A wise man once said: You'll be alone in the most difficult times of your life.
These times will make you wise, mature, and fearless.
They will strip away every illusion and show you who truly matters. You'll learn to be your own strength when no one shows up.
In silence, you'll meet the strongest version of yourself.
Pain will become your greatest teacher, and growth will become your quiet reward.
One day, you'll look back and realize solitude was a blessing in disguise…
Another perfect day to clear up some common misconceptions.
Listen:
1. You don't NEED antibiotics when you have a cold.
2. You CANNOT shift anybody's womb. You cannot even reach it. Don't be stupid.
3. Diabetes is NOT caused by adding too much sugar to your garri.
4. For the last time, Typhoid is NOT malaria and malaria is not Tyforce. Stop diagnosing yourself of typhoid everytime you are ill or have a fever or stomach upset.
5. Hypertension ISN'T caused just by too much thinking.
6. You CANNOT "flush" ur system of illness by "pissing all the sickness away". They LIED to you..6. Your body doesn't need daily supplements. Just eat normally and healthy.
7. You do not need a special kind of tea to flush your system. You are not a public toilet.
8. Putting spoon in a person's mouth during a convulsion will NOT stop ANY convulsion.
9. Taking "Hampicloss" after sexual intercourse will NOT protect you from sexually transmitted infections or pregnancy.
10. Stop the daily douching and stop washing your vaginas with antiseptics. You are only exposing yourself to infections.
Oh... and this one is very important:
Slimming tea CANNOT remove all that fat. It will only make you purge till you are dehydrated (if you are very religious with it) and land you in the accident and emergency of the nearest teaching hospital to you. Go to a Gym, work out and DIET!
Pass it on if you care.
You think I'm happy living abroad?
I have a family I grew up with, whom I love with all of my heart - and the reality keeps dawning on me, on how many times I will see them before I one day turn 60.
People I saw daily, or once a month - I haven't seen in years, and would realistically only see once a year, going forward.
You think I'm happy?
That one day, I might end up having children and my siblings might not have the relationship with them - the relationship I had with my uncles, in my formative years? I remember clearly how they would take us to MrBiggs every Sunday - I am currently reliving the flavour from that meatpie.
How we would go to the family house in Ikeja, every year for Eid. The grandchildren uniforms, the snacks while watching your uncles slaughter rams.
You think I'm happy that I might one day lead a family of children who might not know their version of that?
WTF will I be doing in another man's land, if I did everything they asked me to do from childhood (face your studies, be exceptional, stay away from crime, be hardworking) and opportunities lined up for me to be the best I could, in my motherland? WTF will I be doing here?
Why will I condescend myself to living in a clime where I have to mentally switch from sun burning weather to teeth clenching winter - when I came from a land where I never needed gloves? You think I'm happy?
If I could do honest work, be on my way home and not have to bother about the risk of getting shot by the people meant to protect me, because I have some lines of tattoos on my body - you think I would leave?
If I could trust a justice system to defend me, ensure my rights even though I am a nobody - have trustworthy institutions banking on the highest standards, not have to worry about the bread I eat, the fake drinks from the club or streets, the fake drugs - you think I would leave?
Don't get me wrong. I am grateful for the opportunities this clime has given me, to test my limits - to be everything I thought I could be. But all of these, in replacement for the soul I grew up with?
You know the satisfaction that settled within me when I could wake up on a Saturday morning, stroll to the Iya wanke's place - relish an entire plate, or some ewa agonyin while watching children battle it out, in a 5 v 5 across the streets.
That communal living that relished my soul, is now replaced with silent streets and finely divided sealed terraces.
You walk through the city centres in the evenings - you see friends having an aperitif (they do so every evening), you see grandfathers meeting up with their children, you see entire families with extended families living across the streets, first cousins are even able to use the same gym and you remember what that looked like for you back home?
You think of all your friends scattered across continents, some you might never get to hug again.
For a lot of diasporans, you don't want Nigeria to work more than us. A lot of us want to come home, but what is home? Where is home? When will home feel like home?
I hope to continue living life without lack, in comfort, with accomplished dreams - but I want to do so, with soul. When I die one day, I want to do so - with soul.
Growing up as a young (fine) man, people offered me money a lot.
Sometimes as gifts, for friendship, or relationships. Sometimes for sex or just to have access to me.
But I learned early that free things are rarely free.
When people give you something, even when they don’t say it, there is usually an invisible debt attached. You start owing them time, attention, friendship, companionship, loyalty, or access you may not even want to give.
I hated that position because I like to choose my friends and relationships on my own terms.
There’s a line in David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years that stayed with me:
“By gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.”
It explains how both can be forms of control. One is just quieter.
Even as a young man, I understood that the giver and the receiver are on two completely different trajectories.
The giver is forced to earn, produce, and create value.
The habitual receiver learns to wait, depend, and slowly become whatever keeps the giver interested.
At some point, you have to release yourself from the take mentality because the longer you live only to receive, the more you train yourself to wait instead of build.
The moment I started earning more, I gave more. I did giveaways here. I paid hospital bills. I even handed my shoe business over to my sales girl. And each time I gave, I earned more.
Refusing free money, rejecting transactional intimacy, and choosing the harder road of becoming the person who could give is the mindset shift that changed my life.
The news of the abduction of innocent UTME candidates in Benue State is not just heartbreaking but a damning indictment of the failure of leadership and the collapse of security in our nation.
Young Nigerians striving for an education are being met with terror. In a country where the share of tertiary graduates is already painfully low (about 1%) which is far below peers like Indonesia (about 13%) and South Africa (around 10%). This is unacceptable. We cannot afford to lose even one more student to violence.
Those entrusted with protecting these young students appear increasingly preoccupied with the next election, projecting strength and power to rig elections, rather than deploying that same power and agencies to secure our roads, prevent these crimes, and rescue the abducted children who should not be in the hands of criminals but in examination halls.
This is no longer an isolated tragedy. It is a pattern. It is a national crisis. And it demands urgent, decisive, and responsible action, not excuses, not silence, but leadership that matches the scale of the emergency this deserves.
A nation that abandons its youth abandons its future. This cannot continue.
A New Nigeria is POssible. -PO