Former Wheelbarrow Pusher & Bus Conductor becomes the Best Post-UTME candidate at Obafemi Awolowo University! Uche Okwuoha Excels as a Law Student

 Uche Okwuoha once slept under the bridge, roamed the streets as a tout, worked as a bus conductor and wheelbarrow pusher. Today, he has a different story.

After scoring the highest mark in the Obafemi Awolowo University post Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination in the 2010/2011 academic session (320 out of 400), he sits proud as a Law student in the institution’s Faculty of Law.

An indigene of Imo State, the 27 year-old shared his inspiring story with Punch.
At the time he was leaving his secondary school at Okigwe, Imo State, his intention was to gain admission to any University, join a cult group and kill as many people as he could.
Having heard that cult boys were very strong and fearful, he was eager to go to the University to join a cult group. “I had heard that cult boys were strong people and that people feared them. I also heard that as a student you could only succeed on campus if you were a member of a cult group. I told myself that I would join a cult group and kill as many people as I could,” he told Punch.

According to him, this was also the desire of most of his friends in Secondary School at that time. The boys believed that if they weren’t in a cult group, they wouldn’t be able to survive on campus.
However, after making failed attempts at his West African Senior Secondary School Examinations, General Certificate Examination, and the Unified Matriculation Examinations, he became frustrated. He roamed the streets of Imo for a while and later decided to leave home so his parents would have enough money to take care of the remaining eight children.
Uche recounted that he left his parents home to live with his brother in a one-room apartment in Imo where he had to become a wheel-barrow pusher and a bus conductor to make ends meet. “It was very challenging and risky,” he said.

He later decided to move to Lagos and lived with his uncle. After some months, he left there to another brother’s place and began his life on the streets. “I rarely slept at home. I would sleep under bridges. My life back then was a mess. I was always drunk. There was nothing I did not smoke. I became so promiscuous.”

“I did not think I would get out of the pit, my life was just a mess. I had become an agbero. Going to school was not even an option. I would roam about the streets of Lagos smoking and drinking.”
But one day, when he was staying with an aunt, he got to hear about a college that trained students to write external examinations. “One day I was outside my aunt’s shop and I saw one young boy holding some books. I was just curious about where he was going, so I stopped him and asked; he then told me about a college that prepares students to write external examinations. Right there, I felt this joy. It was like my dark days were over.”

He enrolled for his UTME tutorials at Adams College in Oshodi. Despite many challenges he faced, he scored 289 in his UTME and went on to score 320 at the post-UTME later that year.
He receieved a full scholarship from Mr Adebola Adams, the Proprietor of Adams College who described Uche’s story as remarkable.
Uche advised parents to spend more time with their children. Speaking on his aspirations, he hopes to be the best graduating student and plans “to get a Master’s degree in any reputable university abroad. My dream is to reach the apex of my career.”
Well done Uche Okwuoha!
Culled from Punch Newspaper

DESPISE ME NOT!

I did not study medicine in the university, but I am a huge fan of “Grey’s Anatomy”, so much that I was becoming a surgeon in mind until I snapped back to reality. I will like to talk about some two of the doctors, Dr. Miranda Bailey and Dr. Derek Shepherd. Dr. Bailey is brilliant, bold and hardworking, always on top of her game, while Dr. Shepherd is a brilliant neurosurgeon with the perfect look, perfect face, perfect hair and prefect swags; he was nicknamed “McDreamy”, wow! Let us go back to their roots and see what they were as teenagers.

               

Miranda was a geek during her high school days and felt inferior to others, especially to the sport guys. In order to get their attention, she made herself a slave to the captain of the football team; she did all his assignments for him and he felt like it was his right to have her do the assignments for him. 15years later, she was the Resident Surgeon at Seattle Grace Hospital and became the football coach in their high school. He had an accident and was taken to Seattle Grace Hospital to be treated; Miranda took up his case and treated him. He was so amazed to see in that position, but was not shocked; she felt good about after herself and was proud of her job, especially after reminiscing about how she was during her high school days.

Dr. Derek Shepherd was a nerd in high school; he had a full hair that made him unattractive and crushed his self-esteem so much that he could not even go for prom. He grew up, there was a transformation in him, he became so perfectly handsome and his hair was everyone’s fantasy, it was perfect and he was one of the most sort after neurosurgeons in his country, even got married to a most beautiful medical doctor. He was getting more attention than he ever imagine, as against the unattractive and ignored boy in the high school.

These two people became successful adults became even though they were despised as teens, they were very unattractive and their attention seeking mechanisms failed, but they did not lose focus of their future, they worked hard towards their future which they arrived at safely and they were greatly rewarded for their hard work to the extent of being envied by the people they felt inferior to. Derek’s story is the coolest, the hair that was his minus became his plus as an adult and everyone tripped for the hair and wondered how he got his hair to be so cool.

It is very easy to feel intimidated by other people, especially when you “belief” they have what you do not have, but the truth is there is a bigger picture to see. The teenage period is a short phase in life, it will pass, but it is the period that lays the foundation for adulthood. The adulthood is a phase that ends when you die, it is real life, it is the period when you reap what you sow as a teenager, it is the period to look forward to, it is the period to plan and work towards. So, leave your minuses, ignore the people that despise you and believe you the no matter now, they don’t count in your future. All you need to do is to work toward a brilliant future and all these people will apply to be your friends because by then, you will be the “matter”.

Can you recognize these people?

Do u recognize him?
 

Don't be encouraged to look scruffy, it is a big NO NO!!!!

Have fun matching the “was” to the “is”……………

Swags + neat braids......

A double match to do, what do you say about this?

Even scruffy can be neat and fine in future, lolzzz.......

Youngest Olympian at London 2012 : 16 year old Danielle Alakija

London 2012 Olympics starts in 3days time and it is a pleasure to introduce the youngest Olympian of the London 2012 games. I read her story and was wowwed!, so, i decided to share it with us all. She is a role model to learn from; she is large hearted, hardworking, focused and vision driven.

Danielle Alakija, is the youngest Olympian competing in the London 2012 games. She is model tall, strikingly beautiful and extremely confident for a 16 year old. Although her parents are British, they have Nigerian roots. She was born in England, lived in Fiji for 14 years and now trains and studies in the West Coast of the United States of America.  At the age of 7, Danni says she had a dream that she was competing in a race in a big stadium in a cold city. And now 9 years later, she has qualified to compete in the 2012 Olympics running the Women’s 400 and the 200 meters. She is one part of the ten person Fiji team that will be in London representing Fiji at the Games.

She has been given an opportunity to train at the Lea Valley Athletic centre in Edmonton in London ahead of the games, meaning she has been preparing for the games alongside world and Olympic Champions. She says, “much of her training and preparation has been about learning to perform in a high pressure environment and compete at the highest level”. Her personal best times going into the Olympics this month are 24.32 seconds on the 200m and 55seconds in the 400m. Impressively, Her trainer is Maurice green, four time Olympic medalist and 5 time world champion.

To anyone who thinks athletics is all that’s on Danni Alakija’s mind, don’t be fooled. This young lady sees herself being a successful lawyer in the next 10 years a well as being a world-class athlete. She is also passionate about film and photography.

 When asked about being able to balance her studies and athletics, Danielle says, 

“It is really about time management, focusing on my priorities and keeping away from distraction. I’ve learned to catch up quickly on things that need to get done, and as long as I stick to my priorities, things usually work like clockwork”.

There is a certain level of focus and dedication required when training at the level that Danielle Alakija competes on and although she is optimistic about the games she is also realistic and knows that as a first time Olympian, her  first Olympics will be a “knee trembling” moment and so she is keen to learn as much as she can using whatever knowledge and experience she accrues  to help her prepare for Rio 2016.

Facts about Danielle Alakija

She says her parents; Ricki and Yodi Alakija are her heroes.

She loves Jollof rice

She coaches children with disabilities in Athletics and has a coaching certificate

She LOVES shoes

She was involved in a Haiti relief mission collecting backpacks filled with stationary and then distributing them personally to under privileged children in tent cities in Haiti.

“Never give up on your dreams, no matter how big they are. Whether we are winning or losing, the important thing is to learn something that inspires us to keep moving”  - Danielle Alakija

She is a wonderful role model for young people everywhere who dare to dream big.

Follow Danielle’s progress during the games @daniellealakija

26 year-old girl who had 26 abortions tells her sex stories

I saw this story on the internet sometime ago and thought it is worth sharing. Some said it is a cheap cooked story, some say it is really a true life story, but i know it is worth sharing and learning from.

I am 26 years old. I simply got into sex out of ignorance like millions of young people today. My addiction placed me as the highest abortionist in the world at age of 26 and now, I have a sad story to tell. 

Until I found myself in a total mess, I never really had any idea what premarital sex was all about. I never knew it was so useless and killing. 

Before I got into it, I use to think it was some fun and I dreamt of it more often than not. I wished with all my heart to have a boyfriend whom we would explore it together, little did I know that I was being nasty to myself. Because of things I see on TV and magazine, I thought having sex was so much fun, I fantasized about it each time I felt lonely. Only if I had known that everything I see in movies and soap operas were just acting and make belief; only if I had known that there is nothing in sex after all, the only thing in it is self destruction; I think my life wouldn’t be this miserable.

It’s a pity i really had to learn the hard way and I really wish I had never been born, I wish I had not come out into this deceitful world where nobody cares about young people, all the so called adults do is how they would play on the intelligence of young people in a bid to exploit and use them to satisfy their insatiable sexual passion. I really feel bad about this wicked world.

My plight started when I was sixteen, then I was still a virgin and in secondary school, I was ignorant of many things but because I see it every day on the TV and internet. More so, a couple of so called Anti AIDS people visited us in school a couple of times for lectures, but all they did was introduce sex to us even more because they really had nothing but condoms to show. Fine, they told us about AIDS, but at the same time, they also told us about condoms, they never really said anything real about sex, they said we could contact AIDS not through sex, but unprotected sex, which means there was nothing wrong with sex as long as you could use condoms, but all of that I now know very well are lies, and I wonder why men and women would enjoy telling teenagers deadly lies like that.

 

Even though I can’t blame those people totally for my plight because they weren’t really the ones that said I should go into sex, I still never forgive them for encouraging me and other young people like me into sex with their preaching of protected sex or condom. Even though I wanted to see what sex was really like and I fantasized about it, some were within me, I was still very scared of what may happen to me afterwards if l tried it, and it was that fear that actually kept me away from it until I was sixteen.

By the time I was sixteen, my fantasy had gotten enough boost to express itself with reliance to said to myself one day, “free yourself baby girl, there is nothing terrible in sex, can’t you see everyone is doing it, by the way, you can always use condoms nothing will happen”. So, I finally decided to let go of my fears and embrace in totality my silly fantasies, and that was how I took the very first step into this miserable life of illicit sex. I had absolutely no idea of what I was going into.

I finally agreed to date this guy who had been disturbing me for more than a year, his name was Andrew. Andrew was five years older than me. Both of us began enjoying sex, - we did it every seconds, every minute; - I became addicted that I do not love doing it with condom anymore. Within the period, I had 14 abortions for Andrew, and not only that, I cheated on him in several occasions, I felt doing it with other guys will give me better sensation but all were the same.

My school teacher got me and at the end of the day I had 6 abortions for him. And worst among was my sexual affairs with my close relations, which resulted to 5 abortions. Then I felt I was at the top of the world. I will never forgive my friends who introduced me into partying and sleeping with old men with potbelly and rough skin only in the name of sex.

Right now, all those men have gone, and then shadow of my past sexual life still follows me around. All this pills and tablets I took are now telling on my blood stream. At times I felt like committing suicide each time I remember what the doctor told me, “Tessy, I am sorry, your womb is automatically damaged on account of the several abortion you had”, “I’m sorry, you will never conceive again in your life, but just thank God, you don’t have HIV or AIDS”.

I therefore, advise every young girl reading this piece today, to over look every fantasy towards sex. Sex is good but it has time. And that is in marriage. Keep yourself away from men. Make friends with those who mean good for your future.

She has said it all!