CHIBU NDUBUISI'S DIARY.

BLANK SHEET: THE LANDSCAPE OF POSSIBILITIES C(2018) CHIBU NDUBUISI 1/1/2018.(Week 1) Peace be upon you. Israel Salanter noted that; When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. But I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my country. When I found I couldn’t change my country, I began to focus on my town. However, I discovered that I couldn’t change the town, and so as I grew older, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, but I’ve come to recognize that if long ago I had started with myself, then I could have made an impact on my family. And, my family and I could have made an impact on our town. And that, in turn, could have changed the country and we could all indeed have changed the world. What this simply means is that “there are some dimensions to our own inner development that simply cannot be addressed without our engagement in the wor

THE NEXT BATTLE (c) 2017 BY CHIBU NDUBUISI. 25/12/2017 (WEEK 52) Peace be upon you. Why must we be battle ready for the Next Battle? The reason to get ready for the next battle is that in this age, people are losing themselves without knowing it. How are we losing ourselves? Jonathan Sacks raised a warning that “today, too many children live in poverty and illiteracy, dying for lack of medical attention because those who rule nations prefer weapons to welfare, hostage taking to hospital building, fighting the battle of the past rather than shaping a safe future, it is the lesson the world has not learnt”. “The tragedy is that if you lose a hand or leg you know, but when you lose yourself, you are no longer there to know it”. We can fight against losing ourselves by making conscious efforts to help contribute in solving the “Solvable Human Misery” (SHM) as Bill Gates puts it. He went further and galvanized a Coalition for Endemic Preparedness Innovation

FROM SHARED SENSIBILITIES TO CONCRETE ACTIONS © 2017 By CHIBU NDUBUISI 18/12/2017 Peace be upon you. What do you sense? How do you react to what you sense? Is your reaction proactive or reactive? When you sense poverty, disease, intolerance and indifference, what motivates you to action or indifference? This write up is not about what we truly sense but how the issues we sense propels us to proactive actions. Bill Gates writes on how we can focus on the solvable part of the equation in solving the “Solvable Human Misery” (SHM). Decision making is part of the success equation. What decisions and commitments are we making today to help shape a better, peaceful and more secure future? In his 2017 TED talk Jonathan Sacks titled “Facing the Future Together Without Fear” he averred that “when we have too much of the “I” and not enough of the “WE”, we find ourselves vulnerable, fearful and alone and that civilization

                                       PERILOUS TIMES    (C) 2017                                           BY CHIBU NDUBUISI.    11/12/2017    Peace be upon you. The experience of captivity and slavery in Libya reminds us of Thomas Hobbs state of nature. We are no longer talking about animal poaching but rather we are confronted with the harsh reality of human organs harvesting for business deals. The recent recognition of Jerusalem by President Donald Trump as the capital of Israel will further intensify the call to global jihad. We are still not through confronting terrorist organizations like ISIS, Boko Haram and their ilk. In Nigeria, a unit in the Nigeria Police Force called Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), are accused of intimidating citizens, engaging in extra judicial killings and torturing people to death. We are witnessing the resurgence of kidnapping on a higher scale now; we are not forgetting the University of Maidu

NEARING THE ECLIPSE OF IGNORANCE AND POVERTY RELATED DISEASES: THE FUTURE AHEAD. CHIBU NDUBUISI. 04/12/2017.                      Peace be upon you Not all diseases are related to poverty or ignorance, but many diseases that affect humanity shows that the world still needs to do more to help mitigate the causative factors of some of these  pandemics that are becoming endemic in many regions of the globe. In his essay “Disease of Affluence and other paradoxes” Clive Hamilton poses many deep and searing questions about the affluent world. He asks, (a) if high income, the object of so much determined effort fail to improve our well-being then why have we striven so hard to be rich? (b) Has the pursuit of riches required the sacrifice of those things that do contribute to more contented and fulfilled, such as the depth of our relationship with each other, our links with our communities, a deeper understanding of ourselves and the human

       ECUMENISM: INTEGRATION WITHOUT ASSIMILATION                    CHIBU NDUBUISI.   27/11/2017 Peace be upon you. I have shared this story countless times about a friend of mine who was about to get a lift from his co-tenants friend, who has a motorcycle. As he was about to sit on the passenger’s side, a question was thrown to him by the rider; he asked, Are you a CHOSEN?(Chosen is a Christian denomination in Nigeria) my friend responded NO, the rider immediately zoomed off without the would be passenger. The challenge of the bike rider was that even as a Christian, he could not see the image of God in someone who was not a “Chosen”. He failed to dignify the other person because of his religious convictions; he failed the dignity of difference test, by not acknowledging that God made us all in his image, created biodiversity, cultural diversity and permitted religious diversity. Jonathan Sacks writes that “the crimes of religion have one thing in common. Th

APPRENTICESHIP IN LIBERTY vs APPRENTICESHIP IN ANARCHY CHIBU NDUBUISI 20/11/2017 Peace be upon you. To be an apprentice is to be engaged in a learning process to acquire the basic training of a subject of interest. The word “Apprenticeship in Liberty” was first used by Alexis de Tocqueville to explain that multiple variables are responsible for guiding us on the path of liberty to live responsibly. Apprenticeship in Anarchy can be likened to when particular political, economic, religious and social systems keep propping and galvanizing people directly or indirectly through acts of commission or omission to keep fanning the flames of anarchy. I will employ some examples to buttress the two ideas of “Liberty and Anarchy”. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are dreaming and committing huge resources to help rid the world of some diseases, reduce infant and child mortality, Improve health systems, boost agricultural produ

THE COMMUNITY WE ALL VALUE (BRIDGE BUILDING) BY CHIBU NDUBUISI 13/11/2017 Peace be upon you. “Selfishness is advantageous to the individual but disadvantageous to the group”. Have you ever been involved in a team work? How do you feel when one person betrays the collective interest of the group? Sad, I guess because life is lived in communities for it to be valuable and meaningful. Mark Zukerberg changed the mission of Facebook from “Connecting Friends to Connecting Communities”. The company even has a new mission statement: "To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together", because connecting people online isn't enough”. In his post “Building Global Community” Mark Zukerberg posited that ;”Bringing us all together as a global community is a project bigger than any one organization or company, but Facebook can help contribute to answering these five important questions: • How do we help pe

DRIVERS OF CHANGE: HISTORICAL NARRATIVES (3) BY CHIBU NDUBUISI 06/11/2017 Peace be upon you How does the historical evolution of nations drive change? What experiences and circumstances are continuously shaping and molding the trajectory of nation states? We will briefly analyze some examples and equally chart a way forward. Japan has a pacifist policy of not producing, not permitting and not possessing of nuclear weapons as a result of the bitter experience of the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.The atomic bomb survivors called Hibakusha is a vivid example of why the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) must be supported by all nations. this particular experience made the state to move away from encouraging hawkish policies to promoting pacifist policies. It made them channel resources to the development of human capacity and today we have seen the dividend such investment is yielding, when it comes to technological pro

DRIVERS OF CHANGE: THE ENVIRONMENT (2) CHIBU NDUBUISI 30/10/2017   Peace be upon you. In continuation of our analysis on the Drivers of Change, I will explore the environment via climate changes, natural resources and how they influence change either for good or bad. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines the environment as the sum of all external conditions affecting the life, development and survival of an organism. We are told that nine (9) countries share the River Nile, eight (8) countries share the River Zambezi, ten (10) countries Share the River Niger. Imagine when there is an environmental problem that changes the quality or quantity of water needed what happens? In September 2015 the Vanguard Newspaper reported that water released from Kiri dam in Guyuk major dam in Madagali Lagdo dam from Cameroon made rivers overflow and submerged about 116 villages and towns in Nigeria. Climate changes on the other hand are the depletion of the ozone l

DRIVERS OF CHANGE(1) CHIBU NDUBUISI 23/10/2017 Peace be upon you. “The unknown unknowns are multiplying daily” Donald Rumsfeild What would life be without change? How can we identify factors that drive these changes? What are the impact of globalization, technology, politics, demographics, religion and trade in driving change? What are the roles of people, historical make up of nations and state institutions in driving change? How can we identify the positive and negative forces of change? How can we leverage on the advantages of positive change while minimizing the impact of negative change? How can change lead us to live more peacefully with one another? We will try to briefly explain some of these variables because you cannot explain a dynamic phenomenon like change with a fixed cause. GLOBALIZATION: This is the major driver of change in the 21st century. The world has never been so connected before like this era. Cultures are collapsin

TOTALITARIAN DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL MESSIANISM IN AFRICA: PEACE, A FORLORN HOPE. BY CHIBU 16/10/2017 Peace be upon you. The concept of Totalitarian democracy was popularized by the Israeli historian J . L Talmon to refer to a system of government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity of nation states but have little or no participation in the decision process. Political Messianism is equally an off shoot of totalitarianism. A Phenomenon, were one leader is seen as the key to solving many political and socio-economic problems. The leader holds the “Sole and Exclusive Truth” to solving all problems and unlocking all potentials inherent in any state. “The leader is the state and the state is the leader “. The leader “belongs to everybody and belongs to no one”. The sole view of the leader can become a law. The leader sees politics as a Zero –Sum game. The leader disobeys courts orders brazenly without any fuss. The l