... NOT JUST  SUCCESS, BUT UTMOST  SUCCESS

George Orwell, author of Animal Farm, despite saying 'All animals are equal but some are more equal than others' in the aforementioned novel also gave a somewhat conflicting postulation in another when he said 'We all have equal right to be unequal'. The salient point in these assertions is that whichever way you see it, we are all equal and we all have equal rights to be more successful. And those that become more successful than others only attain this height by learning to utilise their potentialities than others. It is factual that getting to the top is easy after you get through the crowd at the bottom. Don’t be deceived, there is a thick line distinguishing success from utmost success. And for the record, utmost success is not Utopian.

Paraphrasing Charles Kendall Adams, no one ever attains very eminent success by doing what is expected of him; it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required that determines the greatness of utmost distinction. Most people erroneously believe the expectation of lecturers in the forthcoming examinations is for us to give them what folks fondly call GIGO - Garbage In Garbage Out. Well, when all we can do as students is doing only what is expected of us, then all we'll have is partial success.

But if we can go beyond the extra-ordinary; make personal researches coupled with what we were taught, without trying to assert our level of intelligence and ridiculing the lecturer's own method of teaching; the outcome of this effort is not just success, but utmost success – success that can withstand the test of time, success that ‘cramming’ alone cannot give. For what shall we say then, after finishing a session with First Class or 2nd Class Upper, we cannot defend this result neither can we impart this (knowledge) unto others; this will be worse than failure.

Let me conclude by wishing everyone of us what we wish for ourselves in these examinations and the examination of life in general. Henry Hazlitt posits that "A strong passion for anything will ensure its success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.” My thought about everyone in this institution – age, sex, ethnic or religious differences notwithstanding is captured in the last stanza of my poem 'Her Open Secrets':

Even when her dreamed 5.00 seems improbable,

She keeps saying it is achievable.

Someone scoffed, "This lady is imaginary."

I replied, "In B.U.K. it's nothing but reality."

ON THE RAGE ON CAMPUS – POP-CORN

Recently, a friend of mine (T-elti), posted on her 2go status this caption: “A virus is widely spreading in BUK new campus. Guess what?” I have to admit, with shame it took me a while to guess right the name of this virus. At last I got it! In my own English: “Pop-cornilisation” – the new form of socialisation on campus.

Let me register my surprise and contempt at the level this socialisation has eaten deep into the skin of most students. And I should quickly point out that my argument is not against the pop-corn itself nor its maker, but at the way students on this campus have turn the development into a thing of disgrace and shame on our  level of education.

I stand to be corrected on my suppositions here, but I remember clearly without any atom of doubt whatsoever that one of the morals imparted in us in our Health Education classes from our primary school level is “code of conduct on the road” of which eating while on the road (walking or driving) was seriously frowned at. It’s now a common frenzy to see students everywhere on campus eating pop-corn while walking. And some have taken this repugnant act to their various classes. My amazement was concealed a little when I saw guys in this act, judging from our carefree attitude; but I was stupefied beyond doubt to realise that our ladies, known for their propriety, are now a partner in this amoral act. This virulent disease is ignominious and its rate of spreading is alarming.

T-elti asked me a question which I am now asking all serious minded students: “What happened to the teachings on thou shall not eat while on the road?”  We as future leaders should be pace-setters of morality not destroyers of established morality.

I should make my standing clear to avoid misconceptions. This write-up, as some shallow minded people cannot but point out, is not an envious write-up against the maker of this said pop-corn. As a matter of fact if given the right, I’ll vote for the maker as the entrepreneur of the year. That being said however, morality shouldn’t give way for westernization in the guise of modernisation; eating on the road is a bad habit which should be frowned upon by all parties involve.

Let us join our hands together to fight this epidemic (eating on the road) before it spreads beyond our control.

TRAVAIL OF MY SOUL

Travail of my soul inclined me towards Beelzebub

Searching for happiness in plenitude

Amassing sorrow in undeserved amplitude.

The things I seek for, I find not, not even meagrely

The things I have are things I do not desire.                                                         5

A sore travail that drench my soul in abyss

Made in me a fistula not by surgery but a hole

By the incessant ordeals that bedevilled.

With thieves and vultures at my back

The storm keeps on twisting with no crack.                                                          10

Confusing me and those with me, my soul

My heart and my body, on the right path to stroll.

With endless unabated weariness coming with the stress

Nothing makes sense anymore than this sweet madness

And what I feel, together, we feel a glorious sadness.                         15

Long years of bitter travails, in my soul, today

Finds a habitat, and its hard at the end of the day.

In search of some distraction, a beautiful release

From this hapless trauma. Hell on earth.

Memories seeping from my vein                                                                               20

Making me empty and weightless, in pain.

Flying, I wish, to meet the soothing angel;

With wings but heaviness in my soul

Weighing me down, truncating my whole.

Weightless and my wings clipped. Crestfallen.                                                   25

Lost in my reverie, in trance I can fly;

Waking up to meet my wings still clipped.

My utmost ordeal will be, not lost love or less;

Not austerity; not failure; not fears of endlessness.

At the end, my travails will guide me to God.                                                      30

A CURSE ON TRUST

Pushing to the edge of understandability

Results in no better thing safe incomprehensibility.

When I open up my heart to you to take a look

All secrets I made open for you like the Holy Book.

No secrets, no hidden meaning, all ambiguities

Explained to give no room for obscurity.

But now all efforts has gone to fruitlessness

For all you left in me is hollowness.

All the while, at every chance, a chance to divulge

The heartbreaking secrets that now in me bulge

Protruding in me like having within a bastard child.

Your secrets couldn’t have made me wilder in style.

Trusting, I will never again, for with you I lost

All that was left in me that could be called trust.

With every moment, my words in your ears I echoed

And repeatedly asking ‘Is there something I don’t know?’

In this poem I’ll inscribe your name for the world

To know who you are. So help me Lord.

Changing from villainy to innocency with a pass;

Haggardly you appear yet with strength unsurpassed.

In too deep your secrecy cuts my skin and leave

Zigzag traces of your cruelty. I trusted you, reveal,

Open my heart to you. Thinking in you lies fulfilment.

Marring my heart like your was built of cement.

At the end, my dear, nemesis ‘ll catch up and I’ll be

Here to do the last laugh and the world will join in.

Even with this, the love I have for you will be

Inscribe in my heart with gold and not just ink.