"Just a Charge": A Submission to the Anglican Students' Fellowship, FUNAAB 2015 Final Year Brethren's YearBook

by Adegbilero-Iwari, Idowu (bro)

ASF FUNAAB Alumni President since 2010

Friends, brothers and sisters, well beloved and cherished, I find it a great privilege to be allowed to give this little charge to you through the instrumentality of this printed document even as you go out to the larger world, beyond the four walls of classrooms and laboratories. You will recall that you came to FUNAAB some four or five years back with so much joy and high expectations. You had great hope of making the best results out of the various courses you were enrolled to study. You had even proposed to establish one thing or the other or to even aspire to occupy certain position or the other. In short, you had hopes, if not all of you but near it. Whether your expectations four or five years ago have been accomplished or not is now left for you to evaluate and judge sincerely. If you have achieved more than you dreamt, you know it. If you have achieved less, it is you that know it also. You must now do an evaluation of your life and time in FUNAAB. But whatever the outcome of that evaluation is must be accompanied with a huge sense of responsibility that puts you at the center of things. This is to say that YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE for that outcome. And sincerely, you will be responsible for the future ahead of you in the larger world.

However, I will plead with you to emulate Apostle Paul who in the reflection on his life journey has this to say, “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 3:13-14 (KJ2000). If it is only this you can do, how hopeful your future would be and how fulfilling your life overall.

You may want to meditate on the highlighted words. Paul had a life of successes and disappointments to put behind him so as to reach the mark for the prize of the high calling. So also do you. You may have excelled so much in FUNAAB or had lived woefully to your gross disappointment. You may have failed to reach your target grade or even under performed in ASF and in the body of Christ as a student. You may have lists of unfulfilled dreams. You may also have broken all the records; won all the accolades FUNAAB and ASF can offer. Excuse me bro, all those are now in the past, getting behind thee. So, let them remain there otherwise you won’t have a mark to reach. And the reason you must do this is to press on toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

The word “before”; as he was forgetting those things which are behind, he was on the other hand reaching forth unto those things which are before. So also I charge you to do. You have a lot more ahead of you than four, five or six years in FUNAAB can contain. Beyond your 3^rd Class or FNG, or even beyond your FUNAAB’s 1^st Class, life has so much for you ahead. Begin now to reach forth to them. Begin now to find out what life has for you. Locate them in the manual of your life which is the Word of God. The time ahead is loaded, I can belt it if need be. What God will do with your life this coming ten years cannot be expressed by mouth. In fact, the dimensions of righteousness, power and the Spirit in which you will operate cannot be conceived by the heart of men. Don’t let the past chain you down; move on and soon you will know it. The world is waiting anxiously for you to fulfill your destiny. You know why I am so sure of this? He has spoken it. Moreover, the call of God upon you in Christ Jesus is a HIGH CALLING.

Sisters and brothers graduating, you all have a high calling in Christ. Either as a primary school teacher, university professor or even a pastor or politician, a businessman or communicator, wherever God will soon place you as you exit FUNAAB carries along with it the tag of a high calling. So, consider yourselves so highly placed whichever work your hands will find doing soon. Conduct yourself circumspectly and consider keenly the PRIZE for reaching the mark of your high calling. He that called you will do it. He will reward you. God is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. So, you have a glorious prize ahead to grab if only you can put behind and before you THINGS you may have or have not achieved. Don’t put them in your head, success to elate, or failure to deflate you.

I, on behalf of your fellow saints in the alumni, hereby welcome you to be active members of ASF FUNAAB Alumni Association even the more as I commend you to God’s grace and His perfect peace in Christ Jesus The LORD. Amen.

“Finally, brethren, whatever things are pure, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things, which you have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.” Amen!

Philippians 4:8-9 (KJ2000)

The Top is wide enough to take us all, so, join me and SEE YOU @ the TOP!

Your time is come, Africa Arise!

Your time is come, Africa Arise!

Apart from being the mother board of the planet from which the continents broke away, her civilization is as old as humanity itself. It is only antiquity that can explain the length of her life. At least, the Ethiopias and Egypts of this world have lingered all of recorded and narrated history of the earth.

Yet, Africa has remained the magnified shadow of her magnificent self. So much potential with nil realities, enormous possibilities yet unattained. Often assaulted by forces within- her opportunist leaders, and plundered without by humans from other lands whose selfishness and greed has meant failure for the land they plunder. “Scramble for Africa”- such a demeaning word and insulting gesture passed on Africa; she was divided as spoils by looters, her sons and daughters chained as common commodity and shipped away across the sea not for something noble but as shearers, plough men, harrowers, tillers and fighters of and for their lands. Such remembrance is not blessed; and yet perpetrators whose unkind souls had been termed gentle and have been pronounced to rest in peace, what peace is this sort brethren?

To hate them is not the tone we must ring here. And to deny a pardon is to open the eternal gate of self imprisonment to ourselves. That we don’t need, for it will only fertilize our already sown seed of sorrows. We must forgive, forget and like our hero, Madiba, reconcile and work with our former scramblers and spoilers to build the world and bring her the stability it badly craves. But this we would do, to charge up ourselves and discover the path our explorers trod to gain control over us.

We might not have even come to that bitter remembrance of the old affliction their blood-stained hands inflicted on our fathers but for the current disregard their selfish progeny have meted out to our sense of humanity as independent people. Independence itself, now a thing to question. Questions that I hope Africa may be able to answer at this time to define her sovereignty. It is no other moment for Africa but a defining one. Whether we are a people that worth our onions or we have dwelt in self deceit ever since our various independencies. Self deceit is worst than cancer.

Perhaps, we have hated ourselves that much; or why should a people, the aliens, or what do you call a human group who engages herself in habits less of bestiality can condone? What they call rights of man, even animals would spit were it to be declared their dues. Humanity in foreign lands has downgraded to something short of bestiality; we must be alerted, alarmed and of course be wary of the aliens’ encroachment of the  remaining human domains left in Africa. Playing their romantics, foreign aids will cease unless we become less than beast. Is it aids they have been giving us or AIDS? This is the time we must define our relationship and more importantly our personality and/or sovereignty if only we can come to self determination and the much needful liberation.

It is never their fault though! Or how does one say it, that a nation vastly enriched as Nigeria is abjectly impoverished? Not for dart of resources or the persistent wrath of nature as often witnessed elsewhere in destructive hurricanes, wind storms and damning quakes that swallow available reduced resources as if they are the abyss. But for the errors too rampant of our self-anointed rulers: rulers whose necks are free of the laden that naturally yoke claims to leadership. It is enjoyment galore for these uncanny opportunists. Where they appear serious, it is a trade they make of their subjects, the land of their nativity and of course, of posterity. They have sold us to these strange ones from that side the Atlantic. Why then can’t they say they will ground us by the suspension of their AIDS?

However way it is viewed, to me it is still an insult, nay, an assault. Our opportunist friends or rather fiends at the helms have belittled us before them for their own personal gains. Gains turned pains on their guilty hands. Africa, no country in the region, not even Niger or Somalia, deserves the beggarly state the West have classed her. They need us for their own survival or why the mad rush for Africa in the days of old, even now still? As much as it must be said and known everyone the world over need another. They need us, we need them. But it will be inhuman to harass them with our relevance and usefulness to them and so they should stop harassing us with our needs of them. After all, everyone hold the right for self determination.

Now, that shame stares at us in the face, what must we do? The reproachability in the declaration of Hillary and David the other time cannot and must not be taken as mere rhetoric. It is a can of sewage sprayed on our already dented figure and we must now act to win our independence or remain a slave forever. We must act now to reenact our humanity or we join them to fall under the wrath of His Divine Majesty. Or what did Sodom, even Gomorrah invent that turned them to ash heap that that side of Atlantic have not done? Now, that it was unanimously chorused into law by their Senate, that other than the matter of homosexuality that man can mate with beast, sodomizing the innocent lesser creatures, a breeze of madness is oozing forth from over the Atlantic. If man has so downgraded himself to less than the lower animals must he also further drag down the beasts already termed lower? Beasts have their rights and now they must find a way to protect it. And, surely, they will fight. Nature will fight. If the HIV/AIDS menace has not mesmerized us enough, what we will soon witness on the globe will be worst a catastrophe capable of casting man into a permanent state of malady. Nature is angry.

Even of old, when the Creator was angry with the Hebrews for offences less of this grade, such as a man unduly mating with a woman, a natural use of self you may say, but in that instance, a contravention of the will of the Unquestionable, the Unmade Maker, He had commenced their wanton destruction until a Phineas would do the right thing to stave the wave of the wrath of God. God was pacified and He would stop the rampaging carnage. A Phineas!

Where is Africa at this time of general human malaise culminating into a complicated madness? Where is the nation that will tell the West to go to hell with their aids or AIDS should she stamps out sexual indignity and assault on marriage. Man can not marry man and neither can woman a woman. Pronto! Where is the Africa that will rebuff foreign aids and/or AIDS to seek the guidance of the Holy One to help build a virile nation and continent? Will Africans from Seychelles to Zimbabwe arise? Will Africans in Nairobi, Casablanca, Pretoria, Cairo, Accra, Kano, Lagos… arise to raise the banner of sanity and wave high the flag of human dignity across the blessed earth? If peradventure, the wrath of God may stop, His anger relaxed and His blessedness raise Africa to heights of glory. Let Africa stand by her core values at this one time and run by her convictions that we still are humans.

Jasper Peter Akinola, a former Anglican Primate rose on the ground of the church and resisted, damning any consequence, the strange doctrine of homosexuality leading other African churches and beyond in the process to stand for the truth that male and female created He them and that marriage is marriage when it is honorably consummated between Adam and Eve. Now, an African president must arise through the window of nations and defend humanity once and for all damning any consequence. Could that nation be Nigeria? Let her arise. Could that senate be Nigeria’s? Let it enact the law. Or will it be Pretoria or Cairo? Whichever, whoever, wherever, the world is craving a new era and a new focus and a new leadership and direction altogether. Arise Africa, it is your time!

Shilka: A poem on the recent clash of the Nigerian Army with Boko Haram in Maiduguri

Shilka

Shilka, O, Shilka

Wither didst thy prowess go?

When the sons of the dark commanded our men to war

When the hordes of hate fell upon our door

Borno burnt into crumbs

Ki-ki- ki-ki, pah- pah- poh- poh! Sounds of war

At Maimalari her sons were maimed

The maidens of Maiduguri sobbed in tears

But Shilka was long in their arms, the Morpheus

Your sleep our slip O Shilka

Your error our horror thou great artillery

Whether you were used against your own very cause

Or your age has caused your want in keeping our gate unsoiled

All we know, great Shilka, your manners this past “frying-day” was our minus

Three hundred and fifty souls in their own blood soaked

One from a tower of learning

Yet, four younger souls untimely freed from the sorrows of life

But to print an eternal sorrow upon their peoples’ souls that live to grieve

Plus the centuries of skulls these past weeks everywhere North of the Niger

All must halt of a sudden like the failures of Shilka the great

Let the wars be compromised as in the conspiracy of Shilka

Let the age of this insolent battle against ourselves cause the failings of the insurgents’ might

Like Shilka in Maimalari, halt, O war, halt in our land!

By Adegbilero-Iwari Idowu on the latest attack on Maiduguri as reported by the Punch Saturday, 15^th March 2014

Between Us and the Americans

FTO Designate, DV Lottery, GRE and TOEFL Cancellations: Charging Tunes from the Americans

          

                                     

Thank you America!

Now at last that the dreaded operationally hydra-headed and fundamentally absurd group called Boko Haram and its sister group Ansaru has finally been designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations based in Nigeria I think some people can now heave a sigh of relief for reasons so diverse. One, it has been a long call. Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor had even made presentations at the Congress on the subject matter. Secondly, the manner of operation of these brainless dudes void of any recourse to mankind has left so much to be desired. It has strengthened the need to use every means humanly and supernaturally possible to stop at once their dastardly activities in our midst.

Really, call them a monster I think it is an underestimation of what they are. From riotous collision with state’s formations to destructive romance of mosques and wanton exterminating game of enmity against the church in order to establish a fairy Islamic order in their vague minds one can not but agree to the allusion that the hordes of hell are now in the midst of mortals. If the fiend hides under the camouflage of war against book who themselves are schooled; if now the foe takes offence in conjugal celebrations who themselves are married; and if the enemy now declares death at christening of a child born who themselves were given birth to, a thing the beasts would berate, then we must all know that the ongoing dialogue with the sects is typical of a major tete-a-tete between the sun and the moon called solar eclipse. As the result often is when this happen the rest of the creatures would wallow and wander in wonder through harrowing hours of unsure light- twilight.

Cries! They are the creation of the uncaring government who over the years has chosen to rule its people with the iron rod of underdevelopment order than lead them to the glorious level where welfare and security become their inalienable rights the social/welfarists argued. Others in their religious minds have averred that these people are really out to foist a mono-religion society on Nigerians, which is not incorrect; at least, from their statement of intent one would subscribe. Every argument about the creation of these discordant groups seems to be a valid point of view. Now they are here with us, but God forbid for us. And the end to their century-like sojourn is what we all are seeking. Given that, nobody can thumb up the military campaign in the regions in the East of the North nor rate highly the inference of the purportedly advancing dialogue; and more so that the sinister ripples of the then Christmas Day “Underwear Bomber” have refused to diffuse away from our contemporary chronicles, that the Americans have now spoken, I think we must give our listening hears; yield our deciphering minds to the clanging tunes from the American people.

That apart, also in the wake of the gracious month we are in, the wind of change, blown through the trumpet of cancellation or deletion or deregistration hit our ears that have refused to loathe such news. Given that, before what I actually mean to say, Nigeria was deregistered from the list of countries whose citizens are qualified to swap allegiance of their citizenship by choice through Diversity Visa Lottery to the United States of America. That decision did not go down well with so many youths and even families who have being nursing the dream of crossing to the green or greener pasture. As if they are foragers or devourers of made foods; even though in reality we are as our country remain the boomer of other nations’ economy given that she is the highest importer of many products including food. My family is a beneficiary of the lottery thing. Now that the game is over, it is as if the road to a prosperous and rich life is closed to so many. You needed to see the lamentations of people.

As if they are not done yet; like I was initially saying before I digressed to the DV lottery issue, the American people have yet again shown their determination to reduce the numbers of Nigerians gaining entrance into their land; and if anything more, to complicate the process of eventually landing there. The American eagle now sings “no more GRE and TOEFL exams in Nigeria.”GRE and TOEFL used to be the minor hurdles young and brilliant Nigerians jumped to cross to their earthly “paradise” at least for education and there from… “America, home away, sweeter home!”

I really felt for a bosom friend whose wife-to-be has gotten admission to study in the US. He has began to enquire about GRE and TOEFL so that he could also fly with his love only for this trumpet to sound yet again on Nigeria that Nigerians can no longer sit for GRE and TOEFL in Nigeria. Oh so bad! That is what the gong of the town crier has brought our ears thus far there could be more in the offing.

While we wait to see that, we must consider the offering before us. We must consider them not in a reactionary way as to tackle America, no. But to consider them in a reflective mood, it is a charge! It is a cheering charge to self discovery as a people. It is a call to create the Nigerian dream and pursue it. It is a trump of war against corruption, poverty, maladministration and such things that have crippled the once flying and great Eagle of Africa. It is a call to return the value of Naira to the status of strength it once had against the Dollar as it was in the 1980s. It is a call to ban the importation of services and technologies! It is a call to look inward and build our own capacities and industries. It is a call to gather in a sober and resolute convocation, all of us, to denounce our pact with corruption and disregard our agreement with greed. It is a call to harness the champion in us and make Nigeria the giant of the world it really should be so that all of earth will be queuing to have Nigeria for home. Though this shall be, it is my dream, but now it must be!

Nigeria arise! It is not the time to be sorrowful even if the gates of America and all of West are shut against Nigerians. Even if they don’t, the time is rife that Nigeria shuts her gates against her sons and daughters from fleeing to provoke the giant in them and unleash the hitherto latent potential buried in them. It is the time we make Nigeria the America we love. Our kin in the White House, President Obama, have said it all; “we must start from the simple premise that Africa’s future is up to Africans.” It is the time we follow the path of Japan and China. It is the time we empower the youth to be proud of the land of “Unity and Faith”. It is the time the elite class show clinical sincerity in the pursuit of “Peace and Progress” for Nigeria. It is the time the UIs of this world, the OAUs, UNIMAIDs, UNILAGs, FUNABs and of course the ABUADs of this world begin to par with or rather pass the Harvards and the Yales. The time is now that Fellowships and Scholarships, Grants and Post-doctoral awards abound and been sought by all of earth in Nigerian universities. It is the time education is delivered unhindered by strike actions. It is even the time the current ASUU, ASUP and co face off with the FG be resolved. It is the time, as Gov Fashola has in recent times found his lips professing and his heart desiring, “Made-in-Nigeria Everything” fill Apapa on their way out to even New Zealand and within in Aba en route Maiduguri. It is the time UCH, LUTH and co. becomes global centers of excellence for health care. Call it a dream, yes, it is my Nigerian Dream.

Nigeria ARISE and dance to the beautiful symphony from America!

Poems for Nelson Madiba Mandela

Mandela: My Distant Friend

Dear friend,

Goodness has tied us together

Nature has made it so

Common destiny we share

Fortune has made us friends

Friend,

Your age my age

But a million moons younger

Your season of birth, the dates,

Same as mine, the work of God

Lo, similar path to life we trod

Friend,

Your life I adorn, your time is good

The trials tho’, but in them your glory lay

Your values I love, your struggle I share

Your ideals I cherish, bliss to earth you are.

Friend,

Your name swells my head;

Sending a wave across my frame:

The work you did,

The fight you fought,

Like awe, erecting the hairs on my body

Friend,

You will go to grave not as a fighter

Not for weakness though,

But in victory, you’ve seen your struggle succeed

And your dark past of assaults gone,

Friend,

But the brighter now and ‘morrow of freedom

Lightened by a free and equal nation

Where creed and colour all banished to death

Humans, now, all are, black and white, the coloured;

All you’ve glimpsed by the grace of God

My dearest friend,

Distance apart us may keep

Age may range us further apart

My dream is you to see

Whether it be or not, be sure you’ve touched me.

Time says, you are the hero of our world, my friend dearest.

By Adegbilero Idowu on 5^th September, 2009 @ Ibadan.

Rolihlahla: the Trouble Maker

Born the eighteenth day of July nineteen eighteen

The Excellency of days, the jewel of time

Vegetations greening with grace, villagers gleaning,

Food, abundant and surplus, a time of harvest.

Born to a season of ease

When nature never disdain its splendour

Sufficient rainfall displacing stress

The beginning of a new half, moon lighting the night

Madiba the great, Rolihlahla the trouble maker

Who troubled the system to humble its rumble

Never giving up to injustice

With his blood fighting inhumanity

Thembu royal descendant birthed into apartheid

Men profaned by the disdainful act of separate rule

Indulging bestiality to protect the few

In a society with Mandela such naivety would falter

Who would sacrifice personal ease to rescue peace

Slaughtered own interest to see equality reign

Killing his ego to enthrone democracy for all in the south

Choosing an inmate to be for endless years to see a mate in all men

Now that they are one your trouble is o’er Great Madiba!

By Adegbilero Idowu, July 18, 2008 at Ijan Ekiti, Nigeria 

Africa arise

Been African is not a disadvantage.
Been Black is not been backward.
Its the time for Africa revival, she has all it takes to dictate the global pace
Africa arise today!
To be continued in details...