That's What's inside of you!

I hope u ll find it as useful as I did A SURPRISE LESSON FROM SQUEEZING AN ORANGE
As told by the late Dr. Wayne W. Dyer:

I was preparing to speak at an I Can Do It conference and I decided to bring an orange on stage with me as a prop for my lecture. I opened a conversation with a bright young fellow of about twelve who was sitting in the front row.

“If I were to squeeze this orange as hard as I could, what would come out?” I asked him.

He looked at me like I was a little crazy and said, “Juice, of course.”

“Do you think apple juice could come out of it?”

“No!” he laughed.

“What about grapefruit juice?”

“No!”

“What would come out of it?”

“Orange juice, of course.”

“Why? Why when you squeeze an orange does orange juice come out?”

He may have been getting a little exasperated with me at this point.

“Well, it’s an orange and that’s what’s inside.”

I nodded. “Let’s assume that this orange isn’t an orange, but it’s you. And someone squeezes you, puts pressure on you, says something you don’t like, offends you. And out of you comes anger, hatred, bitterness, fear. Why? The answer, as our young friend has told us, is because that’s what’s inside.”

It’s one of the great lessons of life. What comes out when life squeezes you? When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside. It doesn’t matter who does the squeezing—your mother, your brother, your children, your boss, the government. If someone says something about you that you don’t like, what comes out of you is what’s inside. And what’s inside is up to you, it’s your choice.

When someone puts the pressure on you and out of you comes anything other than love, it’s because that’s what you’ve allowed to be inside. Once you take away all those negative things you don’t want in your life and replace them with love, you’ll find yourself living a highly functioning life.

Thanks, and here is an orange for you 🍊

Welcome to bj blog: THE BLACK FRIDAY - 40 YEARS AFTER

Welcome to bj blog: THE BLACK FRIDAY - 40 YEARS AFTER

THE BLACK FRIDAY - 40 YEARS AFTER

THE BLACK FRIDAY - 40 YEARS AFTER

We were in school one Friday morning, indeed we had just resumed from the 'Ijade ijeun' (lunch break) when the school bell rang unusually. We were all perplexed by this oddity and were still trying to figure who the august visitor we were summoned for was, when teachers hurriedly shooed us out of our classrooms and told us to go home immediately. To compound an already chaotic situation, there was an unusual movement in the adjoining army barracks which was separated by the barbed wire mesh. Guns were being corked and we could see soldiers running helter-skelter while some soldiers were assembled seated on the football field. We were still busy watching them when Mr. Olaniyan and Mr. Farinde came from behind and gave us generous lashes of 'pankere' cane on our buttocks. We were warned to proceed to our respective homes immediately because there was a fight among the soldiers. We managed to get home but met the same apprehension while some adults crowded a battery-powered transistor radio to listen to a broadcast that seemed to come intermittently. We were confined indoors and the Friday Jummat prayer for that day was attended only by my grandfather - we did not follow him as it was the norm.  We were told there was 'ko-nile-o-gbe-le' (curfew) by those who overthrew the six-month old Murtala Ramat Mohammed government whose leader, Lieutenant Colonel Bukar Suka Dimka, had been talking to us over the radio all day.

By evening, the situation appeared clearer as the assassination of the Head of State, General Murtala Ramat Mohammed was confirmed alongside his Aide-de-Camp, Lieutenant Akintunde Akinsehinwa. Their Mercedes Benz limousine was ambushed at a road intersection on their way to the seat of government in Dodan Barracks from the Ikoyi residence of General Murtala. They were aged 38 and 31 years old respectively; the date was Friday, February 13, 1976. The Head of State’s driver, Sergeant Adamu Minchika as well as the Orderly, Sergeant Michael Otuwe were also victims of the ambush although Otuwe survived with gunshot injuries on his right arm. The initial position was that the Military Governor of Kwara State, Colonel Ibrahim Adetunji Taiwo was abducted and his whereabouts was unknown. By the following day, a new Head of State was announced as Lieutenant General Olusegun Obasanjo while the assassination of Colonel Taiwo was confirmed and his corpse was recovered in a shallow grave on a cassava plantation off the Ajase-Ipo/Offa highway and taken to his Ogbomoso hometown for a decent burial. The remains of General Murtala Mohammed had earlier been taken to Kano for interment. Colonel George Agbazikah Innih was later named the new Military Governor of Kwara State.

I later read in the Daily Times and other newspapers that some soldiers had been declared wanted while others had been arrested and taken to Lagos. I saw some familiar faces of soldiers from the Offa Barracks of the Nigerian Army 2 Division Training School on the list. It confirmed what I earlier heard from some adults that those who assassinated the Kwara State Governor, Colonel Taiwo were mainly from the Offa barracks. The names of my friend, the Land Rover man, Major Gagara, the mustachioed Lieutenant Wayah, Lieutenant Zagmi, Sergeant Bala Javan (O pari patapata), Sergeant Ahmadu Rege and one other soldier who usually wore a large wristwatch on his right wrist which I was told was his own army rank, were splattered on the pages of newspapers and public notices. Indeed, Sergeant Rege was said to be the one who fired the shot that took the life of Governor Taiwo. At the court martial that followed their arrest, Rege reportedly confessed ‘Na Oga say make I shoot am and I shoot’. The Oga (Master) was Major Gagara.

Three weeks after the botched putsch, Colonel Dimka was arrested on March 5, 1976 by a policeman at a roadblock in Abakaliki allegedly in company of a prostitute. Ten days later, the coup plotters were executed in two batches which saw about forty of them facing the firing squad in Lagos.  The gory pictures of these adorned the pages of newspapers and Almanacs were made of these pictures. I could not stand the sight of the soldiers I had seen and interacted with at close quarters in that horrendous state. That singular experience yanked off totally from my mind the notion of taking a career in the army as I had previously nursed. Thus, when the army authority decided to relocate its 2 Division Training School from Offa following the 1976 abortive coup, I did not miss anything. I welcomed the development in my juvenile mind because I had lost all interest in whatever was going on in that barracks since I saw those pictures. Two years later in 1978, the new Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo introduced a new national anthem to replace the ‘Nigeria we hail thee…’ that we used to sing. There was also another one they called the ‘National Pledge’ which was to be sung immediately after the new National Anthem; but unlike the national anthem which we sang standing at attention and clasping our hands by our sides, the National Pledge was to be sung with our right hand palm on our chest. Suddenly, we had two items of several lines to memorize within a short period.

(Culled from ITAFA: THE FORMATIVE YEARS by Oloye Olayemi Mutiu Olaboye - Page 111- 113)

NIGERIA MOTHERS AND REPLIES...

1) When you say, "Mummy, I'm Sorry!" And she replies, "Sorry for yourself!"

2) When you ask her where you should drop something and she says, “Drop it on my head."

3) When she brings food
wrapped in a nylon bag from a party.

4) When you say, ''Mummy, I have fever.” And she replies you, “Why won't you have fever when you press phone every night”

5) When you say, “Mummy I took 2nd in my class.” and she replies, “So the person that took
first has two heads abi?”

6) When she takes the DSTV remote to work, just to punish you.

7) When you are watching television with her and then she sleeps off and still doesn’t want you to change the
channel.

8) When you tell her you are going to a friend's place to play and she asks, ''When last did that friend come here to play with you?

9) When she asks you if the food she served you is enough, and you reply no, and she says, come and eat my own with yours.

10) When she tells you, if I hear Peem, you will hear Ween.

11) When she touches hot pot comfortably without a cloth or
paper.

12) When she tells you, ''I didn't kill my mother, so you will not kill me''.

13) When she calls you from your room upstairs and then sends you back upstairs to bring her purse.

14) When you ask her to refund the money you borrowed her and she tells you, "All the food you have been eating in the house nko? Which money did you think was used in buying them?''

Our Mothers are wonderful.
True or false
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