Ashford Maurice

10/04/2023

I won’t forget the year I was having what I thought was having a great friendship this Enugu guy. We weren’t dating, he was a very good friend (so I thought).

I met him on my way back from church and convinced him to worship with us. He was very punctual. He would join me for my spoken words rehearsals and also when I go to a garden at NIKE to read.

This guy was my hangout buddy, all the while we were friends, he loves gifting me with stuff.

He would go to the mall and shop cartons of groceries o.

Carton of milk, carton of malt, pack of bottle water. Everything was in carton.

If we are gisting and I mentioned any worries, this guy shows up. He’s that friend you would call “always available”

I would be at work and he would drive in to deliver my favorite Chinese food to me. At a first, I declined his offer and he pleaded I shouldn’t reject it and explained it was nothing. He said it was his own way of showing concern since I help him with some of his work issues and also brought Christ to his life.

I relaxed and was enjoying my dear friendship.

I’m one that loves surprising my friends. I might know you in a week and throw a party for your birthday if I have the funds. So having a friend like me that love surprises was smooching.

I stopped getting food to work because he paid this restaurant to deliver lunch to me every day. It was a feast for my colleagues.

Sometimes I would gift him watch, footwears and co just for it not to seem like he was the only one spending in the friendship.

When we have our night hang out, I try some times to handle the payment especially when I call for the sit out.

The day I got engaged, I ran to share the news to my friend.

I didn’t die that day was at the mercy of God.

This guy actually smiled and congratulated me. He asked I get into the car so we would go and celebrate.

You need to see him drive on the street of new Heaven. I was screaming he should slow down!

Naaaa! It was as though he planned to crash us that night.

He kept asking me why I didn’t get the signal he was in love with me. Haaaa, I had to calm him down by professing all kinds of sweet words to him so he would stop the car.

Thank God my words worked.

I got out and ran away.

He kept calling throughout the night apologizing that he didn’t know what happened to him. He was at my gate even at midnight texting me to just come down so we could speak.

Haaaa!

I didn’t keep his friendship away from my zaddy. So I called him immediately to inform him what was going on.

“You remember that my friend that likes buying me lunch? He’s …….” I started explaining the night horror.

He just asked me stay calm and not come downstairs.

The next morning, Oga showed up at my workplace demanding to see me, I knew if I didn’t come out, it would be drama, so I came out, and asked him to stop.

I used to read about obsession but that was my first time experiencing it.

I promised him I would see him after work. This guy parked outside the gate and waited till my closing time. We met outside and I refused to enter his car. I told him I would prefer we talk everything out.

He handed me a big envelope and said;

“That’s the receipt of all the money I have spent on you. It’s xyz amount. I need my money either in cash or the way I brought it to you.”

Lmao! This guy kept receipt of everything he has ever gifted me. I no believe am. The food we ate together, he marked his order and used pen to write my own amount.

I called zaddy and updated him about the new development. He asked how much the guy spent, I mentioned it, Oga shouted, “Only you?”

Even me no believe am.

When I gisted our mutual friends what was going on, they called him and he was still bent on “Amaka knows I love her, she knows.”

Sincerely, the thing that gave me solace was knowing my fiancé was in the know of the friendship. I had mentioned about the guy and he asked me to slow down with accepting gifts.

You know when a friend would show up at your house with a carton of malt and say, “I was shopping and remembered you love Malta so I got you some”.

That was how his gifts came.

Imagine I didn’t mention about him to the guy I was dating. We would be planning our wedding and I would be running around on how to either hide it so it won’t look as though I was double dating or something.

The restaurant receipts he brought were the food we both ate, he asked I share it two. Then subtract it from the things I gave him too.

It wasn’t funny.

I had to ask him to stop communicating with me, I called a lawyer friend that drafted something and contacted him. The lawyer requested for a meeting with his lawyer so the both parties can do check and balance. We would review all the things he spent and refund him accordingly.

Oga told lawyer he doesn’t need money, he wants me.

I was scared of my life. Sometimes I feel someone is hiding somewhere just to hurt me. I changed my work schedule and stopped hanging out.

I called his aunty that I met when we went for her birthday. She promised to talk to him and asked I stay safe.

Fortunately, I was transferred to Abuja. I was happy to be done with the whole nightmare until someone showed up at work and it was him.

The way I got off from such horror, it was a stress a payback couldn’t stop it.

If you are a young lady, please be careful of new friends and male friends you have. Make sure your friendship is established and no one is feeling led on.

You could innocently be at peace and happy making friends without knowing a male friend is in love with you.
Amy George

09/04/2023

MEN OF GOLD DON'T WEAR GOLD!

Yesterday I had to visit somewhere and it was raining so I did not want to drive there since I was not too familiar with the road, so I parked my car somewhere close and used a keke (tricycle).

While I was there I got a call from a long time friend reminding me of my promise to her husband over a job, so I quickly told her my location, and asked her to tell her husband to meet me up ASAP since I will be leaving town soon, but I told her to tell her husband to meet me up where I parked my car since that place was a popular land mark .

I don’t know her husband and we have never met before. As I sent her the address, she called me back and was so excited that I was even around her area which will make it easy for him because he did not even have transport to come out,things was that bad. So I told her that he should pick a drop and I will pay.
In other not to keep him stranded I had to start rushing back to where I packed my car. God, I even entered under the rain, cold, just to meet up with him so he will not be stranded. As I was walking under the rain I saw a keke and stopped it.

The keke man asked me to beg the man inside so he will allow me join him since i was drenched, so I started begging. The man refused and said I was wet. I told him I will sit to one side, and he refused, saying except I pay for both his fare and mine.

I agreed, then he allowed me. As I entered this man kept me uncomfortable, saying if my wet clothes touch him again I will get down. I just kept my cool until I finally got to my destination. I did not even reach when I stopped at the junction and paid then used my legs to walk to my car, since it was very close.

I was inside my car warming myself, then I got a call from my friend saying her husband was around, so I described my car and he came. I saw someone knocked on my car glass, wound down and it was this same man in a keke with me. Gosh!

I was suppose to pay the keke man, and recommend him for a job? Tears rolled down my eyes, I brought out N3,000, gave him, started my car and zoomed off. My friend has been calling and sending me messages, I had to block her.

Be careful, many times men of gold don’t wear gold. Be nice! Angels do not wear ID cards.
I saw this piece and decided to share the story with my friends and family.

Copied

08/04/2023

"My husband and I had been without work for a long time though we were both graduates. What sustained us was the poultry business we had.

Though it wasn't much and we most times experience some losses, whatever was left was enough to feed us.

The house we lived in wasn't ours, but we weren't paying rent either. The owner had given it to us to occupy pending when he'd be ready to use it. So, thankfully, rent wasn't part of the problem.

When a friend told us about a vacancy in a Microfinance bank and encouraged my husband to apply, we were happy. I had wanted to apply too, but the friend told us it was against the bank's policy to employ a couple.

Things did improve a little bit but the money was very small and our business packed up, so I also needed a job. Since my husband was already in the system, he heard about an opening in another branch of the bank and we decided I was going to apply. My documents still bore my maiden name so the probability of them discovering was low.

With my salary added to his, things became better. The downside was that our children suffered. I had 3 kids of 2 years, 4 and 8. We immediately put the smallest in a day care close to my office while the other two went to a school close to our house.

Now that I think of it, I wonder what we were thinking. To leave children that young to stay alone from close of school till we returned at night.

I think it was because of how busy I was at work I didn't pay attention to my children. I'd get home very tired only to prepare them for school the next day and what they'd eat after school.

On that fateful day, I had returned from work and tidying up chores when my 4 year old started complaining of stomach ache. We thought it was something minor and went to the local pharmacy to get him some drugs. He wasn't relieved but only got worse.

It was late into the night we admitted it was a matter for the hospital but by the time we got there, my child was already dead.

I haven't forgiven myself for it. I also had to stop the job so I don't lose all my children. It really hurts knowing my child died out of my carelessness. "

©The Humans of Abuja

08/04/2023

Chelsea fans right now

08/04/2023

Burnley just got promoted back to the EPL,congrats to company n his boys

08/04/2023

Tinubu Yet to Make Gbajabiamila Chief of Staff, Group Clears; Says Speaker Desperate, Personally Selling The Narrative

A pro-Bola Tinubu presidency support group, Renewed Hope Advocates (RHA), yesterday, said a recent report that the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, had considered the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, as his chief of staff was false and kite-flying, because there was no such consideration on the card at the time of the said report.

The group, in a statement by his Director-General, Olufemi-Daniels Agbaoku, said the speaker, whom he claimed had become “inexplicably desperate” about the job, was the one selling the narrative, with a view to being favoured for the job by Tinubu, over and above anyone else.

Agbaoku, therefore, advised Tinubu to ignore the pressure being mounted by Gbajabiamila and his cronies and go for a more competent hand with the right temperament, mindset and credibility for the job, because the president-elect could not be struggling with the legitimacy of his mandate at the moment and still battled credibility crisis of his chief of staff.

According to the man, whose group claimed to have played a critical part in the emergence of Tinubu at their level without seeking financial help from anyone except that they believed in his ability to change the tide, it was bad enough that Gbajabiamila became speaker despite reservations about him globally, but argued that the office of the president could not be traded on such “pedestrian altar of man knows man.”

His words: “We have it on good authority that the president-elect has yet to make any such commitment, but Gbajabiamila and his allies are the ones selling the narrative to intimidate other alternatives, who might be better than him. It is so bad that he is said to have been dispensing unbelievable favours to people around the president-elect just to emerge the chief of staff.

“A man, who lacks rudimentary credibility and has begun to exhibit corrupt tendencies cannot be entrusted with such office as the chief of staff to the president. Tinubu, regardless of misgivings, worked hard for his victory and is believed by a majority of us that he would do well as president. He is actually the change that Nigeria has been itching for and he has to do everything to live this collective dream, starting with personal examples at all times.

“Although the appointment is personal, he has a responsibility to discourage the impression that Gbajabiamila is creating now amongst the people, especially the assumption that he is going to get it because he has money and has been doling out favours to everyone, including the president-elect himself. That would be starting on a wrong footing.

“While we hate to talk about his alleged misdemeanor in the United States, he has also not come out for once to discuss it, assuming it would blow away. That is one issue that speaks to gross credibility question and assuming it amounts to nothing is setting off the Tinubu presidency on a wrong premise.

“We believe the president-elect knows better and would do just what is right at the appropriate time, even though we also believe he should have since named his chief of staff, among such other related appointments to give a clear indication he would hit the ground running. But if hurriedly appointing Gbajabiamila is the option before him now, he can as well wait till he can do better,” Agbaoku added.

Aside the credibility question, which he claimed could not be compromised, he also reiterated that the speaker did not have the requisite temperament for the job, including the depth and circumspection of the man befitting of that office, because “that is the clearing house and the president de facto as we now know it modern presidency.”

Source

08/04/2023

Pete Edochie Is My Biological Father — Ugandan Man Claims

He wrote: “My late mother told me she worked in 1984 as house help in Nigeria and gave birth to me, please tell Peter Edochie he has a son in Uganda.”

Source

08/04/2023

Good Friday Controversy

(Take your time and read this, so you won't be misled by social media people who think the Bible is a Novel. Read this slowly as one who will teach it to others. Share it, and have it on your wall.)

“Father, I challenge you to clarify this, if Christ was buried on Friday and rose on early hours of Sunday, does it give a complete 3 days and 3 nights as Christ said, that as Jonah was in the belly of fish for 3 days and 3 nights so shall he be in the grave, and also clarify what makes up a day to give a complete day.” ~A Facebook follower who just properly finished listening to Daddy Freeze.

Response:

The first part of the question is on "3 days and 3 nights in the grave."

This is the passage that is causing your confusion. It is Matthew 12:40:

"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth."

Following that passage literally, Jesus was supposed to spend 72 hours in the grave before rising to make it a complete three days and three nights’ experience.

To this, if we say he died on Friday by 3 pm and he rose on Sunday before dawn, then it is just on Saturday alone that he experienced a complete day and night in the grave.

So, with the above, many people of our generation have concluded that Jesus couldn’t have died on Friday. Some have suggested that he died on Wednesday. . .so he can have a full Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in the grave, and rise on Sunday.

And that is exactly where the problem is. . .

To spend three days and three nights in the grave is a way of saying that Christ rose on the fourth day. If you are in a grave for three days and three nights, then you rise on the fourth day. It is simple mathematics.

If Jesus died on Wednesday as many are postulating, then he spent a complete Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in the grave which is three days. Then he rose on Sunday, which is the fourth day.

But, there is a very big but. . .

According to 1 Cor 15:4. Jesus did not rise on the fourth day, he rose on the third day.

"...and that he was buried, and that he was raised ON THE THIRD DAY in accordance with the scriptures."

Even the same Matthew noted elsewhere that Jesus rose on the third day:

Matthew 16: 21 says: “From then onwards, Jesus began to make it clear to his disciples that he was destined to go to Jerusalem and suffer grievously at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be put to death and be raised up ON THE THIRD DAY.”

There is no mathematical formula that will enable someone to spend three days and three nights in a grave and rise from the dead on the third day. I don’t know of any.

So, it is obvious that the use of “three days and three nights” as noted in Mathew 12:40 is a figurative expression and not literally. This is so true because “Three days and three nights” is a special phrase used in the ancient world with the meaning “long enough to be definitely dead.”

When Christ used it, it is a way of him saying that he would REALLY die, and not that he would be literally dead for exactly seventy-two hours.

So, how can we conclude, following the bible, that Jesus spent three days in the tomb and rose on the third day?

The four gospels are so clear in these three chronologies of events: Friday, Jesus died and was buried – Saturday, he was still in the tomb – Sunday, the tomb was found empty.

Let us explain. . .

1. The first is that Jesus died on “the day of preparation” and was buried the same day. The question is, which day is the day of preparation?

In ancient times, they do not have names for days of the week as we do today. This is why, people of this modern era may not be typically familiar with the phrase “the day of preparation,” but it was a way of referring to the day before the Sabbath.

It was called that because devout Jews had to make preparations to rest on the Sabbath. For example, they needed to prepare all the food that they would eat on Saturday.

I wrote about this in my previous posts. I told you that Jews do not even cook on Sabbath. So, they use a day before Sabbath to make all the necessary arrangements. You can read Exodus 16 to understand:

“This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay by to be kept till the morning’” (Exodus 16:23).

So, from the above, we can rightly conclude that the day of preparation is Friday. This means that Jesus died and was buried on Friday.

2. The second chronology of events is the Sabbath day which followed the day of preparation.

Luke’s gospel records that as soon as Jesus was buried, the women “returned and prepared spices and perfumed oils. Then they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56).

If we read from verse 54, we will see why the women returned quickly from the burial to prepare spices: “It was the day of preparation, and the Sabbath was about to begin” (Luke 23:54).

So, in summary, Jesus’ burial was done in haste so that Sabbath day will not meet them. Then the women rushed home and prepared spices since they are not supposed to do anything once it is Sabbath day. The Sabbath day for the Jew is what we refer to as Saturday.

Before I go to the third chronology, I want you to note that for the Jews, the day begins in the evening. Friday evening is the beginning of the Sabbath. This is different from how we calculate time in this era. For us, our day begins in the morning. If you read Genesis on the account of creation, you will hear the narrative saying, “Evening came and morning came, the first day. . .” Whereas, for us, it would have been “Morning came and evening came, the first day.”

3. The third chronology of events is what is known as “The First Day of the Week”.

On this, the gospels are clear that the tomb where Jesus was buried on the day of preparation (Friday), was found empty on the first day of the week. You can read from the four gospels saying the same thing: Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:1, Luke 24:1, John 20:1.

This first day of the week is what we refer to as Sunday.

So, how can we conclude, following the bible, that Jesus spent three days in the tomb and rose on the third day?

The reason it is difficult for most of us to understand this is that the way we understand time and the way we calculate our day is different from the way ancient people do.

For us, if you are born in the month of April 2022, to complete a one-year birthday, it will be April 2023. For ancient people, if you are born in April 2022 and the year ends in December, at the end of the year in December, it will be counted for you as one year. They won’t wait until April of the following year.

The same applies to days. If you are born by 3 pm on Friday, and since the new day usually begins in the evening around 6 PM, even though you were born three hours before the beginning of a new day (3 pm to 6 pm), once it gets to 6 PM of the new day, you are considered a day old.

The trick to understanding this is that the ancient people counted parts as a whole.

We see this also in the parable Jesus told concerning the landowner that went out early in the morning and hires men, agreeing to pay them the daily rate. He hires them at various times throughout the day– 9 am, 12 pm, 3 pm, and 5 pm. In the end, he paid all of them the same rate because the agreement was that he will pay them what they pay per day. In this case, even one hour before the day's end is one complete day. (Matthew 20:1-16).

Back to Jesus’ resurrection.

Jesus died at around 3 p.m. (cf. Luke 23:44-46), which means the first day of his death was the remainder of the day of preparation, between 3 p.m. and sunset.

The second day then began at sunset and lasted through the entire Sabbath (i.e., it was Friday night and Saturday daytime).

The third day then began at sundown on the Sabbath and lasted until sunset on the first day of the week (i.e., it was Saturday night and Sunday daytime).

This is why, on the road to Emmaus, on that Sunday of his resurrection, the disciples were discussing and Jesus came to be with them and as they were narrating the story, they told Jesus that “it is now the third day” since the Crucifixion (Luke 24:21).

Their calculation is clear. Their understanding is clear. Na we dey carry our own 2023 understanding of time go join how people of over 2000 years ago understand time and days.

Fr Kelvin Ugwu

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