Mfonobong Inyang: Pearls to Help You Navigate The New Year

If you thought 2023 was wild, then you’re in for some more interesting times in 2024. I thought to share some expanded thoughts from my journal as a lift-off for the New Year.

Mfon Must Shine

You have heard “you will become what you constantly say about yourself” many times. This year more than ever, you have to watch your internal conversations. It’s tough enough to have so many opps and things trying to take you out, why would you add yourself to that long list? Whenever you say “I am” – you’re actively in God mode, effectively invoking the creative intelligence that formed the material and unseen universe. Whatever comes after, “I am” will ultimately become your reality. Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit – you choose.

I tell myself every time that I am a creative genius and it doesn’t mean I am the smartest guy in the room. However, I have said it to myself so many times that I believe it even if I wasn’t all that at the start. I have conditioned my brain into believing that I am the best at what I do and whenever I need it to do any creative task like, say writing, it has to churn out the very best ideas. After God, my biggest co-sign comes from me, I love myself so much that sometimes it can be awkward having someone else in my space. I’m not saying you should be extra like me who likes talking to myself when alone but you get the point – no gree for anybody. It’s giving Oleku vibes, like tell me something wey I no fit do!

Double Dose: God-abegxylin and Shegementin

With the pronounced exit of major big pharma players from our local market, the prices of drugs have gone high. The three key indices of human development are education, life expectancy and per capita income. What that simply means is that for anyone to live anything close to a decent life, he or she must have good health, be reasonably knowledgeable and earn above a certain income threshold. In Nigeria, our collective knowledge is being assaulted because we have the most out-of-school children in the world. Given the sharp increase in tuition, our secondary and tertiary school dropout numbers are going up too. On per capita income, we’re effectively the poverty capital of the world. Guess what? The last index of HDI, health is now under heavy assault because a lot of us don’t have comprehensive health insurance. Most of our medical expenses are typically out-of-pocket.

At the risk of being accused of politicising this, I will say that I warned. I have never been fascinated by anyone who raises IGR but can’t raise HDI. The optics for foreign direct investment are not good at all, some of these corporations waited to see if we would get our ducks in a row but they had seen enough peak fooling before deciding to pull the plug. What you can do for yourself is to ramp up your healthy living, every man has to stay on guard. All your life, you have heard that prevention is better than cure, na now that talk go make sense pass because the billing wey dey pharmacy and hospital these days go far gaan.

Get ‘em J!

Last year, I told you that Jehu was coming. Well, 2024 is the year of the madman. You will see iterations of this archetype in the local scene and on the international scene. The reason why the mainstream media calls Jehu a madman is simply because he is unorthodox and doesn’t fit into their agenda. I must confess, I also agreed with such narratives in the past. Thankfully, one of my superpowers is the ability to unlearn things very quickly. You see, although “repent” has been misrepresented as such, it was never originally a religious word – it’s rooted in the Greek word, metanoia, which just means to change one’s mind. The opposite is to be stiff-necked. Not me, if you present superior information and inerrant intelligence, to borrow the slang, I will “fold”.

The empirical data is clear and the circumstantial evidence is even more glaring, Jehu is him. Many more people are willing to choose a policy over personality, prosperity over propaganda and a patriot over a puppet. I’m not here to do PR for Jehu, not even his biggest fan but someone just has to say the quiet part out loud. That year, I gave Ahab the benefit of the doubt but I guess you can’t teach a man to use his left hand at an old age. His words don’t match his actions like a foreign film. Nah, I’m moving differently right now – I just flipped the switch. That October sky is looking ominous for the opps. Not saying that Jehu is the best at what he does, I’m just saying that it’s Jehu versus whoever wanna lose. It’s going to be a red letter day if Jehu gets that W, so just leave him and let him cook! Jehu looks too much like Joshua; can we get an encore?

Blinded By Potential

Last year, I was privileged to be in situ with the phenomenal Sarah Jakes Roberts as she preached up a storm. Unsurprisingly, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree at all. She started by sharing how the events or circumstances of our physical environment can affect the condition of our inner environment – the heart. These changes can be so subtle that we seldom see it coming and we then wonder where we missed it and how we lost our first love for the things we were so passionate about before. The profundity of her thoughts was headlined by her subject – Blinded By Potential. A phrase made about how Jesus is focused, not on who people are but who they could be. We often mouth off about having the mind which was in Christ but we never really stop to interrogate how he could look at the very same people who nailed him to the cross and say, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”.

This point is so personal and important to me that I’ll lay it out in very plain terms, none of that cryptic stuff. 2023 was a year and a half, largely defined by a purported election and its aftershocks. I saw Nigeria at her nadir; in terms of her political, religious and socio-economic state. I have never seen Nigeria being made a butt of jokes in international circles as I saw particularly most of last year, there were memes for every disastrous episode. If you ask me, Nigeria lost big time – the skulduggery that happened last year will be spoken and written about for millennia and generations to come. I fell out hard with certain people, not so much for their political choices but for their duplicity – a signature of the average Nigerian elite which is to know the truth but choose to bask in the brightest rays of tomfoolery. I made up my mind to hold political grudges and rightly so, until this message by Sarah Jakes Roberts came again to me.

Just so we are clear, this is not a “move on” think-piece neither is it a co-sign for illegitimacy – nobody has put corn in my pocket. As long as I draw breath on God’s green earth, there are certain political choices I just can never make, I would rather vote for an ekuke. What I am saying in essence is that the reason why people like us are still passionate as patriots is because we are blinded by the potential of what Nigeria could be. It is the reason we still seem interested in a country that appears to be the very weapon fashioned against us. David faced a similar dilemma when he saw his country heading to hell in a handbasket. Initially, he complained bitterly like any disgruntled citizen would, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Then in the very next verse, he switches to his patriotic self, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! If I do not remember you, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth!”

This is why I root for David because even when things don’t seem to go his way, he remains a patriot – his heart is in the right place. He continues to be touched by the feelings of our infirmities and it’s from such an empathetic heart that a New Nation will be born. You will understand this better when the stars align sooner than you think. My job is simple; to give you a head start. Yes, you can call me Mfon the Baptist. Selah.