Follow Us on Google
Of all planets, earth must be the weirdest. Nothing seems to add up here. People said to have been created by a loving God prefer instead to be hateful. We repay good with evil all too often and nothing happens.
If you are too morality-centric, our earth either swallows or overlooks you. The heavens don’t fall let alone the earth rise. See why you must protect yourself, 25 hours a day? Nothing guarantees anything.
Whatever and however, protect yourself. By your actions or inactions and in your speeches or body language(s), protect yourself. In peace and at war, protect yourself. A friend rather than a foe could sooner or later be used by a fiend against you, so protect yourself at all times.
Protect yourself even doubly when the going is good. When you hold the yam and the knife, never be carried away by all the kneeling, all the bowing and all the trembling. All such worship is for your money or your power. None of it is for you as a person.
And, it is easy to know. How easy and how fast didn’t these same people move on from your predecessors? How many of them as much as keep in touch today with yesterday men and women with whom they used to dine and wine 24/7? How many ever bothered -in the build up- to look your way as the eventual successor; when it didn’t seem possible?
Everyone is scamming everyone. As scammee or scammer, protect yourself. Whenever you nurse any suspicion, protect yourself. Run away to live to fight another day.
Are you wining and dining and winning with everyone cheering you on? Pause, and protect yourself first. Get a long spoon, and be careful what and how and where you drink or eat or talk. Don’t be like the fly that refused to listen and so ended up in the grave all because of pursuing a corpse.
Protect yourself, because nothing is cast in concrete. There’s nothing you do or say or don’t do or don’t say that will end all discussions. Try all you want, you cannot change everything. No matter what, you cannot please everybody.
Protect yourself, because some things can never change. Protect yourself, because everybody can never be pleased and never at the same time. However, if you protect yourself by changing and by being pleased, we can at least be sure that progress is being made. Protect yourself because no one else can or shall do that for you when it does not suit them.
You get my drift, I know. Protect yourself, my dear, even if you cannot, because human beings shall always be human beings. Protect yourself, even if you think it is senseless so you don’t over-regret at the end. Protect yourself, even if they have assured you to power googolplex; even if to power infinity.
Never forget yourself, no matter how they jazzed up their promises. Believe them because it is not good to be an unbeliever but protect yourself. Let people know where you stand and limits you cannot cross. Take nothing for granted.
Are you male? Protect yourself. Are you female? Protect yourself.
Are you black? Protect yourself. Are you white? Protect yourself.
Are you a go-getter? Protect yourself. Are you a laggard? Protect yourself.
Are you loved? Protect yourself. Are you hated? Protect yourself.
Are you big? Protect yourself. Are you small? Protect yourself.
Are you healthy? Protect yourself. Are you ill? Protect yourself.
Are you unalone? Protect yourself. Are you alone? Protect yourself.
Trust yourself, but don’t trust yourself. Protect yourself, in spite of. Trust people, but don’t trust people. Protect yourself, despite.
Never share what you do not want shared. If you (the owner) could not safeguard it, how would they who had/have no attachment? Be selfish with anything and anybody you think can hurt you. Protect yourself, in every way, shape or form you can: good or bad.
Protect yourself especially if you are a Nigerian and more especially from the south and most especially from the south south. If you take silly political risks in support, protect yourself by counting it as what my people call empty sacrifice. You really should never expect any reward when you really did not have to make that sacrifice.
Imagine the (immediate past?) deputy governor of Edo state. After a year or two of being treated like something that never ever added any value to Gov. Godwin Obaseki, His Excellency Philip Shaibu was last Monday unexcellently discarded by the State House of Assembly. Yet, it was this same Philip who had stuck with this same Godwin when it was not fashionable to do so; when now-Senator Adams Oshiomhole, himself a former governor of the state, told the world that Mr Obaseki should never get the protection of another tenure. Such a shame, Mr Shaibu spent all that time dancing skelewu purportedly to mock Comrade Oshiomhole instead of first protecting himself.
By the way, at the time Gov. Obaseki was busy protecting himself, this writer served then-Gov. Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom state as media lieutenant. I recall quite vividly when the Edo state chief exec. came to Akwa Ibom to lobby Mr Emmanuel vis-a-vis his plans to crosstitute from APC to PDP to seek a second term. When he arrived Government House, Uyo, his host was in an executive council or some meeting. So, he had to wait quite a while which afforded me the proximity to check him out.
He looked every inch to me then like someone with a list of people he would deal with, going forward. I am glad I mentioned that to some colleagues, that day. I am gladder I specifically talked about how his deputy was first on that list. Everyone laughed it off, exactly how everyone has now laughed at the (erstwhile?) deputy governor.
This writer is perplexed that Accountant Shaibu, a man who has his ways with figures no matter how complex, could not protect himself, which is a very simple something. To protect himself forever, he should simply have walked away the moment he felt stranded at the t-junction of loyalty (to the governor or to his godfather or to the state). When you find yourself disoriented in the middle, try reconciliation of parties: if it fails, simply protect yourself by taking a walk. I call that walking away on a high.
If Mr Shaibu had withdrawn from the deputy governor race in 2020, after trying to no avail to restore the relationship between their godfather and his boss, the concomitant applause would have been deafening and permanent -then and now. But, he did not; he could not because it is not a Nigerian thing to withdraw honourably. In this country, we almost always choose to protect stomach rather than self. Poor man, he characteristically elected to go with the flow of the moment instead of the tide of the future.
It is the exact same tragedy everywhere you go, in this country. Is it in Rivers, where people cannot protect themselves by knowing either when and how to say no or to give and take noiselessly? If this is fun for you, laugh all you can but in the name of God or all the things you believe in, don’t let it end there. Understand also that protecting yourself is a whole gamut.
Ask the kings of self protection: Tinubu, Akpabio, Kalu, Wike, el-Rufai et al. You may add Gov. Obaseki to that elite list because even in making assurance double sure that he got Sen. Oshiomhole and Mr Shaibu out of the way, the man is protecting himself. Everyone tries to protect themselves so that when they die they may get a befitting burial. Especially in this age when befitting living is nearly impossible.
Protect yourself before taking, let alone performing, dangerous roles. Which reminds me, our condolences to the families of Abigail Frederick, Junior Pope and other members of the Nollywood family affected in that avoidable river mishap. You should learn from these and other experiences to protect yourselves.
Protect yourself every time, even if you cannot. If you don’t, just know you are in line to be yet another Shaibu or worse, another Godwin Emefiele. Mr Emefiele’s case is a painful reminder of pregnancy. Two enjoy and nobody sees, but one bears the burden and, because she did not protect herself, everybody sees and knows and talks about it.
Be smarter, be more different, protect yourself. Keep your agreement with God, have sense and beware of man. That is the strategy if you plan to remain protected forever and ever and ever. Amen.
God bless Nigeria!
