MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY: NEVER OUTSHINE THE MASTER

In April 1963, Emir Muhammadu Sanusi of Kano flouted the First Law of Power and was deposed by the Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello.

The Emir had outshined the Master. In 1961, when Sir Gawain Westray Bell, the Governor of the Northern Region, proceeded on leave, Emir Sanusi of Kano acted as Governor in his stead. However, as the Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello believed that his position was that of a grand Emir and was...

On March 21, 2007, 30-year-old Christianah Oluwatoyin Oluwasesin was stabbed to death and burnt in her car by Muslim students for allegedly desecrating the Qur'an at a secondary school in Gandu, Gombe State, North-East Nigeria. A mother of two, Oluwasesin was assigned to supervise an Islamic Religious Knowledge exam when one of the students wanted to enter the exam hall with books. Oluwasesin collected them and threw them outside.

#OnThisDay, June 5, 1967, Israel launches surprise strikes against Egyptian airfields in response to the mobilisation of Egyptian forces on the Israeli border sparking the Six-Day War. The Six-Day War was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighbouring states of Egypt (known at the time as the United Arab Republic), Jordan and Syria.

In the period leading up to June 1967, tensions became dangerously heightened.

Kudirat Abiola, the wife of the acclaimed winner of the June 12, 1993, presidential elections, Moshood Abiola, was assassinated by unknown gunmen in Lagos, #OnThisDay June 4, 1996. Born in 1951 in Zaria, present-day Kaduna State, Kudirat Abiola attended Muslim Girls High School, Ijebu Ode, and married Moshood Abiola at the age of 18. She was the second of his four wives.

The church used for the Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit movie was St. Paul’s Catholic Church in the Noe Valley neighbourhood of San Francisco. The neighbourhood was upper middle class at the time, whereas the church in the film was supposed to be in a downtrodden neighbourhood. As such, they had to dress down the neighbourhood around the church to make the setting work.

In the original script, the action took place in Chicago. However, Whoopi Goldberg (the star actor) had started her standup career in San Francisco and felt a kinship to the city.

MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY: THE MOUNTAINS AND THE LOVE OF A MOTHER

There were two warring tribes in the Andes, one that lived in the lowlands and the other high in the mountains. The mountain people invaded the Lowlanders one day, and as part of their plundering of the people, they kidnapped a baby of one of the Lowlander families and took the infant with them back up into the mountains.

King Ibrahim Mbouombouo Njoya (1867-1933) of Bamum, Western Cameroon, had 600 wives and 177 children. Out of fear that important historical facts of the Bamum could be erased or corrupted, he developed the Bamum alphabet of 70 symbols and a writing system to preserve his kingdom's oral history which the French later destroyed.

MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY: DESTROY YOUR ENEMIES

No sitting American President had more enemies than Abraham Lincoln. He had a great strategy for destroying them; he befriended them. In fact, one of them would eventually take his life. Edwin McMasters Stanton (1814-1869) and Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) were enemies, both legal and political. Stanton did not like Lincoln, at first, at all. He had told everyone that Lincoln was an original gorilla, an imbecile, and a disgrace.

Yoruba High Priestess and Artist, Susanne Wenger (July 4, 1915 – January 12, 2009), also known as Adunni Oloriṣa, in a studio with her adopted children, Oṣogbo, 1964. When Wenger emigrated to Ibadan, Nigeria in 1949, she became sick with tuberculosis and was subsequently taken to a Yoruba herbalist in Ẹdẹ, present-day Osun State, who cured her of the disease.

Lagos Lawyer, Moronfolu Abayomi was shot dead in a Lagos courthouse at the Tinubu Square, on August 25, 1923, three months and 15 days after his wedding day.

Abayomi's killer was a popular Lagos entrepreneur and "big boy”, Duro Delphonso, from the renowned Delphonso family. Delphonso was having a legal battle with his Insurance Company and the case was taken to court. The Insurance Company then hired a young and vibrant lawyer, Barrister Moronfolu Abayomi.

Babangida justified the execution of Vatsa in 1986 in an interview shortly after he turned 60, saying that after Vatsa's coup was foiled, he realised his childhood friend planned the coup in line with a deep-seated personal rivalry dating back to their days as young officers. Babangida claimed that he and Vatsa had been tremendous competitors unintentionally; that as a young officer, everything he did, Vatsa did as well, and whatever Vatsa attained, he pursued as well.

The Yoruba people fought one of the longest tribal wars in world history from 1877 to 1893.

The Kiriji or Ekiti-parapo War was a 16-year conflict that broke out mainly between Ibadan and the combined forces of Ekiti and Ijesha. It was a war that ended all wars in Yoruba land. "Kiriji" was an onomatopoeic name given to the war from the thunderous sound of the cannons the Ekitis and Ijeshas, under the command of Ogedengbe, purchased in abundance which gave them an advantage over the Ibadan forces. However, it ended in a stalemate.

MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY: WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND

An 18-year-old student was struggling to pay his fees at Stanford University. He was an orphan, and not knowing where to turn for money, he came up with a bright idea. A friend and he decided to host a musical concert on campus to raise money for their education.

They reached out to the great pianist Ignacy J. Paderewski. His manager demanded a guaranteed fee of $2000 for the piano recital.

HRM Oba Olateru Olagbegi II, the Olowo of Owo, reportedly had over 140 children. Of these, about 121 were University graduates. In fact, his father had 300 wives, five of whom remained virgins at his death. The Olateru-Olagbegi family is one of the largest and most educated families in Yoruba land.

MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY: WHO ARE YOU?

There were three ships which were nearby when the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912. One of them was known as the Sampson.

It was seven miles away from the Titanic and they saw the white flares signalling danger, but because the crew had been hunting seals illegally and didn’t want to be caught, they turned and went the opposite direction away from the Titanic.

During the Civil War, when the Ministry of Defence shared the same building with the External Affairs, Michael Ojukwu, an officer with External Affairs, had to show his service identification card before being allowed in. A military guard who first caught sight of his name hollered for the others to come and see his catch.

"You are Ojukwu?"
"Yes, I am."
"You're under arrest!"
"I am a foreign service officer."

A successful arms dealer, Francis Arthur Nzeribe sold weapons to both Nigeria and Biafra during the 30-month Nigerian Civil War. As a matter of fact, Nzeribe traded arms in every single place there had been a conflict in Africa. In the 1960s, Nzeribe worked for Kwame Nkrumah as a speechwriter but after the coup that sent Nkrumah and his aides to Conakry, Nzeribe sneaked back to Ghana to work for the new government that had overthrown his principal.

John "Mad Jack" Churchill was the last British soldier to go to war with a bow and arrows, and a sword. And he did it during the Second World War!

His motto was: "Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed." Over the course of the war, Mad Jack killed German soldiers with his arrows and captured 42 of them as prisoners at sword-point during the Allied Invasion of Sicily in July 1943.

Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi (ruled 1888–1897) was the last Oba of the Old Benin kingdom before the British punitive expedition of 1897 led to his capture, exile, incarceration and eventual death in Calabar on January 1, 1914. The Benin Expedition of 1897 was a punitive one by a British force of 1,200 under Rear-Admiral Sir Harry Rawson in response to the defeat of a previous British-led pseudo-invasion force under Acting Consul-General James Philips (which had left all but two men dead).

The largest church building in Africa, the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, is located in Yamoussoukro the capital of Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast).

The basilica was constructed between 1985 and 1989 for an estimated $600 million. The cornerstone was laid on August 10, 1985, and it was consecrated on September 10, 1990, by Pope John Paul II, who had just formally accepted the basilica as a gift from President Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d'Ivoire on behalf of the Catholic Church.

The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III was the longest-reigning ruler of the kingdom since his great-grandfather, Oba Atiba Atobatele founded New Oyo in the 1830s. A direct descendant of Oranyan (founder of the Old Oyo Empire), Adeyemi III was also a boxer before ascending the throne of his fathers after the Nigerian Civil War.