AFRICAN PLUME

By Akin Ojumu Contrary to what you may have been taught or led to believe, the Gospel is not about you, your wants or needs or desires. True Gospel isn’t about your trials and tribulations, or about tests and testimonies. It isn’t about your acts, feats, or accomplishments.  A message that inflames cravings for temporal pleasures, indulges an appetite for everything without measure, and engenders pride in human achievements and earthly possessions is not from God, but from the pit of hell. True Gospel is not a motivational speech to assuage man’s self-esteem. It isn’t to pump up man’s ego by telling him he is a giant on his inside ready to burst out. The true Gospel isn’t to challenge sinners to take charge and take control of their lives, and it’s definitely not to teach people on how to use God to achieve their pipe dreams. Serving people platitudinous ponderosity to tickle their canal minds and make them feel good about themselves is not preaching the true Gospel. Putting on a show

“What You See in the Mirror” By Akin Ojumu For many of us, what stares back at us when we look at ourselves in the mirror is the smallness of our stature. Like the children of Israel who went to spy the Promised Land, we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers crawling on all four before the giants who inhabit our Land of Promise. In the eyes of our mind, we see in ourselves a smallness in the stature of our thoughts, intellect, hopes, dreams, goals, accomplishments, growth, endeavor, wealth, and health.  Society has programmed us to think that the color of our skin and the accent with which we speak make us small. We are small in our family, we are small in our home and, and we are small in our marriage. When our more successful friends look at us, all they see is the smallness of our state in life. Even those we got church with, think we are small because we are not one of the powerful men of God. Our overbearing bosses at work make us see ourselves and our ideas as small. We see the lit

“Little Hinges Swing Huge Doors” By Akin Ojumu Considering the enormous impact that little things make in life, it’s befuddling why anything that’s small or little continues to be grossly underrated. Just think about it for a moment… “Little hinges swing huge doors.” “A little rudder makes a huge ship turn.” “A little spark makes huge flames.” “Little foxes spoil the vines.” “A little leaven leavens whole lump of dough.” “The little tongue sets the whole body on fire.” “A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, then poverty will pounce on you like a bandit; scarcity will attack you like an armed robber.” “Whoever can be trusted with small things can also be trusted with big things.” “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. “Small helpful or harmful behaviors and inputs tend to accumulate over time, producing huge results.”  “Many small improvements, cons

“The Man Who Discovered Anopheles Mosquito” By Akin Ojumu Sir Ronald Ross was a small statured English man whose impact reverberates from the pages of the history books. His name probably would not ring any bells with many people, especially those living in the mosquito infested and malaria-endemic tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world.  However, many of these people would not have been born or born alive, were it not for the immense dedication to science and deep compassion for the suffering of this eccentric British Scientist.  The relentless drive and resolve of this one little man saved untold numbers of lives in Africa, Asia and elsewhere from being killed by serious and sometimes fatal disease caused by a parasite. On August 20, 1897, the world witnessed a profound and consequential scientific discovery that would go on to alter the trajectory of the health and well-being of billions of people around the globe.  It was on that fateful day, one hundred and twenty-one year

By Akin Ojumu If you are an old fan of the Britain’s Got Talent Show – the UK equivalent of American Idol – you’d remember Susan Boyle. She was the singing sensation from Blackburn, Scotland, who on 11 April 2009 wowed the judges – including the Mr. “Acerbic” Simon Cowell – while auditioning on the 3rd edition of the popular show. And she was 48 years old. Ms. Boyle didn’t look like much; she was fat and frumpy, frizzy-haired and squarely shaped. The youngest of nine children, Susan was a shy and solitary nobody, who lived alone with her cat. She had never gone out on a date and had never been kissed – well, almost never been. She was the type we walk by on the streets, but never take any notice of them; as soon as they register on the mind, they are immediately confined to the trash bin of inconsequential beings; erased permanently from the temporary file of the memory hard drive. But all that changed the day she opened her mouth, to let out that beautiful voice of hers, in the proces

By Akin Ojumu Scattered all over the Church are a plethora of false prophets and false apostles who are making promises to people on behalf of God that God has not promised.  These are impostors who disguise their true nature with their cunning lips, and they are fraudsters who harbor deceit in the shallowness of their evil hearts. They creep up to you camouflaged in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. Greedily, they exploit with false words. By their smooth talk and lip service, they deceive the hearts of the naïve. Using flattery and puffery, they pull a wool of dissimulation over the faces of impressionable people. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is most certainly assured. Arrogantly, they presume to speak a word in the name of God that God has not commanded them to speak. They fill their bewitched audience with false hopes and pump them up with pipe dreams. They speak fantasies of their own minds, not from the mouth of th

By Akin Ojumu Our world is a marketplace full of buyers and sellers looking for the best deal they can get at the expense of others. Human relationships are purely high stake commercial transactions where every party involved wants to come up on top as a winner. We live in a world where nobody relates with you on the basis of your worth. Rather, everybody relates with you on the basis of what you are worth to them. The moment you are appraised as being worthless, they’ll turn their back and walk away. It isn’t your need that attracts people to you. Instead, what makes them gravitate to you is what they need. Once you are assessed to be incapable or unable to offer what they need, they’ll leave you in the lurch without as much as a second thought. This truth about human interactions is even expressed in the widely popular proverb: “Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.” Human penchant for self-love manifests in different degrees in different people. Whereas some folks are bett

People!!!?  Arghhhh!!! They are like a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Who can know ’em…really? Predictably unpredictable. Reliably unreliable. Trustworthily untrustworthy. The inner workings of their mind is like a billion-piece jigsaw puzzle.  It’s impossible to piece together. The machinations and intrigues of the human soul is like a Rubik ’ s cube with one thousand miniature cubes. No one can solve it. Humanness is perpetually shrouded in a cloak of mystery. It cannot be figured out. Gahhhh!!!

By Akin Ojumu The remembrance of the righteous brings up happy and heartwarming memories (Proverbs 10:7).  Those we love don't go away; they walk beside us every day. Unseen, unheard but always near. Still loved, still missed, and very dear. Mummy, your life was the ultimate fulfillment of the three grand essentials of happiness. You always had something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for. Your selflessness was out of this world. Every precious moment of your storied life was spent watering the barren field of humanity and making them richer. You showered love and kindness on barren lives, and you turned them into fertile grounds. Your home was a refuge to the lost, and the doors were always opened night and day, no matter what. Continue to rest in the bosom of your Savior, Redeemer, and Lord. The entire Aruntola Commowealth celebrates you today as we mark your 81st birthday. A very Happy Birthday, Ma!

By Akin Ojumu Euripides, the ancient Greek tragedian, must have had Nigerians in mind when he penned his now famous adage, “Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad.” You can’t but look at the excruciating hardship Nigerians are currently experiencing and not conclude that the gods have made the people mad. When it comes to self-immolation, Nigerians are numero uno. In the history of nations, there are no people as self-destructive as Nigerians. The penchant of these stiff-necked people for self-destruction bespeaks of a loose screw flying around somewhere deep in their psyche. Their genetic predisposition to fouling up their own lives is nothing short of pure madness.  Having been bruised and battered repeatedly over the course of their national existence by cruel and soulless vultures who rule over them, Nigerians insist on more infliction of pain and misery in the classical fashion of someone afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome. Insanely, they beg their oppressors for even grea

By Akin Ojumu John Ragan is a Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives for Oak Ridge District 33, in Anderson County, Tennessee. A  staunch “pro-life”  politician, the man is a foot soldier at the forefront of the fight to prevent women from terminating their pregnancies for any reason. As far as Representative Ragan is concerned, once a woman gets pregnant, she is duty-bound to carry the pregnancy to term and deliver the baby no matter what. Under no circumstances can she be permitted to terminate her pregnancy. There can be no exception made for her to have an abortion, not even if her life is at risk or she is a 10-year-old victim of incest. In the Tennessee Legislature, John Ragan sits on the Joint Working Group on Federal Education Funding. The purpose of the Working Group is to come up with an excuse on how the State of Tennessee can reject $1.8 billion in education grants from the Federal Government. If successful, Tennessee will become the first state to reje

By Akin Ojumu Unlike the immensely humongous and tempestuous Genie in the movie, “The Thief of Bagdad,” who was tricked by Abu, the shrewd thief, into granting him three wishes in order to be released from his imprisonment inside a bottle, God is not a celestial Genie imprisoned in a bottle to be compelled to grant our wishes in exchange for His release from His prison.  True prayer is not a set of mantras or incantations employed to elicit a particular response from God. Chanting gibberish over and over or babbling out a bunch of mumbo-jumbos in a never-ending vain repetition is not praying to God; it is what the heathens do. Invoking worthless phrases will not get you to be heard by God; it is the practice of the pagans. First and foremost, prayer is worship. When we pray, we acknowledge the fatherhood of God and our sonship to Him. In prayers, we hallow His Name because it is a priority for us. Prayers bring us to a place where we get with the program of God by asking for the establ

By Akin Ojumu Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, everywhere abortion rights have been put on the ballot, advocates for women’s rights to make decisions about their reproductive health have prevailed, emphatically. Another election, another resounding victory for aborting rights lovers and marijuana puffers. In yesterday’s off-year elections held in Kentucky, Ohio, and Virginia, anti-abortion candidates were once again made to eat dust. Voters in a ruby red state like Ohio not only voted overwhelmingly to enshrine the woman’s right to abortion in the state’s constitution they also voted “YES” to legalize recreational marijuana. For many Christians, the failure of these ballot initiatives may come as a heartbreaking disappointment. To keen observers of these issues, these defeats come as no surprise. There are many reasons why the religious conservative people of Ohio would stand with an irreligious liberal woke mob on the fringes of the progressive movement to le

By Akin Ojumu Journalism died eons ago in Nigeria. Many moons have passed since a free and independent press existed in the country. What’s considered journalism these days is a far cry from what used to be in the days of Dele Giwa who together with Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese, and Yakubu Mohammed founded the hard-punching Newswatch magazine.  Under their tutelage were people like Dare Babarinsa, Nosa Igiebor, Kolawole Ilori, Dele Omotunde, and Onome Osifo-Whiskey. These were the crème de la crème of Nigerian journalism. If one were to write the history of journalism in Nigeria, it’ll be a tale of two eras i.e., the Dele Giwa era and the post-Dele Giwa. The cruel assassination of Dele Giwa marked the end of the golden age of journalism in Nigeria. Nigeria’s journalism was blown up to smithereens by the letter bomb that killed Dele Giwa on that inglorious day of Sunday, the 19th day of October 1986. That was the beginning of the end of bold and uncompromising journalism in Nigeria. Many of the

By Akin Ojumu While Nigerians face unprecedented hardship with the cost of living shooting through the roof and the value of the Naira in a rapid nosedive approaching an exchange rate of N1,500 to $1, the aloof and disconnected President of Nigeria has decided this is the best time to go and procure a luxury yacht at the cost of N5 billion of taxpayers money. Many of us warned Nigerians about the existential threat that Bola Tinubu poses to Nigerian state. We told Nigerians that Bola Ahmed Tinubu was very bad for Nigeria. We alerted Nigerians to the fact that there’s no way they can profess love for Nigeria and at the same time wish Tinubu to be its president. But, alas, all our warnings fell on mostly deaf ears. The angry retort and indignant pushback we got was, “Yoruba ronu! Yoruba ronu!” meaning, “Yoruba people, think!” We were called all sorts of names, and they said we were nothing but Obidiots. Now that Nigerians are buffeted with crushing economic crisis and the average Nigeria

How many instances are recorded in the Bible of demons being cast out of Believers after the individuals had converted to Christianity and had become followers of Jesus Christ?  Can you name Christians in the Bible who underwent deliverance after they had already been saved? These are simple and straightforward questions with no catch.