Jibo Zhema

 I once read about how Mansa Musa began to revitalize cities in his kingdom immediately after his return from pilgrimage to Mecca.  This trip opened his eyes to see how advanced the outside world was and how backward he and his people were.  With so much wealth that could only be likened to that of the biblical King Solomon, Mansa Musa didn't know it all until he ventured out of his Kingdom, and upon his return, he built one of the best Islamic Universities in the world, at that time, in Timbuktu. Not forgetting the world-class mosques he built that attracted tourists to travel over just to admire.  So did Lee Kwan Yew and Sheikh Al Maktoum, the geniuses behind the success stories of Singapore and UAE respectively.  After the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the Japanese government didn't wait for the dust to finish settling when it sent young students on scholarship to study in the same West that had just bombed them. Today, they are th...

  As a young ardent student of history, my thirst for knowledge sent me to parts of the world where the lands abound with evidence of ancient civilization. I saw where Europeans, Asians, and Egyptians built monuments that outlived them for thousands of years and how their descendants are now proudly maintaining those places for the rest of us to travel across the globe to pay and behold their magnificence. From the Nubian pyramids of Sudan to those in Saqqara in Egypt; one could see the clarity with which their ancestors boldly championed the civilization of their era. While they studied and learned how to write down their plans, carved texts on stone tablets, and built great cities, my forefathers were already farming the fields of the Benue Valley and fishing in the rivers that connected their lands with those that housed some of the world’s greatest monuments. At a time when Kano served as an international commercial center and welcomed merchants from across North, East, and Wes...

Nothing saddens me more than our over-dramatization of religious worship. I saw a video where the person leading a prayer session appeared like he had Kyphosis (hunchback). He only yelled, screamed, and shouted nothing I could understand; which made me believe that he might have been “speaking in tongues”. I felt pity for the “disabled” man until the camera turned to the congregants and I realized that it was not a deformity but their style of posture before screaming the Almighty down from the peace in heaven to bless them with the miracles they so desired. The worship place looked poverty-stricken like the screaming worshippers who were all drenched in sweat due to the unavailability of an air-conditioning system in the tiny space. I have forever noticed how certain worshippers felt that for their god to hear and acknowledge them, they must appear and behave like their “cult leaders” or founders of their religious sect. From bleaching of skin to dressing like pimps or carrying the sa...

Something happened recently and it seemed like something out of a Hollywood movie.  I was driving down a busy intersection in Abuja and this pretty lady standing beside a parked vehicle caught my attention.  Her beauty wasn't the attraction but her outfit sort of made me curious and I had to stare to be sure it was what I was thinking.  She wore what looked like a formal skirt and a covered shoe but only had a sleeveless vest on. She didn't wear a bra and I know this because her breasts were struggling to remain intact within the thin-layered men's vest. Almost a see-through material.  By the time I noticed that I wasn't the only one staring at this Nature's gift to mankind, I remembered my Christian upbringing and decided to focus on my journey and the desire to make heaven.  As I was about to look away, she raised her top and revealed the overripe melons beneath them. Perhaps she did so because almost all the men on foot and inside passing vehicles stared at h...

 I had the privilege of meeting some fantastic humans on my journey through life. Many different characters but all had the same goal; to enjoy themselves while alive and also make it into heaven as their religions promised.  The problem there is that, enjoying life on Earth also means breaking the laws of one's heavenly fortune.  Most religions have made it clear that pleasure is a sin, and one cannot seek both pleasure and salvation in a lifetime. So we either suffer miserably on Earth to make Heaven or enjoy the sumptuous pleasures of the world and miss a life of eternal bliss.  This is what many of us were taught about being ready and prepared to meet God when we die, and it has made the majority of us complacent and lazy. Believing that we only need to dedicate our life and work to the idea of pleasing a religion rather than working to solve societal problems that shorten the lifespan of our people.  We are taught to vilify every rich person as a sinner but...

In my primary and secondary school days, the Nigerian economy was doing better than half of the world's economies, so many foreign professionals trooped to Nigeria and became teachers to eke a living.  One fond memory of those days was when the pupils in my class were lined up by our Indian teacher, who asked each of us what we wanted to be "when we grow up". Almost everybody said:  "Doctor" "Soldier" "Teacher" "Farmer" "Simple Servant" 🤣 One of the smallest girls in the class, Nwukabu Luka, answered, "Mother", and the whole class laughed at her.  Now, this didn't register until I was in my final year at the university when my friends and I casually asked each other where we saw ourselves in 10 years, and almost all the ladies said, "married with kids" or just "in my husband's house".  I have always assumed that any lady that is focused on marriage is shallow and without ambition. Tha...