorated him as Nigeria’s “ best dressed woman”. It wouldn’t have been any one’s business if he merely changed his name to Bobrisky. That is his own business. I was born Olufemi Babatunde Kusa. Olufemi was my baptismal name at birth. I took on John at 17 or 18 when Rev. Earl M. Fyne baptised me as an adult in the pool of water right behind the altar of the chapel of Olivet Baptist High School, Oyo. The Epistles of St. John fascinated me. I believed Okuneye Idris Olanrewaju adopted Bobrisky for stage craft. In the stage craft which brought him fame and money and trouble, he dresses and behave like a woman. His father was upset. Who is that parent who lives a straight , natural life who would have no headaches and sleepless nights over such a son who was popularising trans gender life, and, thereby, encouraging lesbianism, gayism and heterosexual life especially among young persons who are being dragged by the internet to the abyss or bottomless pit? In reality, trans gender life deforms the original identity of the human soul, but not of the human spirit the kernel of the soul. I cannot be a judge in respect of Bobrisky’s inner life. I described here only that which I have recognised from my search for The Truth following my OBEs. I have recognised that we who call ourselves human beings today were once unconscious spirit seed germs with potential to grow and mature into conscious spiritual beings. We can glimpse this when we plant a seemingly lifeless mango seed, vegetable seed or ear of corn in the right soil. As spiritual seed germs, we were planted in the soil of the material world, far, far below the spiritual world, Paradise,our home.

At a point in the course of becoming more conscious than when we left home, we were opportuned to decide in which of the two activities in creation we wish to permanently dedicate our existence. We had to choose between active or passive existence. The Active or Positve is rough or rocket, obtuse and material laden. The Passive or Negative is not derogatory, but a fine and deliassivecate countelever Activity to active or rough activity. It means the finer existence which inclines homeward,from where it constantly draws values and power in support of the downward striving positive activity. To the male gender on earth belongs this activity and to the female gender belongs the gentler finer delicate activity. Once the preferred activity is chosen, it cannot be changed in the entire existence of the human spirit. In the entire universe, only these two activities exist. Any attempt to change it causes a distortion of the soul of the person concerned, and sometimes affect the physical body.

Read Also: Bobrisky: Principles governing sentencing of an accused person

Delineation of both activities manifests, also, in the outward forms of the female and male human bodies.The female bodies is finer because the force within it is finer and more powerful than the force within the male body which, to support its course and obtuse work on earth, is endowed with strength. Thus, it is wrong to call the female gender the weaker sex. It is the more powerful gender. There is a difference between Power and Strength. Psychically, woman can bear more stress and inner pain than man. However, man has the strength of bigger muscles. When a man is effeminate and cannot stand up to his calling and duties as a man, he may begin to alter the configuration of his soul. This may begin to affect his body. If he returns to the earth after his dismise, h-incarnate, in a female body,if he has not corrected his spiritual aberrations. Thus,we may find a man in a woman’s body. The same may happen to a woman who returns to the earth in a man’s body.

Today, there are many men in women’s bodies and there are many women in men’s bodies.These thoughts are not original to me. They come as revealed knowledge to mankind at this time in events connected with events of 18 April 1875, that is 149 years ago. Distorted souls are useless souls in Creation. There are only two activities..Male represented by the perpendicular line in an equal-armed Cross, and Female ( Passive or Negative) represented by the Horizontal blind in the same Cross. Old civilisations knew about this Cross. It is sometimes used in decorative manner, though with a serious message, on the robes of some priestly Caste. It was the Cross of which the Lord Jesus spoke when He asked His followers to pick their Cross and fellow Him. He couldn’t have been speaking of the Crucifix which had not featured in His earthly Mission. Distorted souls are trans genders. They are attracted to one another in friendship and marriage. Globally, Nigeria inclusive, more women are inclining towards active activities, are unwittingly shifting the balance in the equal armed cross. This is why the nations are becoming more unbalanced and the world is upside down right from the family level.

I said earlier I could not be a judge over Bobrisky’s life. I can only see his conduct against the background of the conception of the Distorted Soul, of which I am privileged to have an idea. The judge who sent him to jail for six months is a Wise man. He asked Bobrisky if he was male or female. Bobrisky replied that he was male. Had he said he was female,the Judge may have asked doctors to scan “her” genitalia. If the scans found no female breasts,ovaries, follopian tubes, uterus, cervix or vagina but the male genetalia of penis, scrotal sac and testes, Bobisky may have gone down for lying on oath and obtaining money from the public at his public and other shows under false pretenses. In the end, Bobrisky pleaded guilty to disrespecting Nigerian currency. He “sprayed” money at a function and stepped on currency, according to video evidence. A wise society has thus found one of several wise ways to put away for some time one of its deviant numbers who had been beating his drum too hard and too loud to the discomfort of many people and a generation of young, gullible persons he was encouragin to distort their souls and accompany him to the abyss or bottomless pit.

Junior Pope

I am not moved by surface talk, and do not enjoy the company of lococious and garulous persons. I once wrote so in respect of former American President Donald Trump when he stampeded Americans living in Nigeria to flee home, saying COVID-19 would kill Nigerians” like flies”. In the end, Nigerian COVID-19 deaths were far smaller than malaria, tuberculosis, maternal deaths while COVID-19 killed Americans and Europeans “like flies”. Thanks for the infinite goodness of God for our sun and herbs, more natural “lifestyles and other divine mercy. I do not watch films and listen to comedians. There is hardly anything elevating or uplifting in their contents. They either drag society down, grope along with it by mirroring ignorable ways and means, hardly upbuilding guardians and leaders. They parade only base content to cause unguarded laughter and make fabulous money. Many of them even try to drag conception of the the unsubstantiated Almighty Creator far below dense human nature. Only birds of a nature swing along with them.

So, you should please forgive me if I say I did not know the actors reported to have died recently and even Pope Odonwodo a.k.a. Junior Pope who drowned last week in the River Niger along with 11 other members of a group working on a film ironically titled: The Other Side of Life. He was unlucky to not be among the nine survivors. You have to be something other human to be not touched by the manner of his death and of his struggles to survive the drowning. What first touched me was the spiritual admonitions or warning connected with a mission to the earth of which 18 April 1875 is a signpost. The warning is that Carelessness Will Avenge Itself Bitterly. Junior Pope and two of his other colleagues did not wear life jackets in a boat cruise on a river known for boat capsizes! He was even making boastful video posts to sell the upcoming film with statements such as that they were making risky sacrifices to entertain their fellowers. We learnt through Junior Pope that our words form our world. A risk, indeed,their trip was. the episode tried to give herbalism a bad name, but, is, nevertheless, filled with spiritual content. The accounts are varied and confusing. I followed the story line that he was brought out of the river dead and taken straight to a mortuary where the staff observed his finger(s) twitching. This is a familiar story line in Raymond Moody’s Life After, which reported how hundred of “corpses” in mortuaries walk out on their own or were revived on exhibiting signs of life and lived on to share their experiences about the other Side of Life, that is in the so- called Beyond. Junior Pope was thinking and talking about his three sons just before the boat capsized. This bonding may have bonded him to his body in an Out-of- Body Experience (OBE), and he may have been trying to communicate that he was still alive.

His messages picked, goes the story line, he was taken to the herbalist for rituals. The case was a medical emergency which should have taken priority over a native doctor’s rituals. I do not, by this, undervalues the power of incantation and all of that to bring back into the body the soul of a departing person, in so far as the silver cord which bounds them has not been severed and brain waves ceased altogether. There were reports that Junior Pope was still breathing. Only a medical doctor can confirm dead upon confirming that the brain has stopped to emit waeves. This is when the soul is irrevocably separated from the body or the cord no longer conduct vibrations between them, and the body consequently becomes lifeless, cool and dead.

Everyone has been talking about mermaids and water spirits and wondering if they exist and are responsible for accidents in rivers and streams. Yes, they exist. They are species of Nature beings or elemental beings whose activities have to do with water. They are our friends. At the command of the Almighty Creator, these beings are prepared for us this great universe which is to be our home in our growing-up millennia in the material sphere of the world from which, before the dissolution of various parts, we are meant to have become spiritually mature and ascend homeward to paradise. The elemental beings give us rain to calm sun heat, give us streams, rivers, seas, and oceans to drain the land of rain floods and provide us marine foods and water for several uses.

In their work, they do not harm us if we learn about them and fellow their guidance because they obey in all strictness only the Will of God. If there are problems with rivers, these may have to do with the thought forms of phantoms and demons which human beings have imbued into them. In some parts of Akwa Ibom State where many persons still actively worship marine life forms, there are some rivers aliens to the land must not step into. There are some which twins and twins mothers must not get near. Only the native doctor can say what he was up to. At about this time in Lagos, no fewer than seven persons died in water,five in swimming pools and two in the third mainland Bridge when their over sped passenger bus broke through-rail barriers and the impact flung two passengers into the lagoon below.

May we all benefit immensely from the events of April 18,1875 which gave mankind the key to peace and happiness, and help of inesteemable value for their ascendance from this dense part of the world to the luminous gardens of Paradise….Amen.

April 18, 2024