SWEET MOTHER song by "PRINCE NICO MBARGA & ROCAFIL JAZZ" 1976"
Intro]
Instrumental
Rocafil Jazz presenting you
'Sweet Mother'
[Chorus]
Sweet mother, I no go forget you
For the suffer wey you suffer for me yeah
Sweet mother, I no go forget you
For the suffer wey you suffer for me yeah
[Verse 1]
When I dey cry, my mother go carry me
She go say my pikin, wetin you dey cry yeah yeah
Stop stop, stop stop, stop stop
Make you no cry again ooh
When I wan' sleep, my mother go pet me
She go lie me well-well for bed oh
She cover me cloth, say make you sleep
Sleep sleep, my pikin ooh
When I dey hungry, my mother go run up and down
She dey find me something wey I go chop ooh
Sweet mother ah-ah
Sweet mother oh eh-oh
[Interlude]
Son of a sweet mother
When I dey sick, my mother go cry cry cry
She go say instead wey I go die make she die oh
She go beg God, God help me, God help me, my pikin ooh
(Hail my mother!)
If I no sleep, my mother no go sleep
If I no chop, my mother no go chop
She not dey tire aah, sweet mother
I no go forget the suffer wey you suffer for me yeah yeah
Sweet mother eh-eh
Sweet mother ooh eh-eh
[Interlude]
Oh, sweet mother, I never forget you
For the suffer wey you suffer for me
And, if I should forget you
Therefore I forget my life, the air I breathe
Eh!
And then on to you men, on earth, daring and forget their mother
For if you forget your mother, you've lost your life
[Chorus]
Sweet mother, I no go forget you
For the suffer wey you suffer for me yeah
Sweet mother, I no go forget you
For the suffer wey you suffer for me yeah
[Verse 2]
When I dey cry, my mother go carry me
She go say my pikin, wetin you dey cry yeah yeah
Stop stop, stop stop, stop stop
Make you no cry again ooh
[Interlude]
Oh, my mother, oh sorry
When I wan' sleep, my mother go pet me
She go lie me well-well for bed oh
She cover me cloth, say make you sleep
Sleep sleep, my pikin ooh
When I dey hungry, my mother go run up and down
She dey find me something wey I go chop ooh
Sweet mother eh-eh-eh-eh
Sweet mother ooh eh-eh
When I dey sick, my mother go cry cry cry
She go say instead wey I go die make she die oh
She go beg God, God help me, God help me, my pikin ooh
If I no sleep, my mother no go sleep
If I no chop, my mother no go chop
She no dey tire aah, sweet mother
I no go forget the suffer wey you suffer for me yeah yeah
Sweet mother eh-eh-ehh
Sweet mother oh eh-eh
[Interlude]
Oh, sweet mother
You're the one who suffer for me
And I always keep that in mind
One time I wanted to eat, she came for me, tell me what I want to hear
[?]
Hi sweet mother
[?]
My sweet mother, I no go forget you
My sweet mother wey suffer for me
When I dey cry
My mother go cry
She no know wetin to do
You no well?
Na wantin' dey worry you my pikin?
Ooh!
You fit get another wife
You fit get another husband
But you fit get another mother (Mother)? No
[At all]
(My mother is great, greater than the world, haha).
[Verse 3]
When I dey hungry, my mother go run up and down
She dey find me something when I go chop ooh
Sweet mother ahh, sweet mother yeah yeah
[?]
When I dey sick my mother go cry cry cry
She go say instead when I go die make she die
She go beg God, God help me, God help me, my pikin oo
If I no sleep, my mother no go sleep
If I no chop, my mother no go chop
She no dey tire ahh
Sweet mother, I no go forget dey suffer wey you suffer for me, yeah yeah
Sweet mother ahh
Sweet mother yeah yeah
Sweet mother ahh
Sweet mother yeah yeah
Sweet mother ahh
Sweetmother yeah yeah
Songwriter: Nicholas Mbarga
If you have just one minute and the only opportunity to ask God for anything, what will you request from Him?
Many of us have been using our 'lifelines' to request for things that doesn't make sense or little matters and this might be the reason some top people we know stopped picking up your call or reply your emails.
I say it's like using a sledge hammer to kill cockroach.
Many of the time when we have access to great men, it is not an opportunity to portray ourselves as parasites but as someone who has a great value to deliver.
Action
Solomon asked God for wisdom and He got it.
Relationship is a function of value, let us use every opportunity well.
Before you place that call, think we'll about something great to request or remain quiet.
Guess what? I have a WhatsApp channel where we can talk about leadership, business and wealth creation. Just click the link below.
Happy weekend.
Yours Sincerely,
There is no better way of introducing Odia Ofeimun than pointedly stressing that “Odia Ofeimun is Odia Ofeimun!”
Enough said.
Poet, publisher, editor, activist, polemicist, mentor, politician, columnist, factory worker, writer, dance-drama exponent, public intellectual, critic etc, Odia ofeimun has packed uncountable lifetimes into one tumultuous lifespan.
Born on March 16, 1950, in Iruekpen, an Esan-speaking town in Ekpoma, in present-day Edo State, Odia missed an entire year at the start of his primary schooling because, as was the practice then, his right hand could not cross his head and touch his left ear!
He eventually benefitted from the Free Education policy which started in the old Western Region in 1955, under the auspices of the Action Group led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo whom Odia would later in life serve as a Private Secretary.
Odia had to drop out of secondary school in Class Three due to the business failure of his father.
He had discovered the joys of reading, and thus made the library of his uncle Odigie his true home.
The uncle happened to be studying in Germany then, and the daring Odia had the audacity to inform him that he planned to become a writer even without formal university education, not unlike Nigeria’s Amos Tutuola, South Africa’s Peter Abrahams, Ireland’s Bernard Shaw, England’s Charles Dickens and America’s Ernest Hemingway.
He sent some of his early poems to the newspaper, Midwest Echo, a sister title of the Ibadan-based Nigerian Tribune, and fortuitously got employed as a cub reporter.
He wrote poems that would later be published in the Chinua Achebe-edited Okike, and Nigeria Magazine edited by Frank Aig-Imoukhuede.
Leaving the newspaper which salary was in arrears, Odia made to travel to Ghana to function as a writer but only ended up in Lagos where he found work as a petrol station attendant and then as a factory labourer.
He made the rounds of the public libraries in Lagos and occupied his nights writing poetry.
Odia had the singular distinction of doing his A Levels in December and the O Levels in January.
Curiously, Odia failed literature at O Levels, only to get a B in the subject A Levels the very next year.
According to Odia, “Thankfully, I did not need any GCE or any formal qualifications to write… I sent some of the poems to Chinua Achebe’s Okike and some to Nigeria magazine edited by Frank Aig-Imoukhuede. They were published while I was waiting for my A Level results. It got a personal boon when Wole Soyinka was released from three years of detention. I took a trip to Ibadan to meet him. He was driving out of his compound at the University of Ibadan in an open mini-mock when I flagged him down. He took one look at the poems, summed up my factory labourer’s dressing, my bathroom slippers, whitish nylon shirt tied up below my navel, and asked: ‘Are you sure you wrote them?’ From that moment, I knew I could call myself a poet.”
The poems were eventually published in the celebrated anthology, Poems of Black Africa edited by Wole Soyinka and published by the esteemed London publishing house Secker and Warburg.
It is indeed striking that the poems Odia wrote at 18 is still being studied by 18-year-olds doing the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examinations.
Lack of material means could not stop Odia from taking an Upper Second in Political Science from the University of Ibadan.
Odia’s first collection, The Poet Lied, was published by Longman in 1980 but had to be withdrawn from the market because JP Clark claimed he was the subject of the title poem.
Odia has thus far published well over 40 books made up of collections of his poetry, anthologies edited by him, dance dramas, collected essays, creative non-fiction, polemics etc.
His publishing outfit, the Hornbill House of Culture, is a path-finding enterprise in the cultural mill.
Lagos remains for Odia an adorable city of wonder that he celebrates thusly: “Eko, my city by the lagoon.”
To dream big makes great poetry to happen. Odia Ofeimun is the unapologetic bearer of grand dreams.
For Odia, Lagos represents an entire cosmos bodying the dreams of a nation and a continent.
It is not for nothing that the street guys stress always “come to Lagos and be wise.” Nobody experiences Lagos without somewhat waxing poetic.
In the epochal anthology, Lagos of the Poets, edited by Odia, the poet undertakes a sweep that captures Lagos from the wordsintervolving Nigeria’s first president Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the early nationalist Dennis Osadebay, the breakthrough modernist poets such as Gabriel Okara, Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark, down to the modern days of Niyi Osundare, Harry Garuba, Tanure Ojaide, Afam Akeh, Uche Nduka, Ogaga Ifowodo, Chiedu Ezeanah, Nengi Ilagha, Lola Soneyin, Jumoke Verissimo etc.
The icing on the poetic cake happens to be the inclusion of the maverick Afrobeat blaster Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, represented by his songs Confusion Break Bone and Go Slow.
The indomitable Odia is still hard at work on the biography of Chief Obafemi Awolowo whom he served as Private Secretary.
Odia has over the years served as the Publicity Secretary, General Secretary and President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA).
Odia was the chairman of our editorial board when we were practising Guerrilla Journalism in the hard days of General Sani Abacha.
Odia won the internationally coveted Fonlon Nichols award for excellence in writing and human rights activism in 2010.
Odia’s landmark birthdays have always struck a reverberating chord with me over the years.
At Odia’s 50th birthday party in his old house in Oregun, Lagos, my teacher Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka whom I had not seen for some time wowed the audience when he asked me: “My friend, where have you been?”
“Prof, Sir, I have chosen to remain in Nigeria to do battle with Nigerian poverty,” I replied.
Soyinka and Odia and the party had a good laugh at poor me.
When Odia’s 60th birthday was afoot I got an early morning phone call from Odia, and he was quite straight to the point: “I want you at my house this evening.”
Odia is of course “he who must be obeyed.”
When I got to the poet’s home in Oregun I was handed an impossible task. Odia wanted to launch all of 14 books on his birthday, March 16, which was then barely a week away, and he wanted me to proof-read, fact-check and somewhat edit the manuscripts.
In the world of Odia, nothing is impossibility.
He had made contacts with printers from Shomolu to faraway Dubai, urging them to be ready to print all the books to beat the tough deadline.
I spent nights wading through words.
Unfortunately, Odia’s go-between who sent the first three books to the printers did not do a proper checking such that errors were made in the frontispiece of all three books.
Odia, who always insists on perfection, was left with no choice than to dump all the printed copies that consumed a huge amount.
That is Odia for you: he can cast a fortune aside in his drive for excellence.
At 74, Odia Ofeimun has an encyclopedic mind that is as alert as ever. He still commits all his hours to just causes.
Let’s toast to the health of the master poet and indefatigable public intellectual-cum-activist, Odia Ofeimun, at 74
Stop Asking Brethren if they Speak in Tongues
Some days ago, one of my daughters called me to ask me a question about speaking in tongues. She said ‘Daddy, I decided to attend discipleship class in the Chapel. One is required to pick a form for it. I picked the form and they are asking me if I speak in tongues?’
I smiled. I know those folks just want to misled the girl in the name of discipleship. The Bible is clear about the distribution or the administration of the gifts of the Spirit in Christ by God through the Holy Spirit. Brother Paul says:
1Co 12:27-31 Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. 28 And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? 30 Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret? 31 But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.
Verse 29 is very direct to the issue:
29 Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? 30 Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?
The is a question of language, communication and simple interpretation. Bro Paul here asked series of question which obvious answers are clear capital Nos!
[1]. Are all apostles? No!
[2]. Are all prophets? No!
[3]. Are all teachers? No!
[4]. Are all workers of miracles? No!
[5]. Have all the gifts of healing? No!
[6]. Do all speak with tongues? No!
[7]. Do all interpret? No!
I asked my daughter, do they ask you if you speak the word of wisdom? She said no. I asked, do they ask if you speak the word of knowledge? She said no. I said, do they ask if you heal or perform miracles? She said no! I asked, do they ask you if you prophecy or interpret tongues? She said no. I said their question to her is useless if they are not concerned about if she has and manifest those other gifts of the Holy Spirit… Brethren, stop troubling young folks in the faith by insisting they must all speak in tongues! Where did you even find that useless teaching or doctrine that everybody must speak in tongues in the Church? Where?
When Jesus Christ was speak with the disciples in Mark_16:17-18, He says:
17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
Even if this is where folks got the idea from, the question still remains:
[1]. Do all cast out devils? No!
[2]. Do all speak with new tongues? No!
[3]. Do all take up serpents or should they even literally take up serpents? No!
[4]. Should they knowingly drink any deadly thing to prove they would not be hurt? No.
[5]. Do they all lay hands on the sick with healing happening? No.
The truth of the matter is that Jesus Christ did not even mention all the signs of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that would manifest in the life and the ministry of believers in this passage. It rarely happens that a believer will manifest all the signs or the distributions of the gifts of Holy Spirit together. What is important to a believer is being filled with the Holy Spirit and, hear me, being filled with the Holy Spirit goes beyond mere speaking in tongues. In fact, in the ratings and the hierarchies of the manifestations of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Bro Paul rated some manifestations higher than speaking in tongues!
1Co 14:1-5 Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy. 2 For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries. 3 But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort. 4 He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church. 5 I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying.
Bro Paul rated the gift of LOVE, Charity, higher than every other spiritual gifts. In fact, he rated LOVE above Faith and Hope.
1Co 13:13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
The greatest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in Bro Paul’s hierarchies of gifts is LOVE, followed by Faith and Hope. It is after these three Power gifts, that he talks about the gift of Prophesy. In fact, as far as Bro Paul was concerned, speaking in tongues is a personal gift. Consequently, he prefers that believers are able to prophesy than blowing in unknown tongues around and constituting nuisance to the body of Christ, for speaking in tongues, he stated clearly, does not edify the Church, but the individual speaking in tongues!
1 Cor 14: 4-5 He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church. 5 I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying.
The Message says in verse 5:
I want all of you to develop intimacies with God in prayer, but please don’t stop with that. Go on and proclaim his clear truth to others. It’s more important that everyone have access to the knowledge and the love of God in languages everyone understands than that you go off and cultivate God’s presence in a mysterious language – unless, of course, there is someone who can interpret what you are saying for the benefit of all [MSG]
Here, in the Message, speaking in tongues is even described as going ‘off’ in the attempt to ‘cultivate God’s presence in a mysterious language’! And, the question is: Why would anyone prefer going ‘off’ in its attempt to cultivate the presence of God in the language he/she (himself/herself) does not understand? Why? What is the usefulness of a mystery that is not accessible to the one who has it?
In 1Co 12:7-11, we read:
7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. 8 For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; 9 To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; 10 To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: 11 But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.
From the passage above, it is clear that different gifts are given to different folks! This one to this, that one to that! There is perhaps no single individual ‘have-all-know-all’ when it comes to the gifts of the Holy Spirit…
I asked my daughter: Why are they not asking you if you have the gift of the word of knowledge or wisdom? For those are even more important to you now as a University student! She laughed… I said but I am serious. Students need the gifts of the word of wisdom and knowledge than they need the gift of speaking in tongues in my thinking…
In any case, I am waiting for the time when the forms church folks designed for discipleship class will ask the most important question from a believer based on the hierarchies of the gifts of the Spirit: ‘Do you have the gift of LOVE?
To be continued…
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